1 Earth

  • Qantas Exhibition Pavilions for the 1988 Bicentennial Air Show

    Teflon Membrane Structures For Display Pavilions

  • Location

    Richmond, NSW

  • Client

    Qantas Airways Ltd

This is one of the first projects undertaken by Peter Israel when he commenced private practice.

The project was to design two large pavilions for Qantas to house their major travelling exhibition which told the history of Qantas. These were the feature buildings of Sydney’s 1988 Bicentennial Air Show.

The structure was designed to express the concept of “flight’. Accordingly, it was designed as a tensile fabric structure which evokes a feeling of “lightness. Also, the stretched Teflon coated fibreglass membrane recalled the fabric wings of some of the first airplanes, while the triangular form is a reference to the triangular Qantas logo. We worked with the exhibition designer Hulsbosch on the details of the installation.

The pavilions were recognised by the Institute of Light-Weight Structures for a design award. We undertook this work with structural engineers Ashby Doble Engineers and project managed the works with them.