 | RADARCOMPETITION MCA in mid-air. James Weirick outlines the complex and controversial foundations of the latest MCA
competition, assesses the entries and speculates on possible futures.
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Scheme two, replacing the Maritime Services Building with a totally new structure, by the winning architects
Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton.
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Scheme two, replacing the Maritime Services Building with a totally new structure, by the winning architects
Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton.
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Scheme one, additions to the
existing MSB Building, by Matthias Sauerbruck and Louisa Hutton.
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Scheme one, additions to the
existing MSB Building, by Matthias Sauerbruck and Louisa Hutton.
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Additions to the MSB Building by Francesco Venezia.
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The competition for the redesign of
Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on
West Circular Quay has ended, somewhat
courageously, in mid-air – with the selection
of the architects, not a scheme.
Matthias Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton,
of London and Berlin, have been selected on
the basis of two schemes – one which adds
to the Maritime Services Board building (the
MCA’s current home ) and one which
replaces it with a totally new structure. In
the competition aftermath, neither has won
unqualified support. The question which
hover around this project is whether these
proposals can form the basis for a
considered redevelopment of the MCA on its
Circular Quay site.
The confusion and controversy generated
by the competition originate in decisions
made decades ago. The MCA is located at
the landing place of the First Fleet on the
western shore of Sydney Cove. This highly
charged, highly modified site attracted
attention at the time of the Sesquicentennial
in 1938 and the Bicentennial in 1988. The
1938 plans centred on an elevated structure
which became the Circular Quay Railway
and the Cahill Expressway. The old head
office of the Maritime Services Board, on the
centreline of the proposed viaduct, was a
casualty. In 1937, a special planning
committee, with a vision of a “building in a
park setting”, provided a site for the MSB in
the centre of First Fleet Park, a new open
space on West Circular Quay created,
ironically, by the erasure of history – the
demolition of colonial structures. The most
notable was the Commissariat Store, a
substantial pile of sandstone designed by
Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Foveaux in 1809.
The demolition of this major work of the
pre-Macquarie era was the first mistake on
the site. The second was the design which
replaced it. The six-storey, stripped-classical
edifice exudes an air of monumental
mediocrity. Symmetrical and sandstone-clad,
the building’s scale and siting overpower the
urban fabric of The Rocks while just failing
to give spatial definition to the Quay.
Designed in 1938 by William Henry Withers,
the chief architect of the MSB, construction
was delayed by World War II and post-war
material shortages. The building was finally
completed in 1952 by Withers’ successor,
W. D. H. Baxter. An instant anachronism in
style and function, its only interior space of
note was the double-height Wharfage Hall,
finished in marble-patterned scagliola and
burnished aluminium and unified by the
impressive sweep of a continuous counter in
Queensland maple.
By the time of the Bicentennial, the MSB
had departed for a corporatised future in a
sheer glass skyscraper on Kent Street. In
1986, the NSW Government embarked upon
a comprehensive reconstruction of Circular
Quay in a program of works, overseen by
Andrew Andersons, which drew heavily upon
ideas competitions conducted by the RAIA in
the early 1980s. The parkland surrounds of
the MSB building were augmented by the
closure of Lower Pitt Street, the construction
of a waterfront promenade, and the
replanting of First Fleet Park with a strange
selection of Lasiandras, Jacarandas and
Gymea Lilies. Then, in a remarkable gesture,
the hermetic mass of the MSB building was
made available for the Museum of
Contemporary Art – a new institution based
on the collection of contemporary art
assembled by the University of Sydney
under the Power Bequest. The MSB
building, converted to gallery functions by
Andrew Andersons, opened as the Museum
of Contemporary Art in November 1991.
From the start, the office configuration of
the building, and its profoundly conservative
architectural expression, worked against the
subversive, experimental agenda of the art
displayed. The conversion (achieved with
limited funds) turned the Wharfage Hall into
a function room sponsored by American
Express. The room was stripped of its
extraordinary counter, and the building lost
its main claim to architectural distinction.
Stripped of its authentic atmosphere and
“Port of Sydney” purpose, the building
seemed adrift in a world of its own.
The only external artwork to bridge the
gap between the dullness of the building
and the ambition of the MCA’s cultural
program was Neil Dawson’s site specific
sculpture, Steps, first installed above the
quayside forecourt in 1994. Its stepped,
spiralling elements took the stepped mass of
the MSB building into the gravity-defying
realm of space defining space, for the first
time charging this corner of the Quay with
something of the exhilaration of the Opera
House and the drama of the Bridge.
The interior spaces generally proved
intractable for the display of contemporary
art as a confrontation, as a commodity, or as
a cultural critique. Almost every show had
the feel of a dutiful assemblage. However,
behind the MCA’s special moments, its
dross, and its predictable moves – Andy
Warhol, Yves Klein, Mapplethorp – there has
been one constant reality, a dire shortage of
funds. Apart from the gift of a 50-year lease
on one of Sydney’s best located buildings,
the NSW government has contributed little
to recurring costs. Some support has come
from the University of Sydney’s Power
Bequest, but most has come from the
museum’s own activities: private patronage,
sponsorship, admissions, and commercial
operations. This situation, unequalled in
Australia, makes the MCA’s first decade a
remarkable achievement – but funding
shortages doomed the museum’s first
attempt at a major expansion.
From the early 1990s, the MCA’s
foundation director, Leon Paroissien,
campaigned to create a cinémathèque on
the site of the museum’s car park and a
small adjoining building at the corner of
George and Argyle Streets. Conceived as a
centre dedicated to the moving image and
interactive media, the cinémathèque was
also an opportunity to create a more
effective entry to the MCA, along with new
foyers, restaurants, circulation space, and a
rooftop sculpture garden. Initial studies were
undertaken by Andrew Andersons, in 1993,
then in 1997 a competitive process was
launched to select an architect, based on
briefing papers by Graham Jahn.
Seven eminent architects were
interviewed: Andrew Andersons (Sydney) in
partnership with Atsushi Kitagawara (Japan);
Peter Corrigan and Maggie Edmond
(Melbourne); Mikko Heikkinen and Marku
Komonen (Finland); Steven Holl (United
States); Enric Miralles (Spain); Kazuyo
Sejima (Japan); Tod Williams and Billie Tsien
(United States). The selection committee
consisted of John Reid, then chairman of
the MCA board, director Leon Paroissien,
chief curator Bernice Murphy, NSW
Government Architect Chris Johnson, and
filmmaker George Miller.
The winner, announced in June 1997,
was Sejima. George Miller captured the
panel’s enthusiasm, declaring that Sejima
combined “tremendous technical rigour…
with the ability to enchant. Like all great art
her work is clear, potent and ineffable. I
have no idea how she does it, but the magic
is unmistakable.” This was the last Sydney
heard of the Sejima scheme.
The abandonment of Sejima is the tragic
prequel to the current competition. How it
happened is not entirely clear, but funding
problems and management changes were
undoubtedly major factors. Archaeological
investigations of the cinémathèque site also
revealed remnants of Australia’s oldest naval
docks, dating from 1797, under the
museum’s car park, which introduced a
significant heritage constraint to the project.
In October 1999, the new director
Elizabeth Ann Macgregor appealed to the
Sydney City Council for financial support. In
February 2000, the NSW Premier and
Minister for the Arts, Bob Carr, announced
that the State Government would not provide
substantial funds; at the same time he
invited Frank Sartor and the City of Sydney
to consider assuming a long-term role in
maintaining the MCA at Circular Quay. This
important move prevented the surrender of
the site to commercial interests, at least for
the moment.
At the Town Hall, a new team headed by
E. M. Farrelly began to investigate the MCA
issue, with Keith Cottier commissioned to
prepare schematic studies. Sejima was
forgotten – and Sydney had another
compromised competition on its hands.
This was indeed a tragedy. Sejima first
came to Sydney in 1995, at the invitation of
UNSW students, to speak at the Landscape
on the Pacific Edge conference. Her public
lectures, given at the height of the East
Circular Quay controversy, revealed an
architecture of exquisite lightness and
transparency, mesmerising in its spatial
illusions – utterly unlike the stolid bulk and
over-blown effects of the East Circular Quay
scheme. Sejima’s cinémathèque proposal,
developed with Ryue Nishizawa for the
opposite shore of Sydney Cove, distilled the
MCA’s program of galleries, cinemas, art
archive, restaurant, cafe, function area and
foyers into the pure form of a glass cube,
inserted with precision in the slot of space
to the north of the MSB building.
By July 2000, the Farrelly feasibility study
had determined that the MCA’s funding
problems and expansion plans could be
financed by adding revenue-generating
space to the MSB building. Approximately
3,000 square metres of commercial, retail
and function space were proposed, in
addition to the cinémathèque. A new invited
competition was announced. Sejima
discovered that this competition was under
way, and – in light of the fact that she had
won the commission in 1997 – clearly could
not believe the actions of the City and the
MCA. Sydney’s response was a belated
invitation to participate in the new contest.
Sejima treated this proposition with the
contempt it deserved, and the City Council’s
MCA adventure proceeded without her.
The invited participants, selected on the
advice of Chris Johnson and Graham Jahn,
consisted of Richard Francis-Jones
(Sydney); Nonda Katsalidis (Melbourne),
José Rafael Moneo (Madrid), Matthias
Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton (Berlin and
London), and Francesco Venezia (Naples).
The jury, as initially announced, was Renzo
Piano, Frank Sartor and Edmund Capon,
director of the NSW Art Gallery. This was
subsequently enlarged to include Elizabeth
Ann Macgregor and George Miller. Renzo Piano withdrew due to illness and was
replaced by Wilfried Wang, Adjunct
Professor of Architecture at Harvard and
former director of the German Architecture
Museum in Frankfurt.
Farrelly left the project about this time
and has since advocated removal of the
MCA to another location and conversion of
the MSB building to a luxury hotel. The
competition may yet turn out to be the long
way round to achieve this.
When the jury met in November 2000,
none of the schemes was deemed
appropriate. The competition was then
extended to an unplanned second stage,
with the architects given the option to
demolish the MSB building and to propose
a new structure on the site. In February
2001, the investigative journalist and
cultural commentator David Marr revealed
this change of plan in a well-informed
feature article on the front page of the
Sydney Morning Herald. The Marr scoop
raised a storm of protest at the loss of a
“heritage” Art Deco building and prompted
the Premier, Bob Carr, to announce that its
demolition would not be permitted. The
second stage entries had been submitted at
this point, placing the Design Jury in an
almost impossible situation. Under the
circumstances, the only course of action
was to select an architect, not a scheme.
Two of the architects, Francesco Venezia
and Rafael Moneo, chose not to explore the
demolition option. The Venezia scheme took
the outlines of the 1797 graving docks and
extruded them as rectangular elements,
raised at right angles to the MSB building.
These accommodated new gallery spaces
and cinemas in high level projections,
expressed in a design language strangely
reminiscent of Paul Rudolph’s work of the
1960s. The strength of the scheme was a
podium set at the George Street level,
which extended through the complex as a
great urban pavement. At the waterfront,
the modulation of sunlight and stone may
have invested the idea of Sydney’s colonial
ruins with a certain grandeur, but the
scheme lost its sense of proportion in its
domination of the Quayside promenade.
Moneo paid homage to Utzon and the
Opera House by compressing the diagonal
energies projected from Bennelong Point
into a jewel-like polyhedron. This was
strategically off-set from the static forms of
the MSB building and scaled to the
presence of the Bridge pylons – but for all
its formal brilliance, the polyhedron
proposal was too close to Moneo’s 1997
theatre project in Basel to sustain Sydney’s
ambitions for cultural distinction.
Nonda Katsalidis submitted two
schemes. The addition to the MSB occluded
its stripped-classical facade with projecting
levels of commercial space. The new
building similarly privileged the commercial
component of the brief, in a somewhat
prosaic exercise in mainstream modernism.
Neither scheme had the functional logic or
poetic power to match the proposed level
of intervention.
Richard Francis-Jones, with MGT
Architects, developed an extraordinary
proposal for the addition. A series of parallel
blades, taken through the centre of the
MSB’s sandstone massif, revealed a
suppressed energy in its fluted and stepped
forms. The blades then expanded on the
north side of the building into expressive
spaces for experimental cinema, with
sliding screens which could open to vistas
of the Opera House and the Bridge. Similar,
open-air cinema spaces created a
sensational roofscape – with the whole
ensemble poised over a stepped podium in
sandstone. The gallery spaces of the MCA
were re-calibrated internally and extended
under a park terrace. Criticised by the jury
for competing with the Opera House, this
was a very different work of architecture.
Perfectly scaled to its setting, it had the
same power of miraculous transformation
of the MSB as Neil Dawson’s Steps. Jones’s
proposal for a totally new building could not
match the excitement and resolution of the
addition scheme. With the blade forms
unconstrained by the MSB mass, the
building became agitated and characterless
in the larger landscape of Sydney Cove.
The Sauerbruch Hutton strategy for
addition had a compelling lucidity as a
diagram, but little to commend it as an
architectural proposition. The programmatic
requirements of gallery, cinémathèque and
commercial space were sorted into clear
zones of opportunity – the commercial
space returned to the office structure of the
MSB building, the cinemas encased in a
windowless block on George Street, and the
gallery lifted into the air as a new top-lit
space riding over the MSB building – all
linked by a great Harbour Gallery. The
proposal for a new building had a more
plausible scale and circulation pattern in a
somewhat lower structure. Both schemes
appealed to the jury for the clarity of their
programmatic response, the opportunity
provided by top-lit gallery spaces, and the
potential of the Harbour Rooms to create a
new type of urban space in the city. Both
schemes were also informed by a subtle
re-reading of the landscape patterns of the
site, guided by landscape architect Kathryn Gustafson. However, the architectural
expression of the two proposals is almost
totally unconvincing. The first problem is the
size and deadness of the horizontal box as
an urban element – a problem inherent in
the top-lit gallery solution. The second is the
play on Sydney’s collection of mediocre
skyscrapers – Goldfields House, the AMP
Building and so on – a problem inherent in
the architects’ design philosophy. A retromodern
design language may have worked
for the GSW Headquarters in Berlin, where a
mediocre high-rise of the 1960s was
transformed by new interventions, but
Sydney needs less of this, not more.
The MCA competition of 2001, founded
in controversy, may very well founder. The
schemes of the selected architects are
inappropriate for the site. The one scheme
which did demonstrate brilliance and an
appropriate response to the brief and the
site – the MSB addition by Richard Francis-
Jones with MGT – has been overlooked.
The question is what to do next. If
Circular Quay is to be maintained as a great
public space, the Farrelly option of
converting the MSB building into a luxury
hotel must be resisted. Following Carr’s
statement of February 2001, demolition of
the MSB building appears to be politically
impossible. The building remains a “given”.
Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art
clearly has a role as a cultural facility,
provided it is properly funded. If the MCA’s
financial future remains dependent on its
own fund-raising capacities, the addition of
revenue generating space to the MSB
building is a valid strategy. This leaves two
options. The honourable course of action is
to invite the competition winners, Matthias
Sauerbruch and Louisa Hutton, to have
another go and get it right. The correct
course of action is to invite Richard Francis-
Jones to build his clearly superior scheme.
James Weirick is professor of landscape
architecture at the University of New
South Wales.
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