Architects: Lahznimmo Architects
Area: 8,100 m²
Year: 2023
Photography: Rory Gardiner
Landscape Architects: Aspect Studios
Town Planners: Milestone Town Planning
Arborist: MacKay Tree Management
Design Architect: Andrew Nimmo
Project Lead: Brad Cogger
Project Architect: Patrick Love
Quantity Surveyors: Donald Cant Watts Corke
Bca Consultant: Consult Code Solutions
Client: Create NSW for The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences
City: Castle Hill
Country: Australia
Powerhouse Castle Hill, designed by Lahznimmo Architects in Castle Hill, supports the Powerhouse Collection’s research and conservation efforts. Part of the Museum Discovery Centre, this facility was completed in 2023 and addresses the growing need for storage, flexible spaces for education, public programs, and conservation labs.
Powerhouse Castle Hill serves as a repository for the Powerhouse Collection, aiding in research and conservation. This facility is part of the Museum Discovery Centre, operated in partnership with the Australian Museum and the Museums of History New South Wales. The site initially contained six large storage sheds, reaching their capacity, with approximately 95% of the collection stored at Castle Hill. As construction for Powerhouse Parramatta commenced, more items were relocated to Castle Hill, including staff and ancillary functions such as conservation laboratories.
In 2018, Create NSW commissioned Lahznimmo Architects to design a new 9,000 m² facility. The new building includes storage for the Powerhouse collection and archives, flexible spaces for education and public programs, workshops, talks, exhibitions, and events, conservation laboratories and collection workspaces, photography, digitization, and collection documentation facilities, workspace for 50 staff and visiting researchers, and areas for object and exhibition preparation, packing, quarantine, and holding.
Known as Building J, the new facility provides a public-facing interface with Showground Road and integrates into the broader site campus, including the adjacent TAFE. The 130-meter-long building aligns north-south, with an east-west accessway separating storage from exhibition and staff areas, facilitating pedestrian movement across the site.
The facility serves various user groups, including staff, volunteers, education groups, researchers, artists, scientists, industry partners, and the public. It enhances the site’s capacity to host public exhibitions, offering a much-needed museum space for Sydney’s northwest. A 10-meter-high flexible exhibition space fronts the main entry.
The collection store is visible from the entry vestibule through a 3.5-meter-high and 9-meter-long frameless glazed opening into the 3,000 sqm Very Large Object (VLO) storage area, housing objects like planes, trains, and automobiles.
The storage facility maintains a constant temperature band of 200℃ +/- 20℃ and relative humidity of 50% +/- 5% to protect the collection. It is designed with reflective aluminum cladding over thermal insulation, protecting precast concrete wall panels on the inside for thermal mass.
The material palette is minimal and elemental, showcasing raw materials like mill-finish aluminum, off-form concrete walls, and polished concrete floors. The color palette ranges from white to black.
The corrugated aluminum skin provides a utilitarian expression in the tradition of industrial sheds, atop a corrugated precast concrete base protecting the aluminum from vehicle movements. Openings within the aluminum skin are formed with folds responding to interior activities.
Electricity use is supplemented with a 100 kW roof-mounted PV system, and roof water is collected for greywater uses, including toilet flushing.
Project Gallery
Project Location
Address: 2 Green Road, Castle Hill, New South Wales 2154, Australia
Location is for general reference and may represent a city or country, not necessarily a precise address.
