From the architect:

281 Clarence St is a state-heritage listed former police station building, designed by then colonial architect James Barnet in the late 1800s.

Originally A one storey building, it was subsequently added to by Barnet, and then further again by then government architect Richard Wells in the 1920s. It served as a police station until the mid-1980s when it was sold and converted into a private residence and offices.

Since the mid 2000s, 281 Clarence has been the home of the Gaffa Creative Precinct, including maker spaces and an art gallery. In 2018 Supercontext was engaged to undertake the complete refurbishment of the building. The project developed further to incorporate a new outdoor roof garden, to be used as an extension of the art gallery as an outdoor garden and exhibition space.

The Gaffa precinct presented Supercontext with an opportunity to utilise the building’s old cells as gallery exhibition space on the ground floor. Its unique layout enabling the public to “meander in a way that the city doesn't let you do” – it offers a piece of calm amongst the loud city scape, allowing visitors to escape noise and fast pace of the city, getting lost amongst the space, offering a sense of discovery.

“As architects, we create capacity, so a building produces capacity for the uses of the city and its people. Moments from Sydney City’s central Town Hall hub, Gaffa offers a physical and psychological oasis for the people. Disconnecting from external noise, the building itself and the activities within it encourage a return to a place and pace of ease”, says Andrew Daly of Super context.

Nestled amongst office and commercial buildings at the southern end of Clarence St, the building is substantially lower than its neighbours. The works involved facade restoration and repainting, a key concern of which was the desire to make people notice this little but significant piece of Sydney's history.

Prior to the renovations, painted an orange/ochre colour, the building had garnered the informal nickname of "the Pink Police Station" - a moniker to playfully highlight this piece of the city. The project involved the complete refurbishment of the interiors. Stripping back the layers of history in the building, 281 Clarence is a mix of construction types, of periods of construction logics and as more was revealed, including complex interfaces between heritage and intervention. The project increasingly required careful consideration of its found state, at once reconnecting with history as much as revealing that history of intervention and strange junctions.

The project involved key heritage restoration considerations, including the revealing of 1880s glazed bricks in what used to function as the police station's original holding cells. Varying from cream to light grey in colour, the glazed brick cells are now occupied, including the atrium, by Gaffa Art Gallery.

The central atrium was once an outdoor yard, providing the ground floor prison cells with light and ventilation. At the rear of the atrium are the original iron bars that secured the courtyard from the rear of the site, then used as an exercise yard.

A key outcome of the project was the incorporation of an elevator accessing all levels, improving the accessibility of the premises to the general public and all abilities. Slotted into the narrow atrium, the lift provides public access through to the communal roof terrace. New additions are generally brightly coloured or in rich materiality, establishing a simple contrast between old and new.

Culminating in the rooftop extension, the project involved what may be the final vertical extension of this significant heritage asset with a communal roof garden and cantilevered glass awning to provide an outdoor exhibition space, and common-use space for the building occupants. A rare opportunity to contribute to the public life of the city, the building now has a public ground floor and a new room-in-the-city on its rooftop.

The third-floor terrace is principally associated with the refurbished level 3 commercial space, with a curved, standing seam zinc facade acting as a final 'cornice' capping the building and creating a relationship with the various horizontal bands of the heritage facade to Clarence St.

The rooftop is a new room of the city, a partially covered terrace accessible to the general public during gallery events via a new elevator carefully slotted into the existing building.

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