The City of Sydney has appointed three leading architecture firms to transform a disused hospital into modern community facilities.
The three highly-awarded Sydney architecture firms - a blend of well-established and younger, up and coming architects - will adapt the former Royal South Sydney Hospital at Green Square to provide lively, contemporary spaces for musical performances, a community arts hub, a childcare centre, workshops and classrooms.
These architect firms include Peter Stutchbury Architecture along with landscape architect Craig Burton, Fox Johnston Architects and Choi Ropiha Fighera Architects.
According to Lord Mayor Clover Moore, for more than a century, Green Square was Sydney’s industrial heartland but only a handful of older buildings of heritage significance remain. The City of Sydney was determined to save the remaining sites and make them interesting places for people to meet, study, pursue hobbies and provide childcare services.
With a long-established reputation for designing some of the country’s most admired private homes, Peter Stutchbury said he was delighted to be working on a public project that would serve Green Square residents and visitors.
The more recently established firm of Fox Johnston is converting the former hospital outpatients’ building into a childcare centre for the large numbers of families moving into the area. One of the founders of the practice, Emili Fox said her challenge was to transform an old institutional building into a place to delight children.
She said her firm will work to retain the integrity of the heritage buildings by reworking the internal spaces and incorporating a new addition onto the shared pedestrian link that runs through the site.
A separate three-storey former hospital administration building is also being renewed by architects Choi Ropiha Fighera (CHROFI). The team will make the building suitable for housing a stormwater recycling plant, which will provide treated grey water for use in toilets and gardens throughout the new Green Square Town Centre.
To be named after Matron Ruby Grant, the park will be a major part of the landscaping works being master-planned by award-winning landscape design firm JMD Design, in close collaboration with the Peter Stutchbury team.
The City is developing the Green Square Town Centre in close cooperation with the NSW Government and spending $440 million on infrastructure and community facilities including a library and aquatic centre.
