Football consistently remains one of the highest participation sports in Australia, and this remains true in Western Sydney. The development of the Campbelltown Sports Centre of Excellence in Sydney’s west provides an integrated high performance training and community health facility. This project will launch the A-League’s newest team, the Macarthur Bulls, through the provision of state-of-the-art training and administrative facilities.

The establishment of Macarthur FC with its strong and loyal local supporter base, combined with this evolution in sub-elite community training facilities provides an opportunity for Council to bring together elite training facilities, professional teams, strategic partners and commercial enterprise into a ‘one stop shop’ and holistic service offer that creates an attractive value proposition for elite and aspiring athletes, teams and the broader sporting and general public.

The project embodied the opportunity to build awareness of and respect for Campbelltown’s Aboriginal community, their connections to country, heritage, culture and future aspirations.  Our team believed that the project would be enriched with the contribution of Indigenous knowledge. Our role in this process to ensure that abstract Indigenous representation is realized in the project and that opportunities for more explicit forms of representation are created and as far as possible self-determined by the community.

The ground floor plan reflects the aspirations for the facility to be organised around a central shared spaces with easily discernible internal functions. A generous public foyer forms the shared spaces, with direct access to reception and a public cafe. From this position the view will allow for ease of way finding and operational clarity. Making the arrival experience one that will comfortably engage the community.