Rhodes Waterside Complex, NSW
| Date of Commencement | June 2003 |
| Date of Completion | December 2003 |
| Value of Project | $120m |
| Project Architect | Krikis Tayler Architects Pty Ltd |
| Project Manager | Walker Construction Group |
| Contractor | Kingston Interiors |
| Client | Walker Corporation |
When Walker Management site manager, Richard Romano, came to work on the Rhodes Waterside Complex in June 2003, he had a huge task ahead of him. He had to turn the site, which was little more than a steel structure, into a shopping complex by December of the same year. According to Richard, the structure looked like a massive airport hanger. "But with the help of 50 men installing over 86,000 square metres of plasterboard, it took 6 weeks to have the project finished well before programmed."
Rhodes Waterside is one of the largest construction sites in Sydney comprising shops, offices, homes, cinemas and cafes. Located 1km from the Olympic stadium on the waterfront of Homebush Bay, the development includes the largest IKEA store in the southern hemisphere (27,000m2 of floor space). The NSW Lafarge Plasterboard sales and technical services team worked with Walker Construction Group (WCG) right from the start, by approaching the architects and project managers to offer a cheaper and faster alternative to 9mm fibre cement- GIB Toughline®. According to Richard Romano, plasterboard is much quicker to install and can fulfill a variety of needs that other products can not.
"Not many products are able to span the dimensions of the ceiling of the shopping complex, with a height of over seven metres. In fact we had to design a special scaffolding just for the job. We got the ceiling up in a week."
The eight-screen cinema complex used 55,000m2 of 16mm Fireshield. One wall alone in the cinema took 500 sheets. "We had semi-trailer after semi-trailer arriving day after day piled with plasterboard. On the ceiling we used 10mm plasterboard to get curves. Lafarge Plasterboard then worked alongside Matthew Carter from Walker's acoustic consultants, Acoustic Logic, to design a system for the intercinema walls in the Reading Cinema Complex.
Reading Cinemas have developed their own unique standard for acoustic performance in their cinemas. The walls between the cinemas, therefore, had to be tailored to meet Reading Cinema's specific requirements. Working with the Lafarge technical services team, special modifications were made to the Lafarge High Performance Wall System. The final design involved two independent steel stud framed walls that eliminated the bridging resilient element found in the Lafarge High Performance Wall System.