THE original plan for a conventional theatre at the Belconnen Arts Centre has been dumped for an adaptable, “open performance space” – and a change of architect charged to think outside the square.

ACT Arts Minister Joy Burch has announced that the tender for Stage 2 has gone to a team of Australia’s premier theatre architects, Cox Architecture, which has offices in Canberra and is known for buildings such as the Lyric Theatre, at Star City, Bangarra Performing Arts Centre and Fremantle’s John Curtin Performing Arts Centre as well as for large cultural sites such as the National Maritime Museum and the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum.

Describing the selection of Cox as “the right choice,” Ms Burch said community expectations had changed since Stage One went up in 2009, when Chief Minister Jon Stanhope had challenged the community to fill the centre with arts activities.

So popular had it become, embraced by young and old, that earlier plans by the architect of stage one, Melbourne firm Williams Ross Architects, for a conventional theatre space had given way to the notion of an adaptable, “open performance space” that could include workshop spaces and seating for up to 200 to 400 people, as well as a cafe and community kitchen and an outdoor performance space.

The design, funded from a $300,000 allocation in the 2012-13 ACT Budget, Ms Burch said, should be guided by a development review from cultural planner Susan Conroy that had looked into new directions for Belconnen Arts Centre.

She warned that they would need to work fast to come up with, say, three design options by November, as the ACT Budget for 2014 would be set by March and, so far, there was no notional costing of the project.

Cox representative Rohan Moss, noting that Belconnen had “a rising feel of confidence,” told the Minster, the new CEO of the centre, Daniel Ballantyne and the head of artsACT David Whitney that they would certainly look at how the centre fits in with changing developments on the Lake Ginninderra foreshore, where cafes, dwellings and offices were mushrooming.

Moss said the new plan would be “not radically different” from the Williams Ross plan to fill a large gravel square outside the windows with a theatre, but that it had become clear that the centre required an “open space” capable of being used for dance rehearsals, performances and other communal activities, not just straight theatre. To that end, he said, the space would be very high – 10 to 12 metres – making it suitable for circus work and aerial dance work.

Moss said we shouldn’t expect a big theatre, but something more like the Studio space at Sydney Opera House or La Boîte Theatre’s 340 to 400-seat Roundhouse Theatre in Brisbane, where the round space “mediated a different experience”.

One immediate problem, Moss said, was to retain the “fantastic” natural light that pours into the foyer while inserting the performing space into the gravel square. They’d have to think outside that square.