A University of Newcastle team led by architecture professor Michael Chapman has launched the Wangi Power Station Project, using state-of-the-art technology to digitally record a significant piece of industrial heritage.

"It's a really spectacular building, and it's built with a lot of care and craft," said Professor Chapman. "And it's very much of a period."

The power station took shape on the western shores of Lake Macquarie in the post-World War 2 years, with an estimated three million bricks used in its construction. The facility opened in 1958 and operated until 1986.

For a time, Lake Macquarie Power Station, as it was originally known, was the largest facility of its type in NSW.

"It sits on a coal seam, so from a heritage perspective, it's one of the first power stations that was actually built where the coal is, rather than where the power needed to be," Professor Chapman said.

"It has this sense of foreboding about it, and it really is a time when we need to preserve this building, and so many of these buildings are not being preserved."

In the years since it was decommissioned as a power station, the massive main building has fired many an imagination about how it could be revitalised and reused, and it has been defaced and damaged by vandals and the passage of time.

The university team has begun the enormous task of digitally mapping the former power station, using drones to scour the multi-storey building, as well as laser scanning the structure to create detailed three-dimensional images.

"There's literally no way we could go in with a tape measure and a sketch book and record an environment like that," Professor Chapman said. "It would take us years. Whereas within the space of a few days we can develop really a quite accurate record.

"Given the building is probably at a point where its preservation is going to be highly complicated in a physical sense, I thought it would be a nice record, to be able to produce a really thorough digital model of it."

The 22-hectare site was bought by Queensland businessman Ian McDonald from the NSW government in the late 1990s. He talked of using the main building as the centrepiece of a $300 million development.

Ian McDonald died in 2014, but his family still owns the site.

Son Lloyd McDonald said his father envisioned a residential, commercial and retail development for the former power station, and "I follow his vision 100 per cent with that".

"I'd rather see it being utilised, rather than it lying dormant," Mr McDonald said.

The site is not entirely dormant. It is occasionally used as a set for film and television productions. For example, the former power station featured in September in an episode of the soap opera Home and Away.

The building has also been a target of vandals, with its walls marked with graffiti and many of its impressive features smashed.

"It's disappointing to see that," Mr McDonald said, who explained security had been increased on the site.

Despite the deterioration, Professor Chapman was awestruck by the building, particularly the boiler house and turbine hall.

"You come in there and think, 'Wow, this is the most amazing space I've ever been in'," he said. "I said to the students at the time it's probably the most beautiful space I've ever stood in.

"It's beautiful in the sense of the overall scale, the power of the scale, and the grandeur of it. But also to some extent, the way it's starting to erode. There are holes opening up in the roof that let light in, and there are plants springing out of the wall.

"It reminds me a little bit of Angkor Wat and all around some of the Cambodian temples, of this huge, vast brick skeleton.

"But there's this really soft subtle layering of nature throughout it. And incredibly sophisticated, in terms of its architecture."

Professor Chapman and his colleagues from the university's schools of architecture and engineering have applied for federal funding to continue with their project. They want to scan the entire building, and to research the surrounding land, including the coal seams underneath the site that helped feed the power station.

He said the plan was for the digital record to be publicly available and interactive.

The viewer would be able to access the past, with more than 8000 original architectural drawings of the power station in the university's archives incorporated in the digital plan. And, with the help of animation, the team could provide an insight into what the facility looked like when it was operating.

"It allows us to actually reconstruct the site as it would have been as a working site," Professor Chapman said.

The architect conceded that to actually restore the building would be very costly. But Professor Chapman said it would be a "tragedy" if the landmark were to be demolished, and he hoped the university's power station project helped raise community awareness and lead to the building's preservation.

"It doesn't need to be a museum of art or a huge cineplex; it could be obviously," he said. "But I think there's this incredible social resource there, and if it was made safe and accessible ... people would really enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to have access to that site."

"Anything that can provide a life for the building, I think, is in the interest of the community.

"We could have a conversation with the community about what is the future of it."

Lloyd McDonald said the university project "sounds fantastic". However, the future of the old power station site remained uncertain. The property could be sold.

"We're holding out," Mr McDonald said, "waiting for its time to come."

State Member for Lake Macquarie Greg Piper has had a long involvement with the site.

When he was the city's mayor, Mr Piper looked at possibilities for the property.

"It has really important industrial archaeological significance," Mr Piper said. "It had an architectural element you just wouldn't find today."

However, as the years passed, Mr Piper had growing doubts about what could be done for the building.

"Can it be saved? I don't know," he said.

"I'm less than optimistic.

"But I can see why people would see it as a great feature."

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