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Early development of Sydney was predicated on the extraction of material from the land, most notably sandstone, a sedimentary rock that happens to be perfectly balanced between durability and softness. Living in Sydney now is synonymous with living alongside the cuts that remain from the quarrying process, though, whether hidden in plain sight by human occupation or the gradual reclamation by non-human actors, they often go unrecognised.
The same can be said for the civic buildings that were made using the products of the very same quarrying process – despite being carved up, worked and rusticated in a theatrical expression imitating the natural, they remain rock. They still weather; behaving exactly as any piece of land does when exposed to the elements.
The grand front facade of Central is invisible from a theoretical standpoint as well as a physical one, predating the growth of the city up to its boundaries. There is little sense of the civic potential Central holds as you approach, obscured from view at a distance, and undetectable when directly underneath.
Sand Castles proposes to quarry Belmore Park, revealing Sydney’s sandstone foundations and a larger open horizontal space than the current park allows for. The result is a new public square; a square that continues their long history of conflating public and staged civic life.
A portion of the sandstone that is excavated goes towards the construction of a new belvedere and gallery wings, which form the missing three walls of the central Square and a new focal point for the area, forming the connective tissue for a much divided area of Sydney. Seeking to flip the paradigm of the pedestrian experience in Sydney often feeling like an afterthought, the primary purpose of these grand spaces is to serve as a thoroughfare.
At the foot of Central, civic life is absorbed into the theatre. The act of quarrying and the construction of Central’s physical counterpart reveals its rusticated facade for what it is, prior to its obfuscation over time, and stages the processes of extraction and occupation from which our cities are built for all to see and experience.
