Harbourside Festival Marketplace

AUSTRALIA
Sydney

Architect:
Architecture Oceania, Sydney with R.T.K.L. Associates, USA

Structural Engineer:
Wargon chapman, Sydney

Developer:
Merlin International Properties, Sydney

Harbourside is an Australian first, the modern equivalent of the ancient marketplace, which has been the focus of city life since people first gathered into communities. Traditionally, reflecting the life culture of its time, it encourages artisans, craftsmen, the theatre of food preparation and retailing as an art in itself. Its design and aspect allow visitors to enjoy the surroundings, the events and the environment in a safe, clean and accessible space. Morning, noon and night, Darling Harbour and the Sydney skyline beyond spread outward from an oasis in the heart of a great city. Harbourside, once 50 acres of rusted railyards, was conceived and developed as the greatest urban redeveloped project in the history of Australia.

Harbourside Festival Marketplace was primarily designed as two pavilions, linked by a central, vaulted public space which housed the main performance area and fountain. Each pavilion is dissected by minor vaults that house the vertical circulation spaces and address the external balconies facing Darling Harbour. The "Shed", as it was affectionately called, was a simple reinforced concrete frame with a precast flooring system. By increasing the construction building classification to Type 1 and linking this with active fire protection systems, it was possible to frame the entire roof in non fire-rated steelwork. The visual language of the steelwork is neither High Tech imagery nor a collapse into Victorian industrial allusions.

The main roof structure was steel beams at 9.6 metre centres with steel purlins, lined internally and externally with steel deck roof sheeting. Particular attention was paid to the minor and major vault structure, by using radiating steel angle roof trusses at close centres to create a tracery of steel work that is light and delicate, while directing the eye towards the waterfront. Initially, the steel vault structures sprang from reinforced concrete edge beams, but during construction, a design option was prepared to change all the vault edge beams to prefabricated steel framed box trusses, in order to reduce construction time and cost. The primary concern was to get the roof up ahead of schedule to afford greater flexibility in the fit-out programme of the 210 tenancies.