NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AUSTRALIA (NMA)

The National Museum of Australia is one of ARM’s most inventive, daring and controversial buildings.

ARM (in partnership with Robert Peck von Hartel Trethowan architects) won an international competition in 1997 to design it. The Museum wraps around 11 hectares on the Acton Peninsula on Lake Burley Griffin and is therefore closely tailored to its environment.

We began by masterplanning the site, which also includes our Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

There are two big architectural ideas that guide the National Museum’s shape: the Boolean string, which embodies our views on Australian history as tangled and incomplete, and the jigsaw puzzle, which signifies that the Museum is conceptually unfinished. It is a work in progress towards the articulation of the Australian experience that evolves over time.

Each of the jigsaw-puzzle pieces has a different stylised appearance and construction type. Together, the pieces form an incomplete circle around the central Garden of Australian Dreams, an integral element of the exhibition spaces.

CLIENT National Museum of Australia

COMPLETION 2001

VALUE $150M

LOCATION Acton, ACT

AWARDS Public Architecture Awards

Interior Architecture Awards Award of Merit

Features

→ Contemporary public exhibitions/ event spaces

→ 2013 completion of a new cafe

→ Workplace wing for staff memebers

→ Forecourt landscaping

→ Most recent: Children Discovery Centre

The National Museum of Australia is an ongoing client of ARM’s: proof of an excellent and fruitful relationship. ARM completed the Museum in 2001 but we have worked on projects there ever since to expand it and add components to what was always a work in progress. It needs regular calibration to respond to public expectations and technologies, and to offer variety to regular visitors.