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.
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.
