peckvonhartel, in a joint venture with Ashton Raggatt McDougall, completed the Acton Peninsula Development comprising new facilities for the National Museum of Australia, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultural Centre. This project was won through an international design competition.
The National Museum of Australia has been sited at the end of the Acton Peninsula to create a new waterfront condition for Canberra. At the heart of the facility is the Garden of Australian Dreams providing an enclosed outdoor urban garden.
The $150 Million project contains exhibition spaces, high definition digital theatres, academic and several facilities, a public library, workshops and unloading facilities, curatorial stores, work areas, administration facilities, restaurants, retail and grand public spaces. The project was delivered through an innovative form of procurement; a project alliance.
In 2001 this project was awarded the National Partnering in Excellence Award and National New Commercial Building Award over $10 million from the Master Builders Association and in 2002 it received a merit award for Public Buildings from the Australian Institute of Architects among others.
The National Museum of Australia has been sited at the end of the Acton Peninsula to create a new waterfront condition for Canberra. At the heart of the facility is the Garden of Australian Dreams providing an enclosed outdoor urban garden.
An understanding of the cultural significance of both the site and the museum was appreciated and incorporated in the final built form. Two main architectural ideas guide the building’s shape: the Boolean string, which embodies views on Australian history as tangled and incomplete, and the jigsaw puzzle, which signifies that the Museum is conceptually unfinished.
The $150 Million project contains exhibition spaces, high definition digital theatres, academic and several facilities, a public library, workshops and unloading facilities, curatorial stores, and work areas, administration facilities, restaurants, retail and grand public spaces.
In 2001 this project was awarded the National Partnering in Excellence Award and National New Commercial Building Award over $10 million from the Master Builders Association and in 2002 it received a merit award for Public Buildings from the Australian Institute of Architects among others.
The National Museum of Australia was initiated as the flagship project to celebrate the centenary of Australia’s Federation. With a total fixed budget of $155M, allocated from the Centenary of Federation Heritage Fund, and a very short timeline (the unalterable opening date of 11 March 2001) it was decided to pursue a new model of project delivery.
With the budget and time constraints the NMA project used a delivery model developed for Wandoo B, a 1995 oil platform project in northern Western Australia. That model was an alliance, a team approach based on a ‘no blame’ culture in which court action against partners was not permitted. Every difficulty was considered a shared problem, requiring a shared solution and the NMA project is believed to be the first time that contributors in the construction of a building have formed an alliance.
Under the system all partners were jointly responsible for the total project. All worked as a team, and all were jointly responsible for the cost, time, quality and design integrity. If the project had run over, all parties – including the architects and landscape architects would have shared the extras.
Due to the complexity and unique nature of the delivery model, part of the project initiation phase was for all members of the ‘Alliance” to attend Alliance School, this laid out not just the technical aspects of the contractual agreement, but also expected KPIs, behaviours delivery expectations.