Won through a mini design competition with Bruce Willoughby Architect as joint Architect. The program was for pre design, design development, DA, CC (or equivalent), tender, tender selection and construction. It is a Heritage listed building, and the second oldest building in the Botanic gardens. It was originally the Kitchen Gardeners House to Governor Macquarie. The brief was to provide a new function centre for the Gardens that could operate both internally and externally.
The consultant team included a Structural Engineer, Heritage consultant (John Oultram), commercial kitchen consultant, BCA consultant/access consultant, hydraulic consultant and mechanical consultant.
We were directly responsible to the head of the Botanic gardens, at that time Frank Howarth (now director of the Australian Museum).
Construction was difficult with the old Tank Stream running underneath the building. During excavation the water table emerged putting pressure on the existing foundations of the building. This added to the complexity of the alterations requiring shoring up of the existing stone foundations at various locations during building work.