Image Credit : Tom Ferguson; Troy Pearson
Project Overview
Crone brought cutting-edge design to rural Australia with the Orange Regional Museum, a 1,300sqm development completed in November 2016. Recipient of the top State award for architecture, the Sulman Medal for Public Architecture and the Premier’s Prize at the 2017 NSW Architecture Awards, the contemporary design reflects the current values of Orange as a culturally progressive region with a strong arts scene.
Crone’s innovative response to the brief creates a new cultural precinct by integrating a new structure into an existing site alongside the public library and art gallery, layering the program into three parts: Building + Landscape + Events.
The building envelope maintains a line-of-sight to the gallery while creating a new civic square, event space and cafe to house new and existing art and sculpture. The resolution of the complex, angular geometry and attention to detail was critical for a building with a minimal material palette of concrete, glazing, metal panels and grass and a continuous concrete-edge beam that wraps the entire facade, accentuating the form.
Seating stairs create an amphitheatre and provide access to the sloping landscaped roof, a defining feature of the design that rises from the existing lawn to provide a public green space and vantage point across the city. Blurring the distinction between architecture and landscape, the grassed area was designed for flexible usage as an outdoor exhibition area or simply an area for visitors to relax.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Niall Durney
Ashley Dennis
Katherine Turner
Anna Van Hees
Tom Chan
Project Brief
The brief was to strategically place a museum building to create a distinctive civic square between new structures and the existing Orange Library and Art Gallery. The Museum serves a significant function in the local community, housing an exhibition space, visitor information centre, café and council office space, while also playing host to a variety of temporary and permanent exhibitions.
Project Innovation/Need
The City of Orange is a culturally progressive centre that required a museum to reflect the current values of the community and the strong local art scene however cutting-edge, innovative architecture is rarely executed in NSW’s regional areas. The original site condition was disconnected with a separate visitor centre with little connection to the park or immediate precinct.
Crone identified an opportunity to address both cultural and civic requirements by creating a novel form that enabled a sloping landscaped roof.
This new public green space offers a place to relax; it provides links from the Museum to the adjacent park and exhibition space while also defining the identity of the precinct as distinctive and communal. Crone’s design maximises the opportunities within the site, creating formal and informal spaces as well as exhibition and performance spaces inside, on top of and around the Museum.
Design Challenge
The challenge was to bring a contemporary and progressive design despite the conventional expectations for a project such as this. Crone worked to understand the local needs and culture beyond the brief, balancing Council and the local community with functional requirements and budgetary parameters. The site was significantly constrained by flood levels, the slope of the site, a subterranean storm culvert in the plaza, the desire to retain the existing landscape art and the gradient of the ramp required to access the landscape roof. Crone engaged a regional builder with the willingness and expertise to partner with and deliver in in order to overcome these challenges.
Sustainability
In designing Orange Regional Museum, Crone sought a holistic approach to sustainability. Sustainability didn’t just mean a green building process, but ensuring the building created the maximum use and benefit for the amount of materials used and fostering the cultural heart of a city to create a place that will last for generations to come. Every aspect of the building provides a dual role: the roof is also a landscape, the wall is an amphitheatre etc. The thermal mass of the building sought to not only maximise passive heating, cooling and acoustic strategies, but to use its form to improve the surrounding microclimate: shielding the new square, shading the pathways and using the green roof to reduce the “urban heat island” effect.
The building provides pollutant-free indoor environments, lighting and thermal comfort and opportunities for natural ventilation through operable facade elements. The Museum space has been designed to be as open and flexible as possible to adapt to ongoing client and community requirements or events.
Architecture - Public and Institutional
This award celebrates the design process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. Consideration given for material selection, technology, light and shadow.
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