d+a | Issue 128 • 2023

25 The architecture adds much-needed exhibition space to the existing offerings while respecting and enhancing the use of the surrounding landscape of the Domain. Significant trees were retained and the access to Sydney’s eastern cultural prescient was improved with the transformation of a land bridge built in the late 1990s to connect the Art Gallery to the Botanic Gardens into an art garden and civic gathering space. The original 9,000 sqm of exhibition space in the building now totals 16,000 sqm, with the new art ‘campus’ comprising eight galleries, research and education spaces, multipurpose spaces, a gallery shop, food and beverage facilities and visitor amenities. amultifaceted experience The building is experienced as a kind of landform, with ramps, escalators, lifts and staircases taking visitors up and down tall and intimate volumes, and under and above pavilions that overlook other spaces in the kit of parts recalling the insouciance of child’s play; some short and some tall blocks, rammed into one another, slanted this way and that. Indoors segues into the outdoor, and vice versa, with plenty of transparency washing plentiful daylight in between the ‘blocks’, hence creating inviting internal civic spaces for lingering, gathering and pausing. The abundant views outward of significant trees, outdoor art, important sight lines and the site’s undulating contours enable a strong sense of place from the inside. Three central roofs linked as open terraces offer views across the precinct and integrate the gallery experience with nature. (Above) The overlapping arrangement of the pavilions allows for an assortment of spaces such as atriums and terraces. (Facing page) An ariel view that shows the complex site, intersected by a road as well as the museum’s relationship to the Sydney Harbour and surrounding gardens.