Civic Arts Pavilion

The city wanted a hall that honours timber temple geometry but performs like modern infrastructure. We cast the whole envelope in board-marked concrete and floated it on 24 base isolators, so a major quake moves the ground — not the audience.

Acoustics drove the structure: a box-in-box inner shell on spring mounts isolates the auditorium from street vibration. Board-marking was prototyped eleven times before the final pour was approved.