“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.”
Henry Ford, American industrialist and business magnate
Australia’s built environment is shaped by a rigorous framework of regulations designed to ensure the safety, sustainability and functionality of its structures.
But what happens when a project is so large, so complex, so unique that it doesn’t fit into the standard mould?
Think the $700 million Winter Sports World.
It’s the largest new tourism attraction in Australia right now and the biggest ever for Western Sydney.
As well as its showstopping exterior design, our giant snow box will be the first indoor snow centre in the world to have a ski slope on top of another snow box and the first to have a hotel beneath the ski slope.
Winter Sports World falls into the same category as the Sydney Metro, Brisbane’s Cross River Rail and Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel when it comes to the Building Code of Australia (BCA).
(Maintained by the Australian Building Codes Board, that’s the minimum standards for safety, health, amenity, accessibility and sustainability in buildings in this country.)
These major projects aren’t just buildings . . . they’re infrastructure ecosystems, blending architectural ambition with engineering innovation on a scale that pushes the boundaries of traditional compliance.
Out of the norm
Winter Sports World managing director Peter Magnisalis. Photo: David Hill, Deep Hill Media
The BCA is comprehensive and vital, but it's designed for typical buildings – offices, homes, hospitals, shops.
Projects like Winter Sports World aren’t the norm.
Spaces like Australia’s first indoor snow resort defy simple classification.
They have elements that are underground, multi-modal, highly interconnected or exposed to unique risk profiles.
Winter Sports World will have massive underground infrastructure containing carparking and a 1.6 gigalitre water tank.
It will have public concourses, non-standard egress and fire safety systems and will integrate with multiple existing public assets like the park and walking/bike tracks.
In these cases, strict BCA compliance may be impossible, impractical, counterproductive even.
So how do these projects move forward?
Square pegs, round holes
Blackett Maguire + Goldsmith director David Blackett is used to making square pegs fit into round holes.
Projects like Winter Sports World, a bespoke design that the building code fails to capture, “is what gets me out of bed every morning”.
BM+G is a building code and accessibility consultancy and building certification service.
Its approach to the Building Code of Australia is to allow the innovative design and functionality of a building like Winter Sports World to apply the code to a design rather than developing a design based on code restrictions.
That means adapting the code around showstopping elements like the kinetic “ice shards” on the outside of the building or the height of the ski slope or the zip lines in the snow play area.
“Our role is to understand the design intent and how the building is going to work,” Blackett says.
“Do we want to see firewalls everywhere and put the hotel in a little corner and the ski fields in another corner? Or do you want a united building where I'm in the hotel and I feel like I'm in a ski field, and when I'm in a ski field I feel like I'm in the restaurant?”
An indoor snow resort obviously has numerous safety requirements, but those features must be discrete or invisible, Blackett says.
“We need an open building that mimics or replicates an external ski field.”
But while the building code is a minimum standard, BM+G aims to far exceed that standard without compromise, Blackett says.
“What we need to do is work out how to push a square peg in a round hole and make it meet the code.”
While BM+G hasn't worked on an indoor snow resort before, it has worked on indoor stadiums, of which there are only a few and but have many similarities.
“We find ourselves working on unique projects because others can't and don't.”
Since 2002, BM+G has advised on projects worth more than $20 billion, including Penrith Stadium, Macquarie Point Stadium, URBN Surf at Sydney Olympic Park, Allianz Stadium, Amazon Fulfillment Centre BWU2 at Kemps Creek, University of Newcastle’s New Space, Gateway Circular Quay, The William Inglis hotel, brewery and auditorium at Warwick Farm and Ken Rosewall Arena, Sydney Olympic Tennis Centre and more.
Without compromise
The Building Code of Australia allows for performance solutions (flexible methods that demonstrate compliance in alternative but equivalent (or superior) ways), for unconventional projects like Winter Sports World.
“Often, the systems we put in place are usually over and above what the minimum standard would have achieved,” Blackett says.
“We never compromise on safety.”
Delivering such projects isn't just a design challenge.
“You don’t work in silos on jobs like this,” Blackett says. “Disciplines have to work as one to get the right outcome. Everyone needs to have an appreciation for the uniqueness of the building and pull in the same direction.”
This alignment extends to regulatory consultants, engineers, accessibility specialists, even legal advisors, each working towards meeting the building code as well as the vision behind it.
Australia’s most ambitious projects aren’t just reshaping skylines, they’re pushing the boundaries of innovation.
Building big doesn’t mean building recklessly.
It means designing with intent, navigating complexity and using every tool.
Winter Sports World will provide perfect snow, perfect snow conditions and perfect weather 365 days a year in a self-sustaining environmental venue to countless Australians who currently don’t have the opportunity to experience snow.
It will be a transformational piece of social infrastructure for Western Sydney that will provide more than 2,720 new jobs and inject more than $2.5 billion into the local economy over 10 years.
It will also firmly fix the global spotlight on Australia and Western Sydney as the world’s newest international tourist destination.