2023 Australian Interior Design Awards: Public Design

Jury comment

The jury sees Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Modern as the building that truly serves the public in terms of a place to convene and experience the greatest exemplar of design in Australia. It’s a once-in-a-generation transformation, where art, architecture and landscape come together. The combination of interlocking 3D voids and the white glowing spiral stair that carries visitors down to the extraordinary Oil Tank gallery is very strong in its resolve. Its materiality is gorgeous, expressed through the folded ground plane and lightweight tent-like structure above, which together deliver an enticing cross-section. One of the most exciting things about this project is its large, generous city-scale interiors and their visual connection to the city itself. Overall, it’s an absolutely delightful interior that serves as a consequence of its formal resolution.

Design statement

The extension of the Art Gallery of New South Wales building designed by SANAA is the centrepiece of the once-in-a-generation transformation of the Art Gallery of NSW on Gadigal Country overlooking Sydney Harbour. By integrating art, architecture and landscape, the design has delivered an art museum experience distinctive to Sydney.

The gallery pavilions, roof terraces and rammed earth walls straddle the interior and exterior to create a unique visitor experience. The two rammed earth walls, 250 linear metres in total, are prominent features emerging from the ground at the south-east extremity of the site and continuing across the landscape through the interior and out to the north-west, where they disappear back into the earth. The appearance is stratified and follows the current landform to serve as a memory of the site’s changes and manipulations throughout the years. Australian specialists used local soils to build the walls, and because of the handmade process, the appearance and texture are warm and familiar. The design serves as a guide for visitor circulation and as a backdrop to art and activities. With each touch and art display, the walls record today’s activities for future generations.

Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney Modern Building is located on the land of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation.

Project credits

Design practice — SANAA (Design Architect) and Architectus (Executive Architect)
Project team — SANAA: Kazuyo Sejima, Ryue Nishizawa, Yumiko Yamada, Asano Yagi, Soo Kim, Hiroaki Katagiri, Enrico Armellin, Misha Mikhail Nemkov, Ichio Matsuzawa, Riccardo Cannata, Hana Greer

Architectus: Ray Brown, Dr Stephen Long, Luke Johnson, Rodd Perey, John Jeffrey, John Whatmore, Lian Cronje, David Drinkwater, Manuela Silva, Vatsala Shahi, Tim Juckes, Samuel Morris, Adriana Alvarez, Sean Lacy, David Ho, Jonathan Dalbert, Anthony Kerr, Troy Cook, Nicholas Elias, Shawn Li, Andrew Chaplin, Hui Zhu, Hope Dryden, Lewis Jones, Jennifer Strilakos, Heba ElSaid

The Award for Public Design supported by Roca. The Australian Interior Design Awards are presented by the Design Institute of Australia and Artichoke magazine. For more images of this project, see the Australian Interior Design Awards gallery.