Melbourne 1956: The Swimming Stadium

The venue for the swimming, diving and water polo competitions at the Olympic Games and home to the first enclosed diving pool in Olympic history, the centre is now used as a training and administrative base by the Victorian Institute of Sport (VIS) and by Collingwood Football Club’s Australian rules and netball teams. Its facilities include a world-class gymnasium, a 25m lap pool, an exhibition space, corporate event and function rooms, and a hydrotherapy spa. The centre’s community and training facilities are also open to recreational athletes and host grass-roots leisure and sports initiatives.

An enduring landmark of the 1956 Olympic Games, the Holden Centre is a significant building in architectural, historical and symbolic terms, and is listed in the Victorian Heritage Register. An early example of a pre-tensioned steel-framed construction, it won many awards when it opened.

After the Olympic Games, the stadium was used by the public and for national competitions. Demand for indoor pools was limited due to Melbourne’s extensive number of beaches, however, and the Olympic pool was filled in as part of renovation work in 1983 and replaced by a parquetry floor. Extended in capacity, the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre, as it was known at the time, became the city’s number one entertainment venue, hosting concerts by Elton John and Queen and a number of major indoor sporting events. It also became the home of basketball in Victoria, with four of the state’s clubs using it. A fire in the late 1990s marked the end of its use as a multi-purpose venue. The building was renovated once more in 2002, a project that was overseen by one of its original architects and which saw it return to its original shape: an eye-catching inverted pyramid.

The Swimming Stadium adopted its current name in 2015, when its facilities were extended as part of an AUD 25 million investment in the site.