2021 National Award for Heritage Architecture

Jury citation

Founded in 1827, the Australian Museum has earned an impressive set of superlatives as Australia’s first, longest serving and most intact cultural institution. Layered as it is with archaeological potential – beginning with the site’s 1820s convict garden and including abundant later additions, such as the notable Lewis, Barnet and Vernon wings dating from the mid-1850s – carving out legibility would ordinarily attract a heavy hand. Not so with commissioned Australian Museum Project Discover team Cox Architecture and Neeson Murcutt and Neille. Neeson Murcutt Architects was responsible for earlier work on the Crystal Hall that astutely reoriented the museum to William Street, its original frontage. The 2020 design overlay furthers the highly strategic response, prioritizing changes that will sustain the museum into the long term while revealing a new way to experience the purpose-built location of the nation’s largest natural history collections.

A number of memorable and ingenious gestures reveal and celebrate the museum’s rich historic layering. Heritage sandstone, previously hidden, now shines alongside sensitively inserted modern inclusions. A Grand Hall – a civic space for Sydney and a heart for the museum – is created through the rationalization of floor levels. Legibility of movement and wayfinding, both vertical and horizontal, are enhanced, with new sight lines and universal public access throughout the structure, including the oldest parts.

Each gesture exhibits a deep understanding and appreciation of the past while consummately sustaining and securing the museum into the future.

Project credits

Architect: Cox Architecture with Neeson Murcutt and Neille; Project team: Rachel Neeson, Joe Agius, Mark Davey, Stephen Neille, Joseph Grech, Nick Gonsalves, Leanne Mitchell, Chris Tran, Hannah Slater, Ben Dixon; Builder: Kane Constructions; Structural engineer: D’Ambrosio Consulting Structural Engineers; Heritage consultant: Orwell and Peter Phillips; Lighting and ESD consultant: Arup; Services consultant: ADP Consulting; Landscape consultant: Sue Barnsley Design; Certifier: Steve Watson and Partners; Access consultant: Access Associates Sydney; Town planner: Ethos Urban; Quantity surveyor: Altus Group; Project management: Compass Project Management; Acoustic consultant: EMM Consulting; Other consultants: Art of Fact.

Australian Museum Project Discover by Cox Architecture with Neeson Murcutt and Neille is located in Darlinghurst, New South Wales, on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.