Rayner told this masthead that while his firm’s design renders were very much a placeholder, the location of Blight Rayner’s planned stadium made sense, as the terrain was relatively flat.

“I wanted to try and keep the bulk of Victoria Park intact, with the idea that the Lord Mayor’s revitalisation vision for Victoria Park could still be implemented,” he said.

“In other words, if you put the stadium too much in the middle, it could make a donut out of the park and so I was trying to keep move it to an edge such that the bulk of the park was still visible as parkland.”

There would be no need for a warm-up track in the parkland. Rather, a running track could be installed at the nearby Queensland University of Technology sports field, about 750 metres to the west.

“You don’t have a Raymond Park problem that you had at the Gabba,” Rayner said, referring to the planned warm-up track that was met with community opposition when the Gabba was the proposed Olympic stadium.

Rayner said the north-east location would also help with crowd dispersal to the Exhibition train station and nearby Brisbane Metro stations.

“You want [dispersal] to occur, but without necessarily everyone having to trace through the length of the park to get there,” he said.

“And I did a rough topographical study, and while it’s sloping all over the park, it’s reasonably amenable in that area to put the stadium on it. It’s got less slope than other parts.”

Rayner said it could also be situated slightly west toward the golf clubhouse, which was the location former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk had in mind when he recommended Victoria Park in the first Olympic venues review.

“Obviously, you’d need to consider acoustics, both to the housing on the other side of Herston Road and to the hospital in whichever location you put it and that testing still has to be done,” he said.

“But there are ways in which stadiums can contain noise, so I think it doesn’t obviate those locations.”

Rayner said the stadium design was very much a placeholder – a bespoke design befitting the stadium’s location was still to come.

“I think the parkland is the key – a stadium that really engages with the park,” he said.

“It’s not one where you’ve got a big veil around it and you’re either in the stadium or you’re in the park. You want to be in both simultaneously.

“That could lead to a very different kind of typology than anything that’s been done before.”

To that aim, Rayner said he hoped GIICA, or the state government, would hold a design competition to ensure Brisbane’s Olympic stadium became “iconic of the city”.

“It reveals a whole lot of concepts at once, so I hope they go that way,” he said.

“It can become the symbol of Brisbane in every respect – a great sporting state, etc.”

While there had been high-profile opposition to the stadium, Rayner said it could enhance the Victoria Park, rather than destroy the space.

“My rationale was simply, you’ve got 64 hectares there. If you took eight hectares out for the stadium, you’ve still got 56 hectares of parkland,” he said.

“To me, it’s not a massive loss of parkland.

“It’s not a fearmongering thing where you say stadium or park – it’s stadium and park.”