On the Gold Coast, resilience is not an abstract ideal — it is a lived condition. Shaped by steep hinterland escarpments, shifting sands, tidal energy and subtropical weather systems, the city’s topography has always demanded a built environment capable of anchoring itself, adapting, and evolving. Gold Coast Open House 2025 invited visitors to experience the city through this lens, revealing resilience as both a practical necessity and a creative force.
Cheshire Cat Motel. Images: Andy McPherson
Across the weekend, participants encountered resilience in many architectural expressions. It was present in the enduring modernism of the Captain Cook Memorial Lighthouse, still holding its ground after decades of salt winds and corrosive air. It appeared in the reinvention of the Cheshire Cat Motel, where a mid-century roadside relic has been thoughtfully restored, proving how adaptive reuse can preserve heritage while giving it contemporary relevance. And it emerged in the carefully choreographed learning environments of the Abedian School of Architecture, where students are taught that flexibility and responsiveness is essential in designing for the future.
Resilience also surfaced in places the public rarely sees. Tours behind the scenes at the Gold Coast Airport opened discussions around the planning and engineering that keep a city connected even when conditions change. At the Gold Coast Desalination Plant and the Disaster & Emergency Management Centre, visitors witnessed resilience as protection: a complex web of systems, strategy and dedicated personnel working to safeguard water supply and community safety.
Kanooka House. Image: Yaseera Moosa.
But resilience is more than infrastructure. It is also deeply human. Kanooka House, Old Dog New Tricks, Woodside Cottage and Ute House reveal how everyday architecture can nurture this quality. These homes demonstrate the quiet resilience embedded in domestic life — in creating flexible spaces for intergenerational living, supporting diverse family structures, and preserving the craftsmanship and materiality that hold local stories. Each home reflects a community ethos: that resilience grows when people are housed with connection and long-term thinking.
The theme continued through the city’s knowledge and innovation landscapes. At the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct and across Griffith University, resilience took the form of research excellence, technological innovation and collaborative learning environments. Key resilience themes were explored at Griffith throughout the day with panel discussions which brought together architects, researchers, planners and cultural leaders to examine resilience from multiple angles — from multi-generational living to circular economies, these conversations underscored that resilience is never singular; it is interdisciplinary, shared and constantly evolving.
ABC’s dirtgirlworld and scrapboy
Nowhere was resilience more visibly interpreted than at the Advanced Resource Recovery Centre (ARRC), which hosted an entire day dedicated to circular economy thinking. Families met ABC’s dirtgirlworld and scrapboy, who brought environmental ideas to life for younger visitors through storytelling and hands-on activities. By engaging children in sustainability from an early age, the city invests in a generation that understands stewardship not as an obligation but as a creative opportunity.
In timely alignment, the ARRC has announced a major partnership with Visy Recycling and the City of Gold Coast to progress a next-generation Materials Recovery Facility at Stapylton. More than a technical achievement, the announcement reflected a shifting mindset — towards a future where materials circulate longer, waste becomes a source of innovation, and the region positions itself at the forefront of Australia’s emerging green industries. It captured the essence of the weekend: resilience as transformation, not just endurance.
What emerged across these buildings, landscapes and conversations was a portrait of a city quietly strengthening itself. A city investing in its future and recognising that resilience is not a singular trait but an ongoing practice.
Gold Coast Open House 2025 invited us to see resilience not as something the city must strive for, but as something already deeply embedded in its character — visible in its architecture, powered by its people, and shaping the legacy we create for generations to come.
