Three dramatic spiral staircases, clad in Nordic Brass copper alloy, announce intersecting looped pathways helping visitors to explore intuitively a new museum in Perth, Australia.
The WA Museum Boola Bardip in the Perth Cultural Centre was designed as a joint venture by international design practices Hassell + OMA. The new museum, effectively taking up a whole city block, was designed as a series of virtual ‘stories’ that guide visitors through the major galleries to experience the State’s collections. The design aims to make wandering up and down the Nordic Brass staircases, between restored heritage-listed buildings and the new contemporary development, feel seamless to visitors.
Combining Old with New
The old and new come together at the museum’s centre to frame a spectacular outdoor ‘City Room’ – a public meeting place, event space and program area for the whole community. A 1,000 m2 special exhibition gallery features major exhibitions from around Australia and the world. Retail spaces and places to eat and drink are designed to encourage visitors to continue flowing through the museum – especially after hours – contributing to the precinct’s livelihood and growth.
Fabricator and installer of the three Nordic Brass spiral staircases, Carter Roofing, worked closely with the architects and Managing Contractor Multiplex on design revisions to achieve cost effective layouts, dimensioning and details while retaining the original design intent. Sean Barton of Carter Roofing said: “everything we do is hand-made. No CAD software was used on the project for fabrication or installation…just pen, paper, tape measure, mathematics and – most of all – patience. We all loved working on it”.
Nordic Copper Range
The extensive Nordic Copper range of architectural copper products is available from Aurubis, part of the world’s leading integrated copper group and largest copper recycler. It includes Nordic Standard ‘mill finish’ and Nordic Brown pre-oxidised copper offering lighter (Nordic Brown Light) or darker shades of brown determined by the thickness of the oxide layer. The Nordic Blue, Nordic Green and Nordic Turquoise ranges have been developed with properties and colours based on the same brochantite mineralogy found in natural patinas worldwide. As well as the solid patina colours, ‘Living’ surfaces are available for each with other intensities of patina flecks revealing some of the dark oxidised background material.
Copper alloys include Nordic Brass, which can also be supplied pre-weathered, and Nordic Bronze. The innovative Nordic Royal is an alloy of copper with aluminium and zinc, retaining its golden colour. A wide choice of Nordic Decor mechanically applied surface treatments is also available.
