It is not often that the small and modest buildings of a city can provide a clear and unfettered lens to the past. And the past can, through such a lens, be so connected to the present; making a place with no tense.
The four-storey masonry warehouse building at 309 Sussex Street, Sydney, tells the fragile story of the workplace of small Australian manufacturers throughout the twentieth century. Although not scheduled as a Heritage item, Candalepas Associates sort to adaptive re-use the building in such a way as to extend this building’s patterns of occupation knowing how important the ghosts of the past are to the making of our work in the present.
The street-level appearance of the building remains close to the building’s original design both in finish and the pattern of use. The facade-openings and fabric are all original, only added-to slightly to enable the present use.
Entering at ground, the spaces are oriented on an axis terminating at the light filled main meeting room. Each new use seeks to read as a subtle insertion within the high, open and expressed industrial fabric. The sequence of movement is the same. The stair is the same and the lift, whilst new, is in the same hole.
The journey to the upper levels is either by lift or stairs. The plans in all closely align to the original. In maintaining the original building floor to floor heights, the building’s internal spaces achieve high levels of daylighting and the feeling of openness as was intended from the outset.
Project Design Team
Angelo Candalepas - Director
Evan Pearson
Jemima Retallack
