Challenge

The heritage building that had accommodated the museum since 1968 was decaying, cluttered, non-compliant, inaccessible and rundown,  yet it was loved, and characterful and held the towns’ stories in way that was both fascinating and overwhelming. So the challenge as we saw it, was to make careful interventions to provide equitable access and compliance with current codes and standards, renew the exhibition and bring the building back to its glory days, while respecting its cherished position in the town.

Response

Together with the client we decided that the building itself would be a key part of the exhibition. The exhibition is designed around a light steel display frame that allows the restored building to be seen.  New openings are sheathed in a red painted steel that has links to the heavy machinery used in mining which marks them out as being new insertions in the building.

As the settler history of Cobar is primarily pastoral and mining, many of the museum’s pieces are large and able to be housed outdoors, and so we had an opportunity to create an exhibition journey that integrates inside and outside. The exhibition starts on the new entry ramp, continues along the deep front verandah, winds though the nine ground floor rooms, out onto the reinstated southern and eastern verandahs and then into the landscape.