New Powerhouse Museum Ultimo designs unveiled

By ERIN MODARO

New design plans for the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo renewal have been unveiled, striking critique from former Powerhouse stakeholders and museum advocates. The winners of a nation-wide design competition for the Ultimo Powerhouse were announced.  Designs have been released while the museum records its lowest visitation numbers in 20 years.

An eight-year campaign to save the science and engineering focus of the Powerhouse has culminated in strong critiques of the recently unveiled plans, which further solidify the museums turn towards fashion, design and entertainment. The design competition was based off parameters set by the state government’s environmental impact statement for a concept DA.

The concept design that won the competition was produced by an Australian team comprised of Architectus, Durbach Block Jaggers Architects, Tyrrell Studio, Youssofzay + Hart, Akira Isogawa, Yerrabingin, Finding Infinity and Arup.

With the NSW Government powering through on the renewal, the new designs reflect a change in the Powerhouse’s identity. Included is an increase in event spaces over exhibition spaces, a new dorm room for school children to board in, a rooftop garden and a public area where the Goods Line currently sits just outside the main building.

Among the critics of the design is architect of the 1988 adaption of the Powerhouse Museum, Lionel Glendenning.  

Glendenning said the new concept design shows no element of “curatorial storyline”, saying that historic objects on display will be “‘lost in space’ with bemused visitors wandering aimlessly in volumes with no reference to their industrial past”. 

“The gutless destruction of award winning architecture in an orgy of unnecessary overdevelopment on Harris Street,” Glendenning said. 

Boarding house and rooftop garden included in design

The museum’s main entrance will be moved from Harris Street to face Darling Harbour and Chinatown. Harris Street will instead be lined with creative studios that will “support education and industry programs”.

The Wran building where the entrance and main hall current sits, will be demolished- a move that was anticipated in the first concept designs for the renewal.

Powerhouse Chief Executive Lisa Havilah said that the unveiled design honours the “history and heritage” of the original Powerhouse, while “simultaneously reimagining how we can continue to engage our communities into the future”.

Minister for the Arts Ben Franklin said he is “particularly excited” for the new idea of the Powerhouse Academy, which will allow for secondary and tertiary school students to visit and stay in a “rooftop camp”.

Former trustee Kylie Winkworth said that not only are the designs moving towards fashion, design and events, they are moving away from classifying the Powerhouse as a museum at all.

“The CEO’s ambition is to create ‘a new paradigm for museums’, one where audiences, education and collections are optional extras in between a commercially focussed program of events and performance,” Winkworth said. 

“It is not a museum. That is why the Powerhouse Museum will no longer be called a museum.”

Winkworth described the historic planes and industrial artefacts that have been included in the renewal as “marooned”, and “cast adrift from narrative context”.

Museum advocates such as Winkworth are opposed to the overhaul of the museum in its entirety.

Former Powerhouse Museum Director Jennifer Saunders said the renewal was an “unnecessary wasteful upheaval and demolition”. 

“It is of course ridiculous and outrageous that the government is proposing the demolition of a Sulman award winning museum that is just 34 years old” Winkworth said.

“But now [its] about to be thrown away like yesterday’s fish and chips wrapper.”