Brief
To design an outdoor exhibit that would be the centrepiece of the new Melbourne Museum complex.
To design a major interpretive landscape that symbolizes a ‘living’ Museum relevant to contemporary society.
To capture the essential qualities of Victoria’s tall mountain forests with trees, plants, and wildlife. It’s goal is to provide a beautiful and refreshing museum experience and captivate visitors with stories drawn from Museum Victoria’s unique view of the Forest.
To utilize the resources of the Museum and its numerous curators and the extensive consultant team to design a space that will engage visitors of all ages whilst also being a centerpiece for the institution that would grow and evolve over time.
The site
A 50 x 25 metre space in the centre of the $250 million Melbourne Museum is enclosed on three sides by a building and overhead by a huge blade structure.
The Subject for Interpretation
It is an awe-inspiring place that is a living museum in itself. It’s mountainous terrain is cloaked with massive Eucalyptus regnans, some up to 100 metres tall and 300 years old. In its valleys, a temperate rainforest, a remnant of Gondwana, is found. Both live and die with fire, the Eucalypts in their presence and the rainforest in their absence.
The Story
The forest was examined beyond the purely ecological. In partnership with the curators, an approach was formulated that distinguished distinctive influences that have for millions of years and still shape the forest environment.
These were called ‘Agents of Change’ and identified as water, earth, climate, fire, and people.
The emphasis was on dynamic change over time and the rhythms and responses that have evolved within the forest. Detailed stories were developed for each theme, and key messages were defined to provide a window for visitors into the interconnected and multi-layered nature of life in the forest.
This approach allowed huge evolutionary time spans to be interpreted, as well as smaller-scale micro activities such as plant flowering, animal breeding, and daily feeding patterns.
The Method
The intention was to develop an intrinsically interpretive space that conveyed its messages primarily through its form, spatial character, materials, textures, and lighting, with minimal didactic text and images.
Therefore, it was to be a hybrid landscape, one that was neither an ecologically based garden, artificially natural like a contemporary zoo exhibit, or an object /digital display like most Museum exhibition designs.
Instead, it was conceived as a living sculpture, utilising all these genres, employing plants, animals, digital technology, and synthetic materials to paint a picture that encompasses the naturalistic and abstract.
2002:
2024:
The Design
Within the strict confines of the rectangular frame, a forest fragment is inserted. At its southern end at the Museum entry, a natural, arcadian scene of a fern gully is depicted. This fern gully, with its waterfall and wisps of fog, leads visitors into the gallery. Via pathways that go around, under, through, and over the landscape and its waterways, visitors ultimately progress to an abstracted sculptural installation at the gallery’s northern end, which evokes, rather than recreates, the burnt and regenerated forest.
The gallery is spatially arranged via five zones – the ‘Agents of Change’ with pathways running east-west across the space, each examining an element that causes the forest to change over time.
Agents of Change
Water
Behind the verdant gully, the path into the Water Zone is experiential and sensory. Two pools, immersed in mist and separated by a waterfall dominate this part of the Gallery.
Earth
This zone communicates the impact of continental drift on the evolution of forest life.
It is characterised by two walls that slice through the gallery and its landscape. Their spatial disjunction evokes the movement of continents, and their scale and texture relay the mood of earth and plate tectonics, with the ancient Gondwanan wetter landscapes and the dryer Eucalypt landscape and fire-adapted flora and fauna of Australia.
Climate
Conveys the importance of climate in the breeding and feeding habits of animals, the seasonal adaptation of plants and how the regular patterns of responses have been codified by people into seasonal calenders both western scientific seasons and the 7 Aboriginal seasons.
Fire
Without fire the mountain ash tree eventually dies and is replaced by rainforest species.
This is a landscape that is reliant and fundamentally determined by fire, as many eucalypt seedlings grow after a fire and secure the rebirth and growth of the forest.
The scale of the forest is conveyed via blackened sculpted poles that rear out of the ground, conveying the grandeur and scale of the landscape. At the base of the poles, lines of seedlings grow and are gifted to school groups to plant.
Human
The clearing within the Forest Gallery is formed by fire but also by human intervention. It represents our European predilection for taming the landscape, to civilize and make it safe. The most poignant moment relates to the history of the Aboriginals -Wurundjeri’s dislocation from their landscape.
Ongoing Care and Longevity
TCL and consultants, including the planting designer Paul Thompson and the Museum staff, created an operational guidelines document to ensure that all living and non-living elements of this complex exhibit would be well cared for and maintained for the long life of the exhibit.
In addition to this document, TCL’s Perry Lethlean and Paul Thompson have been visiting the project annually for the past 24 years and meeting with the Museum staff to ensure that the interpretive messages and the overall care of the exhibit are maintained to a high standard and that their expertise, particularly in relation to the planting, can be drawn on to solve issues that arise.
Client: Museum of Victoria
Budget: $3,000,000
Completion: 2000
Principal Consultant Taylor Cullity Lethlean
Sub Consultant Team
Planting Design: Paul Thompson
Exhibition: Convergence
Signage / Graphics: Gini Lee with Taylor Cullity Lethlean
Structural Engineering: Arups
Services Engineering Lincolne Scott
Cost Planning: WT Partnership
Lighting: Vision
Irrigation: Michael Tenbuurin
Sound: Garth Paine
Soil: Dr. Peter May, Centre for Urban Ecology
Mycology: Dr. Tom May, Melbourne Herbarium
Botany: Keely Ough
Plant Pathology: Ian Pascoe, Institute for Horticultural Development
Multi Media: ABC Natural History Unit
Fauna Consultant Melbourne Zoo
Operational Guidelines Taylor Cullity Lethlean and Plant Design
‘Earth Wall’ Artist: Mark Stoner
Production:
Project Management Root Projects Australia
Advanced Tree Procurement: Established Tree Transplanters
Primary Works Builder: Baulderstone Hornibrook
Secondary Works Builder: J A Dodds
Museum Representatives:
Program Director Dr. Ross Field
Co-ordinating Producer Luke Simpkin
Head Curator Dr. Alan Yen
Project Officer Amanda Kobelt
Live Exhibits Co-ordinator Alan Henderson
Entomology Dr. Ken Walker
Australian Society Dr. Elizabeth Willis
Freshwater Biology Dr. Richard Marchant
Ornithology Rory O’Brien
Ichthyology Dr. Martin Gomon
Geology Dr. Bill Birch
Indigenous Cultures Lindy Allen
Mammalogy Dr. Joan Dixon
Graphics Co-ordinator Kim Fletcher
Principal Consultant Team: Kevin Taylor, Perry Lethlean, Ross Privatelli, Damian Schultz, Gini Lee, Mel Speakman, Ben Akerman.
