[VIS] Adelaide Contemporary Art Gallery - Designs on Page 6

[Nathan]

The shortlist gallery is up on the competition website: https://competitions.malcolmreading.co. ... /shortlist

Each has a much more detailed blurb, video from the architects, and the seven entry boards revealing much more detail about the entry (concepts, floorplans, context to beyond the gallery, additional renders etc.)

[Jaymz]

Well I'm super impressed with the quality of the designs, no doubt a lot of effort and time has gone into them. Let's hope they're not just visions, as Adelaide deserves something amazing. We punch well above our weight when it comes to art and culture and we'd be mad not to put maximum effort and dollars into one of these.

[Algernon]

I think it's important to have a look at the models and see more detail than a couple of renders each before making any calls. The experience of moving through the interior spaces of the gallery is hugely important, perhaps moreso than external appearances. I certainly want to see more of the Khai Liew/Ryue Nishizawa entry — I've been to a few galleries designed by Ryue Nishizawa/SANAA, and they've all been incredible spaces inside.

What really attracts me to the JPE design is its seamless transition from the botanic gardens to the built up environs of the RAH buildings.

[Nathan]

Thought I'd repost the videos/boards, one at a time:

ADJAYE ASSOCIATES AND BVN

https://vimeo.com/264262472

The building is conceived as a mythical primal house, set on the land of the Kaurna people. It negotiates the relationship between Aboriginal Country, urban grid and the future-facing city into a synthesised moment of cultural enlightenment.

The logic of space is informed by the idea of the house as a vessel for art and meaning. A central light-filled heart – a grand atrium – is surrounded by a series of balconies and rooms, which connect with framed views towards ritualised landscape and distant Kaurna dreaming tracks. The atrium culminates in a skylight, which dissolves the building into light, leading visitors upwards, towards a deeper understanding of culture.

The design establishes a unique visual identity that together with its spatial response, informs a greater sense of place – a place of inspiration, dialogue and encounter. It serves as a physical and symbolic connector of people, art and legacy across culture, geography, time and tradition.

[Nathan]

BIG – BJARKE INGELS GROUP AND JPE DESIGN STUDIO

https://vimeo.com/264263011

The Adelaide Contemporary seeks to reconsider the orthodoxy of how Australian art is curated and experienced through the juxtaposition of art produced contemporaneously across geographical and cultural boundaries.

We propose to embrace this agenda by incorporating the multiple interests surrounding our site to create an inclusive architecture – a seamless merging between the city and the garden with a diversity of pragmatic yet exciting spaces for art in between.

Appearing as an extension of the city to the west and pavilions in a garden to the east, the Contemporary will enlarge both public realm and the Botanic Garden, experienced in the ebbs and flows of hard- and soft-scape on its rooftops.

To the north it gently steps down in transition to the gardens and the Palm House. On North Terrace it will establish a respectful yet iconic presence with a public plaza and expanded entrance to the Botanic Garden.

The Adelaide Contemporary will be a new breed of architecture as social infrastructure and culture bearer across boundaries.

[Nathan]

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD ARCHITECTS AND SJB ARCHITECTS

https://vimeo.com/264263173

Adelaide Contemporary will be an open and inviting place in the city. The building – its form, materiality and urban response – has developed from an understanding of the characteristics of the site and region. The gallery, both unique and of its context, lends itself to the display, reinterpretation and coming together of art from a variety of mediums and origins.

The building is a timber structure, comprising large screens and sloping roofs. Distinct from its neighbours, it sits comfortably as part of both city and garden, providing a threshold between the two. Volumetrically, three linear, staggered bars extend from North Terrace toward the Botanic Garden. To the north and east, a landscaped garden creates a new vibrant, open space in Adelaide. The Gallery of Time sits at the heart of the building, while areas for further display, learning, debate and engagement are located on the exterior, visible to the city.

[Nathan]

DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO AND WOODS BAGOT

Adelaide Contemporary is a new cultural paradigm that places the idea of the “contemporary” within an expanded time frame, linking the deep history of Aboriginal culture, the historical and geographic breadth of the Art Gallery of South Australia’s collection, the perpetual present of festivals and events, and art into the future.

The building is conceived of as a curatorial apparatus tailored to support these juxtapositions of time, geography, scale, and media. A matrix of unique spaces unbound by disciplinary categories range in size, height, infrastructure and light quality, and provide infinite flexibility for work across media. Daylit galleries above and light controlled galleries below are linked by a ground floor Super Lobby – a radically welcoming extension of the city and its gardens. Combining curatorial experimentation with new modes of education anchored by the Gallery of Time, Adelaide Contemporary will be a cultural incubator for South Australia and the world.

https://vimeo.com/264263369

[Nathan]

HASSELL AND SO-IL

https://vimeo.com/264263531

The world is changing rapidly, and so is how we relate to our history and the environment. Beyond providing South Australia with a state-of-the-art facility for exhibiting art, Adelaide Contemporary also needs to anticipate, respond to, and evolve with the increasing importance and expanded presence of arts in public life.

We have taken inspiration from what makes Adelaide special. Like the River Torrens Karrawirra Parri – a powerful and gracious river that gives life to Adelaide – Adelaide Contemporary will carry and deposit fertile ideas along the course of culture, constantly attracting, hosting, and transmitting pulses between the Australian heartland and locations abroad.

The architecture we propose hosts both the formal and the informal; the everyday and the exceptional. It is humble enough to be open-ended as well as audacious enough to generate more energy than it consumes. It experiments outside the conventional tropes of institutional architecture. Through sensitivity and lightness, the building will restore the parkland to a state of balance between nature, art, and people.

[Nathan]

KHAI LIEW, OFFICE OF RYUE NISHIZAWA AND DURBACH BLOCK JAGGERS

https://vimeo.com/264263705

We propose a museum like a park with open areas where people can stay freely and gradually shift from art, nature, and public spaces while wandering through the architecture. We imagine architecture that sits gently on the ground to allow for everyone to criss-cross the site freely and to experience gradually integrating urban and natural atmospheres.

Like a park where different activities happen simultaneously, this place gathers a museum, public spaces, nature, people, terraces and sculptures as part of one realm. We envisioned a large roof to create a comfortable, shaded place to invite people underneath. While providing soft shade, the horizontal gesture of the roof creates openness on all sides so breeze and nature flow through. By creating a large roof floating above the place, we had a feeling it could become a place in Adelaide where people gather, spend time and meet art; where they use the place freely as they imagine.

[ml69]

Brilliant ... thanks Nathan. You beat me to post on this.
I came across this website (linked from Indaily article) earlier this evening.

[Jaymz]

Thanks Nathan, excellent work

[Pants]

That’s awesome, thanks Nathan.

I think I’m now leaning towards the Adjaye/BVN design. It’s a really challenging building. People will love and hate it at the same time, which is a sign of something great. It’s basic at the same time as being confronting at the same time as integrating into the landscape well, which is some feat. It’s also beautiful internally and very much fits the new brief around aboriginal art. I’d be more than happy if the gallery ended up looking like that.

And it looks like a Pizza Hut.

[SRW]

I still love BIG/JPE most, but closely followed by Adjave/BVN and Hassel/SO-IL for their interiors.

[Nathan]

very much fits the new brief around aboriginal art.

I'm not quite down with the assumption of a "new brief". I think it would be an appalling act to take the years of work and money spent by the art gallery to get this far, and just hand it all over to the museum. Marshall should be reminded that the Adelaide Contemporary is an initiative of AGSA, not a project of the former Labor government.

And Aboriginal art was always a focus of the Adelaide Contemporary. The Gallery of Time was the central feature highlighted in the competition brief.

[omada]

I WANT THEM ALL!!!

Great quality submissions, really impressed.