A Palimpsest Through Time -

The Torpedo Factory tells a layered story of Sydney — where geology, industry, defence and culture intersect. Once harbour-side bushland, the site was quarried to support the neighbouring Neutral Bay Gasworks, founded in 1876 to supply town gas. During World War II, the Royal Australian Navy Torpedo Workshop was built over the quarry and was later adapted for torpedo maintenance until the site’s closure in 1999. The building sealed the quarry for decades, concealing the site’s deeper geological and cultural history beneath layers of industrial and naval occupation.

Historic photographs revealed the location of the original quarry face. Tracing this excavation line across the building became the project’s central design move. One-third of the structure was removed, while the remainder was retained and selectively stripped back. This asymmetric demolition line daylighted the quarry once more, exposing both face and floor, transforming the former factory into a porous framework that mediates between street, landscape and harbour.

Adaptive reuse is embedded throughout the project. Existing materials were retained, reused and reassembled to anchor new public spaces in the site’s material memory. Salvaged brick from the former structures was repurposed as paving within the High Street forecourt, establishing a robust civic threshold and grounding the project’s contemporary interventions in its industrial past.

Design is structured as a deliberate spatial sequence that reveals the site incrementally. From the High Street forecourt, movement passes through a bush food garden into the interpretive concourse within the retained building, where maritime artefacts and histories are held. From here, the sequence opens to a harbour terrace overlooking Sydney Harbour, before descending into Wirra Birra Park within the reformed quarry. Compression and release, enclosure and openness, are used to heighten awareness of geology, history and setting as visitors move through the site.

Environmental repair underpins the project’s transformation. The polluted quarry floor was remediated according to a single guiding principle: nothing leaves the site. Contaminated material was treated, quarantined and re-layered to form the ground plane of Wirra Birra Park. Native coastal vegetation was re-established, and salvaged quarry stone reused to shape terraces, paths and places of vantage and repose. Planting extends into and through the retained structure, interwoven with its skeletal frame, softening the boundary between building and landscape.

Connection with Country shaped the project from the outset. Working with local Elders informed landscape renewal and the integration of public art by Dennis Golding, woven through the retained structure. His graphic artworks speak to deep time, the harbour beyond, and ongoing cultural presence, ensuring the site’s renewal is grounded not only in repair and reuse, but in respect for enduring relationships between land, water and people.

Today, the project operates as a layered palimpsest — a harbour park and community building where geology, history, culture and contemporary public life are held together within the physical section of the place itself.

Client: Sydney Harbour Federation Trust (Harbour Trust)

Collaborating Firms:

· Turf Design Studio – Landscape Architect

· Guida Mosely Brown Architects – Architect

· SUPERSENSE (formerly Trigger) – Blast Wall Interpretation

· Dennis Golding and Vicki Golding – Public Art (Around the Curve)

· Yerrabingin – First Nations Consultant

· Taylor Construction Group – Contractor

· Gujaga Foundation – Community Engagement Support

· Iguana Creative – Signage and Fabrication Installation

· Simon Wood, Thurston Empson & Mike Chorley – Photography