The BCC was keen to include a wading pool in the Centenary complex, one of its principal objectives being to provide facilities for children of an early age to be taught to swim.

[1] James Birrell, Brisbane's City Architect from 1955 to 1961, produced a substantial body of civic work for the Brisbane City Council, including the Wickham Terrace Car Park, the former Toowong Municipal Library Building, Toowong Pool, and various suburban libraries.

This is demonstrated in the design of the Centenary Pool Complex, which is unlike any of Birrell's other work, and is not in the mainstream of modern international style architecture that was being practised in Australia in the 1950s.

Like Niemeyer, Birrell attempted to create in the Centenary Pool design a work of art rather than a purely functionalist structure.

On technical aspects of the pool's construction, such as the size and positioning of the filtration equipment, Birrell worked closely with the Brisbane City Council's Chief Health Officer, James Douglas Mabbett.

[1] Underwater floodlighting and observation windows were included in the design, to permit coaches to view their pupils in action from below the surface.

[1] In 1960 the Centenary Pool complex was selected by the editors of the Melbourne publication Architecture and Arts as one of the top ten buildings in Australia.

The complex is modernist-influenced in both design conception and detailing; in particular the buildings are related to the plastic expressionism of modernist architects and artists such as Oscar Niemeyer and Hans Arp.

...hovering above this is another free form volume with geometric shapes placed in it, that is the restaurant with access stairs, ceiling lights and the roof terrace".

Within this boundary the pools and buildings relate to a bisecting north-south axis which extends through the park and finishes at the facade of the University of Queensland Mayne Medical School.

To the east of this concourse is the swimming pool, measuring 165 by 60 feet (50 by 18 m), whose eastern edge is lined by a stepped concrete grandstand (designed to seat 1200).

The bath house comprises a long curved building which hugs the edge of the slope, and is entered via a ramp leading down to a central ticket office.

The restaurant building contains a kiosk at ground level, and is entered via a concrete ramp which arches over the roof of the dressing sheds.

The curvilinear walls of the restaurant are formed with faceted glazed panels set in circular steel columns.

[1] Internally, the restaurant is a fluid, transparent space, with the kitchen at the centre encircled by a curved wall clad in T&G boarding.

The northern end of the restaurant has a raised round lit floor which has translucent glass panes set in a steel frame.

[1] The bath house comprises a series of externally expressed steel portal frames, with a concave rendered concrete masonry wall to the south with obscured glass louvres at high level, a convex brick wall to the north with steel louvres, and a metal deck roof.

The eastern and southern edges of the complex have domestically-scaled tracts of brightly coloured tropical plantings (for example Acalyphas, Hibiscus, Travellers palms, Aloes).

Its social significance lies in its contribution to the development of competitive swimming in Brisbane, having been the city's principal aquatic sports centre from 1959 to 1980.