Shortlist revealed: 2022 NGV Architecture Commission

The National Gallery of Victoria has announced the five shortlisted teams that will compete to design the 2022 NGV Architecture Commission.

Four Victorian teams and a Western Australian team will now progress to stage two of the design competition. They are:

• Adam Newman and Kelvin Tsang (Vic)
• Austin Maynard Architects (Vic)
• Antarctica Architects (Vic)
• Bryan Chung and Patrick Byrne (Vic)
• Yang Yang Lee and Louise Allen (WA)

Each year, the NGV holds a two-stage national competition, in which architects or multi-disciplinary teams are invited to submit a proposal that is “thought-provoking, issues-led, relevant and resonant and that can, in a non-didactic way, facilitate or instigate conversations, dialogue, immersion, or reflection.”

In the first stage, all submissions are judged blind and jury of experts may chose up to five proposals to progress to the second stage.

“The NGV Architecture Commission series to offer a unique opportunity for Australian architects and designers to propose a compelling design idea for presentation within one of Australia’s great civic and cultural spaces – the Grollo Equiset Garden at NGV International,” said Ewan McEoin, senior curator of design and architecture at NGV.

“The series has moved in unanticipated and exciting directions since we started it in 2015, a direct result of the breath of ideas fielded in the open competition process and the vigorous efforts of the competition juries over the years. We have engaged the public in conversations about suburbia, borders, memory, Indigenous systems of living, and fragile ecologies. These five shortlisted teams offer diverse and engaging propositions – we are excited to see who wins, and what is in store for the Commission for 2022.”

The five shortlisted teams will now further develop their proposals for the second stage of the competition which will close on 25 February 2022, before presenting to the jury on 3 March.

The 2022 jury comprises Don Heron (chair, assistant director exhibitions management and design, NGV), Amaia Sanchez-Velasco (lecturer at the School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney), Linda Cheng (editor, ArchitectureAU), Michael Banney (founding director, M3 Architecture), Mel Dodd (head of Department of Architecture, Monash University), and Rachel Nolan (founding director, Kennedy Nolan).

The winner of the 2021 commission is Pond[er] by Taylor Knights and James Carey.