Works are underway to transform the Central Goldfields Art Gallery in Victoria’s Maryborough, designed by Nervegna Reed Architecture. Originally established in 1996, the gallery occupies the town’s iconic 161-year-old fire station. The refurbished interior will have a new floor plan that will make use of the building’s natural assets, such as the original 19th century […] More
The New South Wales government has marked a date to open doors to the Art Gallery of New South Wales expansion project, also known as the Sydney Modern.
Premier Dominic Perrottet announced on 26 April that after several years in the pipeline, an official opening has been scheduled to take place on 3 December 2022.
“This is a major investment in art, artists and culture, and sends a strong signal of confidence for a vibrant and exciting future,” Premier Perrottet said of the $344 million expansion.
Pritzker Prize laureates Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, of Japanese practice SANAA, were announced the winners of the international design competition for the expansion in 2015. Architectus is the executive architect for the project.
Construction began on the expansion in November 2019 that would double the exhibition footprint of the gallery and make use of the space to the north of the original building.
“A new standalone building, public art garden and revitalized historic building will bring together art, architecture and landscape in spectacular new ways, with dynamic galleries, site-specific works by leading Australian and international artists, and extensive outdoor spaces for everyone to enjoy,” said the Art Gallery of NSW.
Sejima and Nishizawa designed the modern wing as a lightweight matrix of pavilion-like structures that respond to the site’s natural topography.
The interlocking steel-framed pavilions sink into the landscape and integrate the land bridge over the freeway below and the subterranean heritage structures.
The Sydney Modern wing will be home to a permanent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander gallery, and museum curators have already commissioned nine original artworks of which more than half are by female artists and three by Indigenous artists.
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A decommissioned World War II naval fuel bunker will be repurposed as an immersive underground art space for special commissions and performances, designed by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Image:
Art Gallery of New South Wales
A decommissioned World War II naval fuel bunker will be repurposed and reimagined as an immersive underground art space for special commissions and performances.
Alongside the new building by SANAA and Architectus, local architecture practice Tonkin Zulaikha Greer has been engaged to restore and revitalize a series of spaces in the 150-year-old gallery as part of the project.
The Sydney Modern is poised to be one of the most ambitious cultural landmarks since the opening of the Sydney Operah House almost 50 years ago. More
A comprehensive review of unprotected heritage buildings across Melbourne’s CBD has been adopted, securing the future of 126 buildings and spaces within the Hoddle Grid. The Hoddle Grid Heritage Review was prepared for the City of Melbourne in 2020, recommending the protection of 137 buildings and five precincts built throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. […] More
Studio Nine Architects has been engaged to design a $50 million visitors centre, microbrewery and whisky distillery for Coopers Brewery in Adelaide.
The new development will be an addition to the existing facility in Regency Park. Studio Nine will strive to create a continuous narrative on the site, to “bridge hospitality and industry through history,” the architects said.
The new development will include a restaurant and bar, tasting facilities, outdoor plaza, microbrewery, whisky distillery, and underground stillage for whisky maturation.
A 50-metre glazed bridge will connect the new development with the main brewery facility. The visitor centre will house an interactive history display, telling the story of Australia’s largest independent, family-owned brewery.
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A processional, tree-lined promenade will extend from a new entry from Regency Road leading to the new facility. Image:
Studio Nine Architects
“The circular plan is inspired by the vessels of the brewery and the rondel of the famous Coopers label,” said Studio Nine. The distinctive, elevated form will be visible from flightpaths, the architect said.
It will also providing an infrastructure link to the main operations building, leveraging off the efficient water heating and cooling processes of the factory to service the new distillery.
“The idea of connecting the brewing operations with the future of Coopers via a bridge […] became a fundamental driver for the design,” said Studio Nine’s project lead Simon Tothill.
“It quickly developed an essential link to their whole operation; not just transferring people and infrastructure but elevating the whole experience of the brewery.”
The new microbrewery will allow Coopers to develop more craft-style beers to supplement its existing portfolio.
Studio-Gram will oversee the interior design, which will feature a restrained palette of natural and locally sourced materials.
Construction is expected to commence mid-2022 for completion by the end of 2023. More
It’s not everyday that New York has two Basquiat exhibitions. At “Art and Objecthood,” decoding the basics: his materials, iconography and unmistakable line.It’s not everyday that New Yorkers can choose between two concurrent exhibitions of work by Jean-Michel Basquiat. “King Pleasure,” an immersive experience designed by the architect David Adjaye and curated by the artist’s sisters Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, includes a recreation of Jean-Michel’s childhood bedroom and his studio and charges $35 admission. “Art and Objecthood,” curated by the art historian Dieter Buchhart at Nahmad Contemporary, gathers an extraordinary trove of paintings Basquiat made on doors, windows and a refrigerator.Though “King Pleasure” includes a number of never-before-seen pieces, too, its emphasis is distinctly on the artist’s life, so I’ve focused on the Nahmad show, whose sparse staging give you a better chance of engaging with the work itself. But you should keep his biographical basics in mind.Young and ambitious, Basquiat shot straight into the center of the New York art world when he was barely out of his teens, showing with some of the country’s most influential gallerists, haunting nightclubs with Andy Warhol, and producing a staggering quantity of art work before dying of a heroin overdose, at the age of 27, in 1988. In 2017, one of his paintings sold for more than $110 million, the highest price ever paid at auction for a work by an American artist.He was also the Brooklyn-born son of a Haitian father and Boricua mother, and though his family wasn’t poor, he spent a few lean years on his own before he started selling work. When he did hit the artistic big time, he was one of the few Black faces there — and issues of race and class, complicated by his own extreme experience, are all over his work.Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Untitled (Refrigerator),” (1981). In the artist’s hands, it wavers between appliance and found surface on which to draw.Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New YorkMaterialsLike most artists, Basquiat drew as a child, famously copying anatomical drawings from “Gray’s Anatomy” while recuperating from a car accident. His first real foray into the adult art world, though, was via the graffiti tag SAMO, which he and his high school friend Al Diaz posted up around SoHo and the School of Visual Arts. Before continuing on to canvas, Basquiat used “found materials” like discarded cardboard and paper or construction debris. In part this was born of necessity — canvas costs money, while broken windows were there for the taking in downtown Manhattan in the 1970s.But Basquiat’s use of found materials was also, as the painted windows, doors and sections of wooden fencing in “Art and Objecthood” make clear, a daring artistic strategy that reverberated through even his more conventional efforts. Unlike ready-mades, the manufactured goods that Marcel Duchamp exhibited as art in the early years of the 20th century, Basquiat’s found objects aren’t exactly sculpture. They’re surfaces for him to paint on. But because they are, also, recognizable objects in their own right, they have a beguiling sort of ambiguity. You can’t quite see “Untitled (Refrigerator)” (1981) as only an appliance, or only a surface to draw on — the longer you look, the more it seems to waver between both categories. And once you’re primed for that sort of ambiguity, you start to see it everywhere. In another context, “Multiflavors” (1982), a royal-blue canvas on exposed wooden stretchers, might just look like a painting. Here, it’s a very peculiar object, too.Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Minor Success” (1980). Pared-down graffiti techniques and pointed assertions of dignity and individuality.Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New YorkIconographyBasquiat didn’t spend long writing graffiti, but he used its techniques throughout his career. The graffiti writer’s pared-down repertoire of easy-to-recognize signs can be as effective on a gallery wall as they are on the side of a building, and one of his favorites — a simple, icon-like crown — shows up on the first piece in “Art and Objecthood,” a white wooden cabinet door titled “Minor Success” (1980). Beneath it are a face without features and a cartoonish sports car.“If you ask 10 people” about the crown, says Buchhart, the curator, “they’ll tell you 10 different meanings.” He goes on to cite Basquiat’s often-quoted remark that his artistic subjects — musicians, athletes, artists — were “royalty, heroism and the streets,” and the way the crown serves to emphasize images or works particularly special to the artist.Essentially, though, the crown claims a figurative mantle of royalty for the artist himself, for the figure he’s depicting, or both — Basquiat’s faces and bodies often read at least partially as self-portraits. But it’s also more nuanced than that, particularly as wielded by a young Black artist intent on making himself a celebrity. You have to ask what kind of social context required him to make such pointed assertions of dignity. Is it one in which Black faces struggle to be recognized as individuals? Or one in which status comes from the possession of material objects like a fancy car?Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Multiflavors” (1982). A painting on canvas demonstrates the unique quality of Basquiat’s writing.Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New YorkWriting/DrawingAnother aspect of graffiti that Basquiat kept hold of was the use of writing for visual effect. In many earlier collages and works on paper, a deluge of all-caps writing fills every available square inch. But you can’t read from beginning to end and expect to find an argument. What you get instead is a cloud of loose associations more similar to a picture, in the way you read it, than to ordinary prose or even poetry.This quality is amplified by the way Basquiat mixes drawing and writing together. If you look back at “Multiflavors,” you’ll find that it has a three-pointed yellow crown in the middle and a cloud of red and yellow circles to one side, and that the white, yellow and pink writing, arranged over blocks of black and blue, forms a striking composition. When you come to read it, you find a group of what appear to be references to advertisements or restaurant signs, phrases like “cheap food” and “HACKED CHICKEN WITH MULTIFLAVORS.” You can’t definitively say whether it’s satire or poetry, angry or exuberant or funny. But it could almost be all of them.CompositionOne thing in particular that’s easier to see in “Art and Objecthood” than in the overwhelming visual cacophony of “King Pleasure” is how conservatively Basquiat organized the elements of his paintings. The sheer profusion of marks can be misleading, but if you recognize the scratches and scrawls of “Minor Success,” for example, as providing a texture rather than so many pieces of separate information, you’ll see that the arrangement of crown, face and car couldn’t be more straightforward. A squat little refrigerator is adorned with a burst of letters and a face in “Untitled (Refrigerator),” but they stop just short of the handle, letting the mostly blank lower section balance their effect. And even when every mark really does carry the same weight, as in an intricately painted yellow door, Basquiat keeps careful control of shape and color to create an overall effect of harmony and stability that balances the frantic energy of his lines.Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Untitled” (1982). His line “shivers like someone naked in a snowstorm.”Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New YorkLineThe most stunning piece in “Art and Objecthood” may be an untitled painting from 1982 — the year the artist himself claimed to have “made the best paintings ever.” Done in acrylic and enamel on a packing blanket mounted on exposed wooden stretchers, it shows a Black face with white features and a blood-red skull marked with little black dashes like watermelon seeds.It’s a searing portrait of the psychic toll of racism: Even as slurs and insulting tropes leave him bloody and exposed, the figure wears a “white” expression to get along. It’s another stately composition, too, balancing a dense figure on one side with empty space on the other and underlining both for emphasis. And it’s as good a place as any to study what may be the single most distinctive feature of Basquiat’s work — his line.The line that describes this skull shivers like someone naked in a snowstorm. It makes a break in the jaw, uneven eyebrows, a bump on the crown of the skull. It doesn’t leave anything unclear; the drawing is as easy to read as a geometric diagram. But this shakiness does transmit extra information. It lends the figure a particular kind of intensity, making the eyes squint and the teeth gnash, and it gives a similar intensity to the art work as a whole, evoking the tension and energy that must have gone into making it. At the same time, it gives you a sense, more vivid than any mere biography, of the personality of the man who drew it — manic and melancholy, electric, incandescent.Jean-Michel Basquiat: Art and ObjecthoodThrough June 11, Nahmad Contemporary, 980 Madison Avenue, third floor, 646-449-9118; nahmadcontemporary.com.— More
The Australian Institute of Architects has issued a statement declaring that Australia should have a national construction supply chain strategy to increase sovereign capacity and ensure the availability of high-quality, low-carbon construction materials. As the impacts of the global pandemic have demonstrated, relying on international sources for essential building supplies puts Australia’s construction sector in […] More
Woods Bagot, in a joint venture with the City of Adelaide, has completed designs for what could be Adelaide’s greenest office building.
Located within the commercial portion of the city’s $400 million Central Market Arcade redevelopment, the tower will be a 15,000 square-metre, all-electric office building targeting a six-star Green Star rating from the Green Building Council Australia (GBCA).
To achieve this level of accreditation, a building must be “fossil fuel-free, powered by renewables, highly efficient, built with low carbon materials and offset with nature,” according to the GBCA.
Woods Bagot said it wanted to focus on long-term sustainability solutions to help address looming global challenges. Plans for the Market Square tower reveal the building would use locally sourced recovered and recycled materials wherever possible.
Developer ICD Property said the building will feature other “unique earth-friendly initiatives” including rooftop solar, rainwater capture for irrigation, and a targeted minimum of 90 percent diversion of waste from landfill.
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Aerial view of the Market Square precinct. Image:
Woods Bagot
ICD said it would also maximise the use of biophilic design elements like natural light, raw materials and vegetation.
City of Adelaide lord mayor Sandy Verschoor has expressed her support for the proposed project, calling it a “significant green milestone” in the journey towards a renewable economy.
“We all know the journey towards a green economy is not quick, but in Adelaide we are making real progress thanks to commitments like this,” said Verschoor. “We are thrilled that Market Square is enabling us to deliver one of the first all-electric buildings in South Australia.”
Market Square is also on track to achieve a five-and-a-half star rating for the National Australian Built Environment Rating System, as well as Gold WELL accreditation rating from the International WELL Building Institute.
ICD managing director Matt Khoo said the sustainability initiatives were “non-negotiable.” He added that ICD, as a developer, has a responsibility “to influence tangible change in Australia’s landscape by future proofing all our projects with best-in-class sustainable practises.”
“Aside from the obvious benefits to the community and environment, there are also flow-on effects to tenants who will receive significant savings through lower ongoing operational costs,” said Khoo.
Construction of the precinct is earmarked for July and will be built by Multiplex. More
Plans have been submitted to the City of South Perth for a 183-metre-tall hybrid timber tower designed by Fraser and Partners – a research-based design studio borne out of Elenberg Fraser.
If built, it will reportedly be the tallest hybrid timber tower in the world, three metres taller than Atlassian’s hybrid timber tower in Sydney, designed by Shop Architects and BVN, which was approved in October 2021.
Located at 6 Charles Street, South Perth, the development will be named C6, after the chemical element for carbon on the periodic table. It will become the first carbon negative building for Western Australia.
According to plans, the $350 million hybrid timber tower will be constructed using 7,400 square metres of timber.
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Plans for C6 include 300 per cent more communal space per apartment than what current planning requirements specify. Image:
Fraser and Partners
The proposal currently includes provisions for 245 apartments (ranging from one to four bedroom apartments) over 48 levels, and a 500-square-metre rooftop that will feature an edible garden, outdoor dining and entertainment paces, and communal amenities.
The proposal also includes an open-air piazza with a playground, cinema, horticultural zone, food and beverage and entertainment precinct at ground level open to the community.
Fraser and Partners’ design intends to adopt biophilic design principles, demonstrating the tangible benefits of incorporating nature in the built environment. C6 will include almost 3,500 square metres of floral, edible and native gardens as well as onsite energy production and electric vehicle charging stations.
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The $350 million hybrid timber tower will be constructed using 7,400 square metres of timber. Image:
Fraser and Partners
Plans for C6 include 300 percent more communal space per apartment than what current planning requirements specify.
Grange Development founder and director James Dibble said that if successful, C6 will set a new precedent for renewable building developments around the world.
“If we can accelerate a paradigm shift into the use of more renewable building materials such as mass timber in a hybrid nature and see even 10, 15 or 20 percent of future projects use mass timber in their construction in the next few years, we will have succeeded. At the moment, that figure is almost zero,” said Dibble.
“We want to encourage other developers to see what we have delivered with C6 and start to incorporate the methodology across other projects. Steel and concrete are some of the most energy-dense materials in the world to produce, and at the moment, the industry relies on it,” he added.
Plans for Elenburg Fraser’s hybrid timber skyscraper have been submitted to council for planning approval, with building intended to commence next year. More
