Adelaide Festival Centre celebrates 50 years as a cultural beacon

The award-winning Adelaide Festival Centre notches up 50 years as the heart of the arts.

When its first stage opened in 1973 — only three months ahead of Sydney Opera House — Adelaide Festival Centre on Kaurna Yarta Country heralded a new dawn for Australia’s arts scene. The complex was commissioned by Don Dunstan’s progressive South Australian government to position the arts at the centre of cultural life. It quickly became ​‘a flag in the ground saying we care about culture, we celebrate it, we want it to be a part of our lives in a daily way’ (arts lover interviewed in Sharp Edged Clouds).

At the 2023 Australian Institute of Architects SA Chapter awards, Adelaide Festival Centre won the Jack Cheesman Award for Enduring Architecture. 

“The Adelaide Festival Centre boasts a bold, modernist form that has stood the test of time. It is fitting that in its 50th year the Centre receives the 2023 SA Enduring Architecture Award.”

— Jury Citation

The jury continued by saying, ​“The Adelaide Festival Centre is not only instantly recognisable, it also represents an important period in South Australian history and is integral to our identity as the Festival State. Buildings that achieve all these things at once are rare, and for the Festival Centre to have done so for 50 years is truly worthy of celebration.”

Hassell architect John Morphett (1932−2016) led the design that marked ​‘a major step forward in modern architecture’ in South Australia.

“We started designing this centre, the Festival Centre in 1969. The feeling of the city at the time was one of a large country town. People didn’t go out much at night. The arts were almost unknown.”

— the late John Morphett AM OBE

Delivered in three phases between 1970-1980, the centre comprises a 2,000-seat Festival Theatre for large scale orchestral concerts, opera, ballet, musicals and conventions as well as a Drama Theatre complex consisting of a 635-seat Playhouse (now Dunstan Playhouse), a flexible experimental performance studio originally known as The Space (now Space Theatre) along with galleries and function spaces. 

Between two concrete carapaces, a 1,000-seat open air amphitheatre makes the most of the site’s natural contours and riverside setting overlooking the Karrawirra Pari, Torrens. A major art installation by German environmental artist Otto Herbert Hajek adorned the plaza over a 300 space car park.

“We were most fortunate getting a site like this one here on the edge of the river, which must be one of the best sites in the whole of the world.”

— the late John Morphett AM OBE

Described by arts-lovers as ​‘sharp-edged clouds in front of a city’, ​‘an origami box’, and ​‘different from anything that’s been built anywhere in South Australia’, the concrete shells and performance spaces of this leading arts hub ​‘change[d] the way that South Australians saw themselves and probably the way that we were seen by the rest of the world’.

Fifty years on, ​‘they are still majestic, still striking. That folded structure is still timeless… and that’s the mark of an enduring architecture.’

— Adelaide arts lover

“I’m pretty proud of what it’s done for Adelaide… It’s a sign. It’s a symbol. It’s an image of Adelaide, and so Adelaide is known by the image of this centre.”

— the late John Morphett AM OBE

As well as hosting Adelaide Festival, the arts hub presents annual festivals including Adelaide Cabaret Festival, OzAsia Festival, DreamBIG Children’s Festival, Adelaide Guitar Festival and OUR MOB. It is also home to Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, State Opera South Australia, Australian Dance Theatre, State Theatre Company South Australia, The Australian Ballet, Brink and Windmill Theatre Co. 

The first of Australia’s purpose-built performing arts centres certainly put South Australia on the cultural map. Frequented by over a million people each year, Adelaide Festival Centre is still acknowledged by audiences and performers as the best of its kind in the nation.

Now, the Adelaide Festival Centre is undergoing a $90 million redevelopment led by Hassell in partnership with ARM Architects and landscape architects TCL and Aspect Studios to better integrate the arts hub with its riverbank location, making it more accessible to all, and enlivening the spaces in and around the complex. All of these improvements will ensure the facility can continue to host world-class performing arts events through its next 50 years and beyond.

Watch the video Sharp Edged Clouds for more on the genesis and evolution of this monumental arts project.