Rising from a caravan of masterplans, “cultural ribbons,” coverage and regulation, Pier 2/3 joins Wharf 4/5, whose refurbishment was accomplished in 2020, to grow to be what Infrastructure New South Wales calls “a premium twenty-first-century house for theatre and music efficiency [that] … will set up Sydney’s status as a worldwide participant within the arts sector.” 1
Tonkin Zulaikha Greer’s (TZG) status as a agency able to delivering responsive and inventive adaptive reuse initiatives gained it the mission in 2016. The transient concerned making certain the way forward for the location as a cultural point of interest for Sydney.
The general precinct, together with the unique Pier 2/3 “finger wharf,” is listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register. The unique growth, constructed between 1913 and 1920, comprised 10 wharves of cargo sheds. Nonetheless, post-World Struggle II, the wharves discovered themselves out of date, and the warehouses had been boarded up within the Nineteen Seventies. The almost 200-metre-long, predominantly timber construction survived comparatively intact for a very long time, regardless of many makes an attempt to revitalize the precinct – which, maybe fortunately, had been by no means absolutely realized. 2
Pier 2/3 and Wharf 4/5 have had an extended affiliation with the performing arts in Sydney – from 1984, when architect Vivian Fraser’s impressed “recycling” of Wharf 4/5 to deal with the Sydney Theatre Firm and Sydney Dance Firm opened, by means of the late nineties and early 2000s, when each wharf buildings had been used for quite a lot of different occasions and happenings, together with the Sydney Writers’ Pageant and the Biennale of Sydney. The concept to create an arts precinct to completely home plenty of the nation’s most cherished arts establishments (together with Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Australian Chamber Orchestra) threw up the chance the protect these industrial cathedrals for the foreseeable future.
Externally, Pier 2/3 primarily stays because it was within the Nineteen Twenties, with the one notable additions being the stair “gantries.” Related in type to the crane constructions discovered on different wharves of the same age round Sydney, but detailed in a recent method, the gantries allow giant numbers of individuals to securely transfer out and in of the constructing.
Internally, a extra nuanced and technical strategy was required. By their nature, modern efficiency areas carry lots of finely calibrated know-how and repair help. Housing a number of of them in a comparatively intact, early-twentieth-century industrial constructing perched over water requires delicate service integration. Mix this with the necessity to accommodate giant numbers of patrons, and the mission turns into a collection of interfaces – bodily and non-physical crossovers – with out which the conservation and the modern efficiency facets of the transient couldn’t be realized.
At a excessive stage, the mission parti might be merely described as a collection of packing containers inserted into the prevailing constructing to cater for the programmatic wants of the varied corporations. However this fails to explain what was truly required for the meeting of the interiors. The unique wharf constructing was by no means actually a single inside house into which outlined volumes might be inserted; moderately, it was an extended construction break up into completely different ranges with a collection of dividing partitions, stairs, chutes and limitations that had been pragmatically organized based on logistical necessities. Whereas there are self-contained volumes – such because the apply and rehearsal rooms, theatres and auditoriums – within the new work, the mission is extra aligned with the theories established by the Italian architect and critic Camillo Boito who, in his late-nineteenth-century constitution entitled Prima Carta del Restauro, developed an strategy to adaptation that thought-about, amongst different issues, differentiation, suppression and exhibition.
Appreciable unseen work was carried out to consolidate the construction of the constructing. Refined shifts in roof type and ground construction had been required to facilitate the companies to run the constructing program. Previous to the graduation of labor, the constructing might be described as permeable; the trains that rumbled over the harbour bridge had been significantly audible, and the harbour might be simply seen by means of the gaps within the diagonal gray ironbark floorboards (which had been an integral a part of the structural bracing system). Isolating the inhabited areas from the outside to completely different levels, in accordance with their efficiency necessities, was a essential a part of the design response.
A collection of repairs to essential constructing elements was undertaken alongside the consolidation work. The surprisingly delicate metal strongback trusses, which type an essential a part of the constructing inside, had been repaired and augmented. These trusses are an attention-grabbing counterpoint to the massive timber bracing parts, which have been repaired by resplicing new timbers into the vertical trusses that traverse the construction.
The brand new inside interventions add a humane overlay to the size of filigree established by the unique industrial elements. Finely detailed glass, metal, brass and timber amplify the human scale and set up a harmonic interaction all through the constructing. Belonging to the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO), The Neilson is an auditorium lined in calibrated timber (Queensland maple), whereas the finely detailed Rehearsal Room has a perforated ceiling and staccato timber and brass partitions with built-in instrument shelving. Alongside the Belgiorno Room – a reception house on the northern finish of the pier’s higher flooring with a view of Sydney Harbour – these public areas set a refined tone.
The Australian Theatre for Younger Individuals (ATYP) occupies the central part of the pier, separated from the ACO by a central void and public lobby by means of which each establishments are accessed. Additionally central is the event’s predominant occasion house, which occupies a 3rd of the bottom ground. The most important quantity of the pier, it’s right here on this early-twentieth-century hypostyle corridor that the unique inside proportions of the decrease flooring of the constructing may be skilled.
The ATYP’s personal theatre and lobby house, named “The Insurgent,” hangs out over the void. The important thing determination to unlock the workings of those central areas by turning the theatre 90 levels from the pier’s predominant entry allowed a semicircular amphitheatre house for workshops and performances to suit inside the unique material. The amphitheatre is well tailored for skilled productions, rambunctious college teams, and the whole lot in between. The southernmost element of the mission homes workshops, inexperienced rooms and different back-of-house services at floor stage, whereas on the degrees above, a brand new studio house for Bell Shakespeare is creatively entwined with extra rehearsal rooms and workplace house.
With the finished redevelopment of Pier 2/3, the watery peristyle of Walsh Bay Arts Precinct has lastly taken form. A dexterous amalgam of differentiated architectural interventions alongside thought-about consolidation and restore has secured the way forward for these traditionally vital constructions.