It’s act two for an engineering icon long eclipsed by the Opera House

It’s been no simple task converting Walsh Bay’s post WW1 wharves into a high-tech arts precinct, but architect Peter Tonkin has pulled it off to applause.

Steve Meacham

May 25, 2022 – 5.00am

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Perhaps the best way to think of Sydney’s first new waterfront arts precinct since the Opera House is to imagine the twin Edwardian-era finger wharves as “roughly the equivalent of two 40-storey skyscrapers, laid on their side, made of wood and floating over 20 metres of water”.

So says Peter Tonkin, co-founder of Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Architects, which won the contract from Mike Baird’s NSW Coalition government in 2016 to transform Walsh Bay’s Pier 2/3 and Wharf 4/5 into the newly named Walsh Bay Arts Precinct.