Within seconds of seeing footage of flames engulfing a Surry Hills warehouse, architects Nazia Kachwalla and Tim Greer knew it was the heritage-listed Henderson hat factory site.
It followed years of work by the architects at Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, who were then two weeks shy of breaking ground to transform the former women’s hat factory into a boutique hotel for its owner, Hanave Pty Ltd.
The catastrophic fire caused its brick facade to crumble and radiant heat melted windows in parked cars and neighbouring high-rises. Observers reported it was gutted in less than an hour.
Now, three years after the fire, a hybrid project has finally broken ground that will give some of its charred remains a new life.
“It is a dance,” said Kachwalla, of the design that balances old and new.
It entails rebuilding walls that had been destroyed.
Some of its burnt wooden beams will be used for timber floors and furniture. Incinerated blocks of bricks will become art and paving.
The factory’s original fire bell, salvaged by firefighters in 2023, will be hung on Randle Street.
Before the fire, Greer, a director and founding partner of Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Kachwalla, director of projects, had worked on the project for eight years, and won a design excellence competition held by a hotelier and property company Hanave.
When Greer saw news of the fire, he was surprised by how emotional he felt. “I’ll never forget it,” he said.
Kachwalla left the office in shock, needing to walk around the city “eight or nine times that night” to process her grief.
After the fire ripped through the site, the architects and Hanave were given two choices.
The City of Sydney advised Hanave that it could hold a new design excellence contest, in essence, starting again.
Greer said they chose the other option: rebuild the shell and avoid another contest and further delays.
Built in 1912 for ladies’ hat manufacturers RC Henderson, the state government’s heritage listing said the wedged-shape site, home to three buildings, represented the influx of industrial development in Surry Hills during the early decades of the 20th century.
Henderson produced felt and straw hats for decades. They advertised heavily, including on a large billboard that could be seen behind the Sydney Dental Hospital.
The 11-storey hotel is a mix between a new build and an adaptive reuse project that will incorporate what can be safely repurposed. Some changes were required by government engineers who decided what was safe to keep, Greer said.
Greer said giant lumps of brickwork would be suspended in the walls in a kind of slightly unstable way as a reference to the fire. “On one hand it’s hideous because it is a lot of things we don’t want to remember. But on the other side it’s one of the big stories of the site so we can’t leave it out.”
From our partners
Read the full article here
