Project Case Study
Adelaide Aquatic Centre
North Adelaide, South Australia
Project Overview
When the South Australian Government committed $135 million to rebuild the Adelaide Aquatic Centre within the city’s Parklands, the brief carried weight beyond construction. What was to be developed would become a civic landmark born of place, unmistakeably and uniquely Adelaide.
Atlantis Liquid Dynamics was engaged by Warren & Mahoney to design the indoor leisure play experience and commission a custom hero piece for the space. The scope was deliberately open, with no catalogue, no precedent and no pre-agreed outcome. Atlantis joined the design team at concept stage and stayed through to commissioning, with a shared understanding that what was being built had to belong specifically to this city and this community.
Design Collaboration
The design process was a true collaboration. Lead Architect Brett Diprose, Principal Architect at Warren and Mahoney, worked closely with JPE Design Studio and Karl Winda Telfer to shape the broader project vision, while engaging closely with Atlantis throughout the development of the indoor aquatic experience. Together, the team brought different perspectives to create a cohesive and culturally grounded outcome.
The Eagle Ray grew from a long process of discussion, reference and exploration rather than a single sketch or predetermined idea. From early in the project, Brett Diprose at Warren and Mahoney had been clear: “I had in my head that we weren’t going to do something conventional.”
Karl Winda Telfer is a Burka-Senior Man of the Mullawirra Meyunna, Dry Forest People, and one of South Australia’s most respected cultural creative voices. His contribution centred on water as connective tissue — the idea of multiple river systems converging across Country. This concept became structural rather than decorative, informing how the aquatic zones relate to one another, how people move between indoor and outdoor environments and how the building’s water story finds its identity in this specific place.
PROJECT PARTNERS
Atlantis is proud to have partnered with Warren and Mahoney, JPE Design Studio and Sarah Constructions to deliver the Adelaide Aquatic Centre indoor leisure pool.
Creating The Eagle Ray
An exploration of art, movement and architecture
The Eagle Ray did not begin as a conventional play structure, but as an exploration into how art, movement and architecture can coexist. From the outset, the ambition was to create something emotionally resonant at civic scale — an object that felt alive within the space rather than simply installed in it.
For Atlantis’ Head Designer, the challenge became translating an abstract vision into a buildable reality without losing the elegance that made the concept compelling in the first place. Early design conversations repeatedly returned to the image of a Spitfire suspended in flight — aerodynamic, weightless and effortlessly occupying space overhead. The reference was less about aviation itself and more about the contradiction of scale and lightness; something visually immense that appeared to glide almost without structure.
THE INSPIRATION
At the same time, the team drew inspiration from the Ghost Net Collective, Indigenous-led woven sculptures of marine creatures stretched across lightweight frameworks. Their sense of movement, craftsmanship and cultural storytelling helped shape the thinking around how the structure could feel sculptural rather than themed.
Through ongoing dialogue between Atlantis, Brett, JPE Design Studio and Karl Winda Telfer, these references gradually converged into the form of the Southern Eagle Ray — a species endemic to Gulf St Vincent and deeply tied to the waters surrounding Adelaide
The Resolution
What emerged through the collaboration process was a highly iterative design exercise balancing art, beauty and engineering simultaneously. Rather than treating the Eagle Ray as a standard aquatic piece with decorative elements applied afterwards, Atlantis approached it more like an inhabitable sculpture — concealing structural complexity within a form that reads as effortless and organic. Every curve, angle and transition had to function structurally while still preserving the illusion of something floating through the air.
The eventual resolution became a convergence of architecture, culture, storytelling and technical innovation.
ENGINEERING & PRototyping
Bringing the vision to life
With the concept established, the harder work began. Water needed to perform across a sculptural form that had never been built before, and the design intent pushed well beyond what existing typologies could offer.
Rather than a single tipping-bucket release, common for most aquatic ‘hero’ pieces, water would be pumped through the internal structure of the Eagle Ray and distributed across the full span of its wings — travelling slowly, staying visible and providing a continuous stream rather than a single event. The internal distribution system was engineered to maintain even flow across an asymmetric form under variable operating conditions. It required sustained iteration: full-scale prototyping, performance testing, refinement of hydraulic routing and close coordination between design and fabrication throughout.
The prototype — built at full scale, water running for the first time — was the moment the project’s ambition became tangible. Brett Diprose was direct about what that stage meant:
“The level of innovation that Atlantis brought to the table was exceptional.”
For Atlantis, the prototyping stage was as much about maintaining trust in the design intent as solving the technical water delivery mechanism.
FABRICATION
PROUDLY MADE IN QUEENSLAND, AUSTRALIA
The aquatic elements were fabricated across a network of specialist manufacturers in Queensland, each contributing a specific capability towards the finished piece. Building locally kept the design team close to production throughout. Decisions were made quickly and with full understanding of the intent behind them, something that would have been far harder to manage at a distance or offshore.
It also meant the project could tell a story about Australian industry: bespoke, technically demanding work, delivered by local businesses on a piece of public infrastructure built to last for generations.
Final assembly was undertaken in-house by Atlantis, allowing the team to maintain complete control over the finish and integration of the piece as it came together. The process involved carefully layering custom acrylic panels through the wings, coordinating concealed plumbing systems and aligning each component so the engineering disappeared into the overall form. Much of the complexity sits hidden within the structure itself, preserving the illusion of something lightweight and effortless despite the technical sophistication required to deliver it.
An Award-Winning FACILITY
Adelaide Aquatic Centre has been recognised at the 2026 South Australian Architecture Awards, winning the City of Adelaide Prize for Design Excellence and the People’s Choice Award.
DELIVERED AS DESIGNED
FROM RENDER TO REALITY
Atlantis provided specialist installation support on site, working alongside the team at Sarah Constructions through the commissioning process. The hydraulic performance established during prototyping held in the built environment. The Eagle Ray entered the Adelaide Aquatic Centre as it had been designed and tested, with the integrity of the design process carried through to the end.
In addition to the Eagle Ray, Atlantis delivered equipment for the broader indoor leisure play environment as an integrated aquatic experience rather than a single hero installation. The space combines interactive water play elements, sculptural water features and family-oriented design to support a wide range of ages and confidence levels within the one environment.
ARTIST’s RENDER
FINAL DELIVERY
COMMUNITY IMPACT
THE START OF A LEGACY
The Adelaide Aquatic Centre opened on 26 January 2026, with temperatures hitting 44 degrees across the city. More than 10,000 people had registered for the opening ballot. Since opening, the centre has been awarded the 2026 City of Adelaide Prize for Design Excellence, described by the jury as a landscape within a landscape.
Brett Diprose’s hope for the project was always longer than an opening weekend. He draws a comparison to the Centenary Pool, built in 1957 and still spoken about warmly by people for whom it marks a chapter of childhood.
“A child interacting with the Eagle Ray today will interact differently with it later on in life. And then a new generation of kids will experience it for the first time.”
With around 2,000 people moving through the centre every day, that generational ambition has every chance of being realised. The Eagle Ray will be there for all of them — a piece of the city’s fabric that began, like most good things, with a conversation and a vision.
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