Ballast Point Amenities
Client:
Program:
Scale:
Year:
Park Design:
Scope:
Photography:
Team:
Location:
Builder:
Status:
Ballast Point Park lies at the tip of Birchgrove on a prominent headland overlooking Sydney Harbour. The park draws interest out of the site’s chequered history by retaining the cliff faces where ballast was quarried by the early settlers as well as retaining the footprints of the storage drums from when the site was more recently used by Caltex for lubricant and oil storage.
The challenge was to establish an appropriate design language that responded to the site’s history and past abuses whilst celebrating this new layer to its story.
Our strategy addresses these issues within a framework of sustainability by retaining selective components of past layers, using recycled materials from site, and adding finely crafted details and elements to create a park that reveals the past, but speaks of the future.
The architectural program works within this overall philosophy by layering the site with contemporary structures that complement the remnant site features through their materiality and contemporary industrial aesthetic. The new structures include two amenities buildings and a cliff-top shade structure. Each structure has a finely crafted canopy formed with bright yellow recycled seat belt webbing that is woven in an interlocking pattern to allow full shade in the middle of day and dappled light in the morning and late afternoon.
These structures enable the spaces beneath to be light-filled and naturally ventilated while introducing an intriguing play of light and shadow. The amenities blocks consist of open plan modules of recycled aggregate in-situ concrete and recycled hardwood contrasted by finely crafted elements such as the bespoke pre-cast wash basins.
The architecture sits finely between abstraction and tectonic expression allowing the eye to appreciate the shade structures as delicate textured 'kites' from a distance and close up, understand the construction and structural forces at play. Nothing is concealed. All details are designed to add to the 'craft' of the building.
Awards
2011 The Chicago Athenaeum, International Awards (Overall Park)
Aerial photograph of the former Caltex Refinery
Site Plan
Wharf Road Amenities Floor Plan
Wharf Road Amenities Elevations
Awards
2011 The Chicago Athenaeum, International Awards (Overall Park)
