Museum celebrates Chinese heritage of gold rush town

Woods Bagot is to design an extension for the Golden Dragon Museum in Bendigo, Australia.

The museum, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary, celebrates the Chinese heritage of the town in rural Victoria, where some 4,000 Chinese people arrived during the gold rush of the 1850s .

The extension concept includes three levels of new space for the museum, touring exhibitions, a restaurant, gift shop, function space and internal courtyard gardens.

With a metallic skin and flowing form, it appears very modern but the patterning is a reference to the Chinese Wheel of Life.

“Furthermore, the rising of the building to a third storey on the south is a deliberate gesture to assimilate in feng-shui practice, garnering the positive energies from the Bendigo Botanic Gardens,” said Bruno Mendes, design leader at Woods Bagot.