Margaret Olley Arts Centre ::

Project Description::

Like a still life in a park setting, the Margaret Olley Arts Centre has been composed as a set of engaged elements, built of carefully selected natural materials and lifted above the flood plane. The ground floor foyer below is open to the public forum, addressing Keen Street with a clear sightline connection. This connection is at the heart of the design concept: The Margaret Olley Arts Centre is to be a welcoming building and a favorite Lismore destination.

To make a showcase of Lismore’s timber industry heritage, the first floor gallery ‘container’ is clad in locally sourced Australian hardwood, reducing embodied energy.

The form and scale of the building complements the historic Conservatorium and Library, whilst the first floor Galley bends to embrace the existing large Tallow wood tree and make a signaling gesture to Keen Street.

A truly sustainable Arts Centre is proposed with innovations such as naturally lit galleries, masonry walls made from the recycled Block ‘C’ brickwork, trees planted to reduce solar heat gain on the building’s northern side, the reduction of embodied building energy with simple lightweight timber construction to the first floor, a naturally ventilated roof plenum for summer cooling, winter solar pre-heating for conditioned air plus gravity fed storm water storage for WCs, washing and landscape irrigation. The smaller roof area resulting from the two-storey footprint minimises solar heat gain, and openings on the hot and cold sides of the building are designed to allow effective cross ventilation to reduce air conditioning loads to the foyer and ancillary spaces. Offices are positioned on the cooler eastern side of the building to reduce reliance on air conditioning.