Opening Ceremony to crown students’ architecture project

Master of Architecture student Sarah Paige was among a group of students who created a 3D model of Carrara Stadium.

Architecture student Sarah Paige was at university during the holidays when lecturer Karine Dupre approached her with a project that would enhance and invigorate her studies in a way she could never have anticipated.

The project will reach a spectacular culmination on Wednesday night, April 4, when the Official Opening Ceremony of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games is beamed to Australia and the world.

On the back of the approach from Associate Professor Dupre, Sarah teamed up with fellow architecture students, Kirra Keating, Brian Mates and Nikki Findlay, to create a 3D model of Carrara Stadium that has played a central functional role in the design of what promises to be a memorable Opening Ceremony.

The talented student group was charged with the task of creating a 1:100 scale model of Carrara Stadium that would enable the ceremony designers to picture and plan each step for the gala show.

“It’s only when you start that you realise just how big a stadium is. We knew we had our work cut out for us,” Sarah, who is studying a Master of Architecture, says.

Through long days and longer nights of trial and error with an array of building materials in the architecture studio on Griffith’s Gold Coast campus, the team built a 3D model which met the requirements of Open Ceremony producers.

“That was testament to how well we executed the brief. We’re almost professional model makers after that,” says Sarah who went to on work on the stadium interior at the Gold Coast offices the ceremony producers for a further week.