The new museum will be innovative and interactive — but the iconic pyramid will soon be gone, architects of the new build say.
The unusual pyramid-shaped building which has been the entrance to the Southland Museum & Art Gallery at the edge of Queens Park since the 1990s will no longer be part of the city’s landscape.
A team of architects from Fjcstudio, together with Auckland firms Evatt Martin and Design Tribe, attended a meeting with the community earlier this month.
While they said they had not yet started designing the new museum, they discarded the pyramid being incorporated into the new building.
"I think the pyramid served its purpose well and now we are looking for a new and exciting vision that will look into the future," Fjcstudio design director Richard Francis-Jones said.
The team had been working together for about 20 years and was responsible for designs such as the Auckland Art Gallery, the Auckland War Memorial Museum and the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney.
The $39.4 million new city museum is part of Project 1225, which involves the delivery of a new museum base built and a tuatara facility by December 2025 — with the opening estimated for the second half of 2026.
Evatt Martin principal architect Justin Evatt said this project was the southernmost design they would be working on and they were really excited with the responsibility.
At this stage, the expectation was for the first design draft to be ready by June and the finalised concept to be available by the end of August next year.
Evatt Martin principal architect Neil Martin said the idea was to deliver something special for the community.
"I think in Murihiku, Southland — your aspirations are right up there, which is great.
"There is anticipation, a bit of trepidation but enthusiasm and excitement for what that project could be."
Fjcstudio’s Annie Hensley wanted to ensure the building would tell the communities’ stories.
"It’s about embedding the culture of this place in the building so that it could be nowhere else ... it is about belonging, it is about community pride and it is about day-to-day use."
She said when they used the word iconic, it did not mean it needed to be "enormously flash".
Tribe architects director of design Rau Hoskins believed one of their main focuses was youth.
They wanted something which would be future-proofed for generations.
"If we can capture the imagination of your people, that is probably our core target because our young people need to be inspired and be able to see this place as theirs.
"As they come, they can engage, interact and be enriched by both what is in this place, but also the interaction with each other."
Despite acknowledging some people were very attached to the pyramid-shaped building, Mayor Nobby Clark said it would cost more money to ratepayers as it needed to be earthquake-proofed and had leaks.
"When you go uphill, in a design, you need to strengthen down below. So we will be simple — [we] are going flat, one-storey only."
The benefit of this shape was more accessibility for people with disabilities and more "floor space", which meant it could be a multipurpose facility, he said.
The estimation was for construction crews to be on the site from April 2024 and demolition was expected to be completed and the site cleared by the end of July that year.
