Culture | Shear Outback: Australian Shearer’s Hall of Fame

Hay, NSW

In association with Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture

Awards

RAIA National Award for Commercial Buildings 2002

BHP Colourbond Award for Use of Steel 2002

RAIA NSW Commendations Award for Public Building 2002

BHP NSW Colourbond Steel Award 2002

Australian Steel Institute Award 2004

Shear Outback is a museum and interpretive centre on the outskirts of Hay in western NSW. It documents and celebrates the role of shearers in Australia's growth and development. The complex includes a new museum and associated facilities, a re-erected 1920's woolshed, gardens, dams, windmill, tanks and levee banks.

The site plan and building design evolved from careful analysis of the landscape, climate and regional precedents as well as the functional requirements of a small museum. The new building is placed near the Sturt Highway, forming a sheltering barrier to traffic noise. Two long earth berms engage the building and landscape, overlapping to define the entrance and form an edge to a lush garden which will grow over time into a shady retreat, reminiscent of the formal gardens of an old homestead.

The former Murray Downs woolshed has been re-erected at a distance from the new building so that it is seen as an object in its own right, displayed against the broad horizon.

The new building is composed of sloping planes that define the major spaces and punch skywards to make a dramatic silhouette. The fully conditioned museum is complemented by more economical spaces with natural ventilation and evaporative cooling. Tall steel blade walls shelter the Hall of Fame, a robust space that evokes the character of the great woolsheds. Heat extractor boxes above harness the stack effect to draw air through the building. A low cantilevered verandah runs the length of the building, forming a contrasting space to frame the horizon and contain the never ending sky of the Hay plain.

Maitland Cathedral Precinct – THE HUB

Maitland, NSW

In association with Bastian Architecture

The project provides an exciting possibility to create THE HUB, a new multi-use commercial and community space, a new focus for the Maitland Cathedral precinct with connections to the Hunter River and High Street and integrating with the city’s pedestrian network.

The proposed adaptive reuse will provide a flexible multi-purpose facility, capable of serving a variety of functions for the community, special interest groups, local businesses, schools, Council and others.  The range of uses could include:

•  Gourmet food and produce markets, showcasing the Hunter Valley.

•  Café / brasserie style restaurant with terrace overlooking the new Cathedral Square.

•  Special events, concerts, lectures, film nights and similar events with 375 + capacity.

•  Historical displays, photographic and text panels in public areas, café and circulation spaces.

•  Community market days.

•  Historical Society meeting and administration space.

The design includes a restaurant kitchen with dry store and cool room.  Catering and furnishing for major events would be supplied from off site and delivered via the new loading bay.  The bar area to the side of the auditorium has space for its own cool room as well as drink fridges and display.  Also included are a box office / cloak room, store rooms and administration offices.

Toilet facilities have been provided on ground and upper floors to serve the maximum predicted population.  Ambulant and wheelchair accessible facilities are included.  Flexibility and diversity are paramount: the layout and circulation permits each use in the building to operate alone, or in conjunction with one or more other uses.

The design provides a dedicated mechanical plant room on the first floor, with screened enclosure for condenser units above.  The large volume and layout of the main hall also lends itself to energy efficient solutions and to full or partial natural ventilation.

The building will be fully wheelchair accessible. The dress circle will be served by a new glass enclosed lift and ramped walkways – with a possible link to the adjacent offices. 

The existing building has many remarkable features, including a memorable theatre space and proscenium.  The design retains most of the valuable historic fabric, but also makes several bold interventions – these contrast with the existing in a dramatic and memorable way.  The new gallery space along the western side of the auditorium is a grand top lit space, an ideal place for the display of large photographs and interpretive panels of Maitland’s past.

Port Macquarie, NSW

BTB Architecture Studio have been engaged by the Port Macquarie Museum to undertake strategic concept design for it’s inner city site, containing one of Port Macquarie’s oldest and most significant historical structures.

The museum is core to Port Macquarie’s civic identity, as it uncovers the town’s rich and unique cultural heritage. Collections are curated vividly with artefacts, ephemera and photographs that orchestrate the narratives of the now prominent town.

The museum has been a finalist in the 2018 National Tourism Awards and has received a North Coast Tourism Hall of Fame Award in 2018. With these achievements in curation and organisation and the nature of Port Macquarie as a popular coastal destination, it is necessary to embark on a design exploration that will further engage visitors and community members. Currently sited in the cultural centre of town, this meaningful building lacks a dimensional relationship with street and requires a means of attraction that goes beyond typography.

This will involve extensive consultation with the museum committee, members, local council and the community to identify a preferred concept design solution. This will then be developed into a detailed schematic design proposal for DA and beyond into delivery.

Culture | Maitland Regional Art Gallery

Maitland, NSW

In association with Barry McGregor and Associates

Awards

Master Builders Association NSW Awards: Winner, Refurbishment/Renovation and Extension 2009

Landcom Lower Hunter Urban Design Awards: Merit, Large-Scale Development Award 2010

Landcom Lower Hunter Urban Design Awards: Winner, Graph Building Heritage Award 2010

RAIA NSW Architecture Awards: Winner, Premier’s Prize 2010

RAIA NSW Architecture Awards: Commendation, Heritage Greenway Award 2011

Lower Hunter Urban Design Awards: Joint Winner, Heritage Award 2015

The former Maitland Technical College campus has had a place in the historic fabric of central Maitland for a century. Its conversion to an Art Gallery is only recent. This latest infill work completes the process of adaptive re-use of the site. It combines facilities to exhibit local and visiting collections as well as dedicated areas for children, art teaching, a gallery shop selling the work of local artists, and a café to draw casual visitors. In urban terms, it is destined to be the cornerstone of the planned re-emergence of this part of Maitland’s main street as its civic core.

Two pre-existing buildings occupied the site. These tell a remarkable story about the change in architectural expression in the early twentieth century; the contrast between the civic ambition and rich architectural language of the 1908 building facing the main street and the stripped functionalism of the 1911 rear classroom block.

The new work provides contemporary gallery accommodation sited between these pre-existing buildings. It is a two-storey, linear form that unites the complex, with voids revealing the unfinished historic fabric and its narrative of Architectural volte-face and changes of intent.

A restrained palette of contemporary external form, details and materials in the new work seeks to create an appropriate but contrasting form behind Vernon’s richly detailed building. Vernon’s great top-lit stair hall and gallery spaces remain integral to the new complex. They are connected to the new wing by a series of openings, most of which are through the originally intended doors, constructed but ‘temporarily’ in-filled in the 1908 brickwork.

The project was realised on a very modest budget measured against the briefed floor area and facilities. The main gallery spaces in the new building are, by necessity and design, simple and flexible. More complexity and detail was reserved for the spaces that mark the interface between the new work and the pre-existing buildings.

The new complex utilises high underlying thermal mass in its floors and external walls, protected by an insulated, lightweight outer envelope. Window openings are limited to maintain gallery conditions and contain solar access. Those windows that are present have been carefully considered to frame contextual vignettes and articulate the junctions between old and new and between discrete elements in the new work.

Culture | Tweed Regional Museum - Murwillumbah   

Murwillumbah, NSW

The new museum wing is a two level building, partially buried into the sloping site, with a dramatic top-lit retaining wall forming a backdrop to exhibition and display storage areas. The central courtyard and café links the old and new buildings and provides space for outside display and special events. The new building mass has been carefully designed to work with the scale of the existing buildings in the precinct, including an historic Government office building, adjacent dwellings and the existing historic Museum building.

Rouse Hill, NSW

Rouse Hill House and Estate Museum is one of the jewels in the crown of the former NSW Historic Houses Trust (HHT), now Sydney Living Museums. After the realignment of Windsor Road, the HHT sought to reorientate the approach and sequence of a visitors experience of the site.

This reorientation was facilitated by the construction of a number of sensitively considered visitor facilities, carefully arranged on the lower slopes of Rouse Hill and along the historic alignment of Windsor Road. The principal components are the Visitors Centre, the Entrance Building, School House, and the Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA).

The old school house was brought back to its late 19th century configuration. Extraneous elements will be removed and original features such as tiered seating, ventilation systems and raised windows reinstated. The former, free-standing boy’s and girl’s toilets were faithfully rebuilt at the end of the schoolyard.

Rouse Hill, NSW

The new Rouse Hill House visitors centre was located and designed in conjunction with the new public entrance and carparking for the site, at the junction of Windsor and Annangrove Roads. The carparking and Visitors Centre were located and designed to have to have the minimum visual and physical impact on the considerable heritage value of the Rouse Hill House Estate.

The design of the Visitors Centre was necessarily and deliberately ‘low-key’, utilising the simple, robust, utilitarian external language of a pre-fabricated farm shed, but fitted out internally with visitor reception, introductory displays and interpretation, theaterette, shop and small café. A generous, long wide verandah provides a place for visitors to gather and orientate themselves, with a view up the old Windsor Road alignment to Rouse Hill House amongst its garden on the hill.

EDUCATIONAL | ROUSE HILL ESTATE MUSEUM - COLA

Rouse Hill, NSW

When visiting children attend interpretive education programmes at the historic Rouse Hill School, they assemble in the old schoolyard and are divided into small groups for classes in the old school room, sewing room, playground and in the new COLA/Classroom (Covered Outdoor Learning Area).

The COLA / Classroom was designed as a simple, elegantly restrained, multi-use space, able to be opened up or enclosed to suit teaching requirements and weather conditions. It includes ample storage and kitchenette facilities. Like the Entrance Building, it has a low profile and long sheltering walls to give relief from road noise from nearby Windsor Road.

EDUCATIONAL | ROUSE HILL ESTATE MUSEUM - ENTRANCE BUILDING

Rouse Hill NSW

The new education facilities at Rouse Hill House Estate are centred on the historic Rouse Hill Public School building. The principal components are the Entrance Building, the historic School House and nearby Covered Outdoor Learning Area (COLA).

The Entrance Building includes reception, administration / home base, bag storage and covered amphitheatre, as well as toilets, storage and associated facilities. The building has a low profile and organically shaped plan, fitting within the site contours to retain views from the new Windsor Road to the old school and Rouse Hill House. The building has long sheltering walls that protect the courtyard and amphitheatre from noise from nearby Windsor Road.

School groups, arriving at the Entrance Building for interpretive education programmes, alight at the Annangrove Road entrance to the estate. They then move into the Entrance Building for briefing and orientation. Children dress in items of period costume, changing ‘into character’, before walking out to the old Windsor Road and up the hill to the School House.

PUBLIC AMENITIES | GOVERNMENT HOUSE AMENITIES BUILDING

Sydney, NSW

BTB Architecture Studio has undertaken the design of a new amenity building at Government House in Sydney. The amenity building was commissioned to satisfy access requirements to the grounds of Government House and will consist of a single accessible unisex toilet located close to the existing female lavatory building. The amenities building is to be constructed of robust finely crafted materials which including sandstone cladding to the external walls, zinc cladding to the roof and high grade off form concrete to the roof light and ceiling soffit of the interior of the building. The Government House Amenities Building is currently under construction and is expected to be finished by the end of 2019.

EDUCATIONAL | WRECK BAY OUTDOOR CLASSROOM

Jervis Bay, NSW

This simple, delightful building provides an evocative setting for lessons and workshops held for visitors by the local, indigenous custodians of this part of Jervis Bay.

The site was selected by the community, set back from the shoreline amongst mature trees with filtered views between them to the bay beyond. It’s form evokes the organic (dis) order of the bush. Its roof suggests the bark roofing of traditional, indigenous shelters and allows uneven strips of sunlight to pass through the space underneath. The rear wall gives a solid back to the space, serving to screen out the carparking beyond as well as enclosing lockable storage for chairs, tables and lesson material.

Culture | Wreck Bay Community and Booderee National Park Cultural Centre

Jervis Bay, NSW

In association with Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture, Craig Burton Landscape Architect, Kate Sulivan+Associates, Dillon+Savage Architects & Acor Consultants

Paul Berkemeier led a multidisciplinary team in a year long pre-design study for a new Aboriginal community Cultural Centre, interpretive facility, National Park Visitor’s Centre and Wreck Bay Shelter at Jervis Bay. The process involved extensive collaboration with the Wreck Bay aboriginal community and Booderee National Park staff through a series of five day-long workshops as well as several associated working sessions. The study included detailed analysis of the natural environment, ecosystems, topography and cultural history of the place. Interpretation strategies, visitor needs and commercial opportunities were studied, as well as infrastructure and service needs. The final report, endorsed by all stakeholders, identified a preferred site and developed an agreed brief and budget.