Three dramatic spiral staircases clad in Nordic Brass copper alloy announce intersecting looped pathways, helping visitors to explore intuitively a new museum in Perth, Australia.
Aurubis
The WA Museum Boola Bardip in the Perth Cultural Centre was designed as a joint venture by international design practices Hassell + OMA. The new museum, effectively taking up a whole city block, was designed as a series of virtual ‘stories’ that guide visitors through the major galleries to experience the State’s collections. The design aims to make wandering up and down the Nordic Brass staircases, between restored heritage-listed buildings and the new contemporary development, feel seamless to visitors.
Fabricator and installer of the three Nordic Brass spiral staircases, Carter Roofing, worked closely with the architects and Managing Contractor Multiplex on design revisions to achieve cost effective layouts, dimensioning and details while retaining the original design intent. Sean Carter said: “everything we do is hand-made. No CAD software was used on the project for fabrication or installation…just pen, paper, tape measure, mathematics and – most of all – patience. We all loved working on it”.
As well as Nordic Brass, which can also be supplied pre-weathered, copper alloys include Nordic Bronze and the innovative Nordic Royal – an alloy of copper with aluminium and zinc, retaining its golden colour. The extensive Nordic Copper range of architectural surfaces includes Nordic Standard ‘mill finish’ and Nordic Brown pre-oxidised copper with lighter (Nordic Brown Light) or darker shades of brown.
The Nordic Blue, Nordic Green and Nordic Turquoise pre-patinated ranges have been developed with properties and colours based on the same brochantite mineralogy found in natural patinas worldwide.
As well as the solid patina colours, ‘Living’ surfaces are available for each with other intensities of patina flecks revealing some of the dark oxidised background material. A wide choice of Nordic Decor mechanically applied surface treatments is also available.
A growing series of ‘copper stories’ – building studies exemplifying the best in contemporary architecture – showcase the diversity of surfaces, forms and applications available with Nordic Copper today.
