The founder of Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art (Mona) in Tasmania has unveiled detailed plans to build a neighbouring 172 room, 5-star hotel suspended over the River Derwent.
David Walsh has commissioned Fender Katsalidis Architects, who designed Mona’s understated Berriedale home, to draw up the design for the project, called HOMO (HOtel at MOna).
In addition to guest rooms, it will also include a conference centre, a 1,075 seat theatre, extra gallery spaces, a health spa and a three-storey public library to house Walsh’s extensive collection of literature. New jetties for a fleet of motoscafi ferries, an outdoor stage and more bars will also be added.
HoMo will be constructed using the Unitised Building system developed by the design studio’s director, Nonda Katsalidis, to cut construction times in half. Building sections will be produced in a factory, brought to the site in transportable units and erected using purpose-built cradles.
Design visuals released by the architects and Walsh show it will be built on a suspension bridge, inspired by San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge.
Walsh told the
Guardian that the hotel “will shout what it is” because “I want to market what we have here at Mona. I want to market the city.”
Explaining the decision to include a theatre, he said to the newspaper: “You can’t usually build a theatre inside a building because when it shakes, the whole building shakes. But because this is a bridge, the top seven floors are suspended from above, and the bottom three floors are built from below. They’re not connected to each other – there’s no [noise] transmission.”
He also revealed the spa will be “extremely expensive”, with people paying because they’re “easily deluded, or because it's spectacular.”
A planning application will be submitted to the local council later this year, followed by extensive public consultation process.
Walsh – who has made a fortune as a professional gambler – founded MONA in 2011 to exhibit his collection of more than 2,200 old and contemporary art works.
He first revealed his idea to build a hotel “that shouts where MONA whispered” in December 2015, and proposed that rooms could be designed by artists including Marina Abramovic and James Turrell, who has also created four purpose-built installations for the museum.
