Former Rocks Police Station

Fine Diner

Built in 1882 to Colonial architect James Barnet’s design, number Four Police station’s original sandstone entrance on George Street is highly ornate and bears authority-alluding motifs such as at its apex, where a lion’s head holds a brass police baton in its mouth.

Last used as originally intended in the 1970s, the station sat vacant from 2009 until the Sydney Harbour & Foreshore Authority revitalised it for retail use.

Architects Welsh + Major seized upon a tiny slice of courtyard on Nurses Walk at the Station’s rear to create a new entry and dining room. A highly refined cassette-like structure was custom-made from 6mm and 8mm BlueScope XLERPLATE^® steel and ‘dropped in’, adjoining the existing brick building on one side and slightly overhanging it on the other. This created a delightful annex-style volume that Chris Major affectionately calls ‘The Porch’.

Reconciling the new structure with the existing building was a complicated exercise and ultimately dictated building material selection, as Major explains. “The thing with these old buildings is that everything’s a little bit wonky. Nothing is perfectly straight, square or parallel,” she says. “Because of that, all the individual components had to interlock perfectly to meet our calculations so almost everything was custom-made. We required a material that dealt in fine tolerances so it was always our intention to use steel.”

Box frames with surrounds containing double-height glass windows and finely clustered steel fins – which wrap around and slice through a glass skylight – proved particularly finicky. Major eschewed 3D modelling to tackle this intricate challenge, and opted instead for old-school methods.

“It can be done in plan, section and elevation,” she explains. “You’ve just got to work it out properly. There was a lot of backwards and forwards with the shop-drawers and we had to adapt a few things along the way, but basically it’s just good detailing.”

Director of project builder A.J. Bristow & Sons, Toby Bristow, concurs. “It’s really just attention to detail and understanding the most important parts of the building. There was a lot of site measurements and double-checking. A lot of time was spent with the workshop drawings to make sure of the dimensions.

“It was quite difficult to keep some of the very light members straight and maintain structural integrity,” Bristow adds. “If they’re three or four mill’ out on tolerances it can impact on the glass facing, so you can’t waterproof. So if things aren’t fabricated to specification, they go back.”

The project’s accomplishments are widely acknowledged: it won the Australian Institute of Architects New South Wales Chapter 2014 Heritage Award and a National Commendation for Heritage at the National Awards.

Having given this majestic old building a new life, does the architect have a favourite feature to reflect on? “I really love the new entry, where you can stand and sense the sky through the really slender steel fins that have finesse and transparency, but also a robustness,” Major says.

“It plays with the idea of lightness and solidity,” she adds. “The existing building is quite heavy and cloistered inside: the cells with their original steel bars being almost oppressive. Then you step out into a space that opens right up and has lovely light filtering into it. It’s quite a special place to be.”