The Latrobe Regional Gallery project is a major refurbishment to a significant public cultural building to create a world class venue for local and international travelling exhibitions. The design is an ‘archaeological’ response, stripping back to reveal the original façade, opening up the structure to create an expansive interior public space, and cutting through the envelope of the building to connect the galleries and other functions of the building to the street, revealing up the internal life of the gallery to the public domain, and re-stablishing the urban presence of the gallery within the civic spine of the Morwell. The former corner entry point was also reinstated with the creation of a new climate-controlled airlock, with the removal of internal walls and structure in the lobby space, forming a new continuous opening between the public spaces and gallery one. A new timber ceiling on the ground floor public spaces serve as a unifying element through the public spaces while also operating functionally as an acoustic baffle.

The new unified public space is a ‘loose fit’ programmatic response, which allows for a greater range of activities to occur, connecting the gallery as a key public asset. Working through close observation of the existing building fabric, and in conversation with gallery and curatorial staff, the design response was developed through a process of removal and reorganisation. A regional project, completed on a tight budget with a compressed timeline, the design is a celebration of incompleteness and the layered nature of historical buildings.