THE MUSEUM/SEP13–FEB14/NMA.GOV.AU
architecture
Hidden
meaning
THE MUSEUM/SEP13–FEB14/NMA.GOV.AU
Unravelling the stories, ideas and
symbols embedded in the Museum’s
architecture gives a greater sense of
meaning to the site.
b y M e r e d i t h M cK e n d r y
lad in eye-catching handmade
ceramic tiles arranged in a pattern
based on QR (Quick Response) codes,
the design of the new extension of the
Museum’s administration wing literally
encourages the idea of reading the
building. Simply by scanning the QR
code with your mobile device, you can
gain access to layers of information and
detail about the Museum.
Like its latest addition, the Museum’s
building is full of hidden signs and
symbols, from the words written in
braille on the exterior to the great
virtual knot in the Hall, a metaphor for
the weaving together of the lives and
stories of Australians. But the symbolic
significance inherent in the architecture
and landscape design is not always
obvious to the visitor. To gain a greater
understanding of the ideas and stories
embedded in the building, we need to
go back to the beginning.
PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN GOLLINGS.
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THE MUSEUM/SEP13–FEB14/NMA.GOV.AU
Opened in 2001, the Museum
was designed by Ashton Raggatt
Macdougall (ARM Architecture), in
association with Robert Peck von Hartel
Trethowan and landscape architects
Room 4.1.3. Chief design architect
Howard Raggatt describes the design of
the Museum as a series of puzzle pieces
joined together. ‘We like to think that
the story of Australia is not one story
but many tangled together, so we set out
to create a building that fully embraces
that concept.’
The international competition brief
for the design of the Museum called
for a building that expressed Australia’s
cultural diversity and reflected a society
continually questioning, exploring and
reinventing itself. Walter Burley Griffin’s
vision for Canberra worked along three
axes – a land axis, aligned with the
surrounding mountain peaks; a water axis,
running along the lake; and a municipal
axis, forming a triangle at the city’s heart.
The competition brief proposed that the
Museum should incorporate two new
axes – one axis was to project from the
site towards the city centre and the other
towards Parliament House.
The architects chose to re-interpret
Burley Griffin’s axes in their design:
instead of Burley Griffin’s straight lines,
these axes were imagined bent, stretched,
twisted and curled, intersecting through
the Museum’s site. They also created a
third axis that went beyond the visions
of Burley Griffin. The Uluru line – a sixmetre wide red band that cuts through
the site – formed a new axis between
the Parliamentary triangle and the
geographic centre of the country, Uluru.
Bright orange and curling overhead
like a roller-coaster, the 30-metre-high
sculptural loop at the entrance acts as
both a directional pointer and a sheltered
walkway that leads to the Museum. The
architects see the ribbon-like structure as
representing a rainbow serpent from an
Aboriginal Dreamtime story, and a piece
of the Boolean string that shapes the
Museum design. In their competition
entry the architects explain, ‘We have
subtracted (by Boolean operation) a
volume of tangled space in the form of
a ribbon or knot from a solid spherelike-object’. The loop is a small piece of
this string, which entangles and defines
the entire building – a metaphor for the
strands that tie us together as a nation.
Leaving the loop behind, visitors to
the Museum step through a red, cavelike tunnel and into the Hall, a soaring
light and open space with curving walls,
windows and ceilings. To the architects,
the Hall is like a huge rope knot – seen
from the inside. The space resembles what
would be left if a resin mould was cast
around a five-sided knot and then the
knot was removed, creating a sculptural
interior space in which walls and ceilings
dissolve into each other. The knot extends
outside physically in the loop.
At the Museum’s centre is a protected
outdoor courtyard named the Garden
of Australian Dreams, which can be
read as a promenade at the water or a
sports stadium embracing an oval with
spectators performing a ‘Mexican wave’.
The garden’s contoured concrete surface
symbolises a complex interweaving of
histories represented by different maps,
including a standard English-language
map and Horton’s map of the linguistic
boundaries of Indigenous Australia. Says
co-designer Richard Weller of Room
4.1.3, ‘It is a map of Australia upon which
the public can walk and read complex
layers of information’.
Along with other elements of the
design, the facades of the Museum are
embedded with hidden meaning. On
some of the raised dimples and sunken
holes are words and phrases written in
braille, including ‘God knows’, ‘she’ll be
right’, ‘good as gold’ and ‘love is blind’.
On the curved facades of the permanent
exhibition galleries are selected fragments
of the word ‘Eternity’, chalked on the
streets of Sydney by Arthur Stace for
over 30 years. Appearing as seemingly
random curves and lines, it is impossible
to read as a whole and becomes a hidden
message. There are repeated references
throughout the Museum to the letter ‘X’,
to symbolise the signatures of illiterate
Indigenous Australians. The ‘X’ has even
been applied to covers for the in-ground
hydraulic services.
The building also features striking
combinations of colours and a variety
of external surfaces, that can be read in
many different ways. The red and black
exterior reflects the Aboriginal flag, with
hints of blue and tan representing the
colours of the uniforms worn by convicts
transported to the penal colonies. Deeply
patterned black concrete walls evoke soft
skin or billowing drapery. The tile colours
on the new extension were drawn from
heat-mapping technology and blend
from the existing green cladding of the
administration wing to the pale yellow
bricks of the heritage-listed annexe,
providing continuity between the two
existing buildings.
Visually complex, the Museum’s
postmodern design and layers of hidden
meaning reflect Australia’s cultural
diversity and, with the vibrant new
extension, will continue to provoke
debate and discussion about architecture
and the built environment.
'The symbolic
significance inherent
in the architecture
and landscape design
is not always obvious
to the visitor'
clockwise from top left: Artist rendering of the string that shapes the Museum design extending outside physically in the loop by ARM
Architecture. Architectural model of the virtual knot used to create the shape of the Main Hall by ARM Architecture. The aluminium
exterior is covered in raised dimples that look like words written in Braille. The Garden of Australian Dreams’s concrete surface is covered
in a complex layer of maps. Design drawings by ARM Architecture featuring the word ‘Eternity’, seen as curves and lines on the building.
The Hall is a soaring light and open space, perfect for displaying large-scale objects from the Museum’s collection.
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