page_title: National Museum of Australia
section_title: Architecture
hierarchical_section_title: National Museum of Australia / Architecture
caption_attribution_description: The word "mate" inscribed on the exterior of the National Museum of Australia using braille
context_page_description: The National Museum of Australia, in the national capital Canberra, preserves and interprets Australia's social history, exploring the key issues, people and events that have shaped the nation. It was formally established by the National Museum of Australia Act 1980.
  The museum did not have a permanent home until 11 March 2001, when a purpose-built museum building was officially opened.
  The museum profiles 50,000 years of Indigenous heritage, settlement since 1788 and key events including Federation and the Sydney 2000 Olympics. The museum holds the world's largest collection of Aboriginal bark paintings and stone tools, the heart of champion racehorse Phar Lap and the Holden prototype No. 1 car.
  The museum also develops and travels exhibitions on subjects ranging from bushrangers to surf lifesaving. The National Museum of Australia Press publishes a wide range of books, catalogues and journals. The museum's Research Centre takes a cross-disciplinary approach to history, ensuring the museum is a lively forum for ideas and debate about Australia's past, present and future.
context_section_description: As designed by architect Howard Raggatt (design architect and design director for the project), the museum building is based on a theme of knotted ropes, symbolically bringing together the stories of Australians. The architects stated: "We liked to think that the story of Australia was not one, but many tangled together. Not an authorized version but a puzzling confluence; not merely the resolution of difference but its wholehearted embrace." The building is meant to be the centre of a knot, with trailing ropes or strips extending from the building. The most obvious of these extensions forms a large loop before becoming a walkway which extends past the neighbouring AIATSIS building ending in a large curl, as if a huge ribbon has haphazardly unrolled itself along the ground. Known as the "Uluru Axis" because it aligns with the central Australian natural landmark, the ribbon symbolically integrates the site with the Canberra city plan by Walter Burley Griffin and the spiritual heart of indigenous Australia.
  The shape of the main entrance hall continues this theme: it is as though the otherwise rectangular building has been built encasing a complex knot which does not quite fit inside the building, and then the knot taken away. The entirely non-symmetrical complex is designed to not look like a museum, with startling colours and angles, unusual spaces and unpredictable projections and textures.
  Though hard to precisely categorise, the building can be seen as an example of Charles Jencks' "new paradigm". Some characteristics of Deconstructivism can also be identified.
  The organising concept of the scheme using the idea of a "tangled vision" incorporates a variety of references including:
  Bea Maddock's "Philosophy Tape"
  Jackson Pollock's "Blue Poles"
  boolean string, a knot, and Ariadne's thread
  the Aboriginal Dreamtime story of the Rainbow Serpent making the land.
  The building's architecture is thus meant to imply that the story of Australia is not one story, but many stories tangled together. The building also refers to or quotes other buildings:
  a Burley-Griffin designed cloister at Newman College in Melbourne
  the Sydney Opera House – both the parts designed by Jørn Utzon, and sections designed by the other architects
  the shell curves of Félix Candela
  the Hall is evocative of Eero Saarinen's terminal at the J F Kennedy Airport in New York
  the arc is like a piece of work by Richard Serra
  the Garden of Australian Dreams is meant to evoke a range of different cartographies
  the walls use selected fragments of the word Eternity – evoking the story of Arthur Stace who for thirty years chalked this single word on the pavements of Sydney
  the most controversial quotation is a reference to the Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum Berlin, Germany which opened in 1999
  The plan of the National Museum of Australia incorporates an exact copy of the lightning-flash zigzag that Libeskind created for the Berlin Museum by breaking a star of David. The Bulletin magazine first publicly raised allegations of plagiarism in June 2000. Libeskind was reported to be angry with the copying. Raggatt's defence against plagiarism was that the design was a quotation rather than a copy. The director of the museum, Dawn Casey, claimed in the press that she and her council were not aware of this symbolism when they approved the plan.
  The exterior of the building is covered in anodised aluminium panels. Many of the panels include words written in braille and other decorative devices. Among the messages are "mate" and "she'll be right". Also included were such controversial words and phrases as "sorry" and "forgive us our genocide". These more controversial messages have been obscured with silver discs being attached to the surface making the braille illegible.
  Among the phrases in braille are the words "Resurrection city". The phrase may refer to the clearing of the former Canberra Hospital to make way for the museum or it could be a reference to reconciliation between Indigenous Australians and European settlers. The phrase is used as a label in tiles on another
caption: "mate" in braille
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