The six teams shortlisted for Adelaide Contemporary

Adelaide Contemporary

Arts South Australia posted a digital gallery of the six concept designs devised by star international and Australian teams for a new landmark cultural destination, Adelaide Contemporary, which is intended to revitalise the former Royal Adelaide Hospital (oRAH) site. The unique cultural destination on Adelaide’s celebrated North Terrace boulevard will combine exhibition, research and education spaces with a public sculpture park and community meeting place. The proposals on show are by the following high profile shortlisted teams:

ADJAYE ASSOCIATES AND BVN
with McGregor Coxall, Steensen Varming, Plan A Consultants, Barbara Flynn, Yvonne Koolmatrie, Aurecon Group and Front Inc

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Adjaye Associates and BVN

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Adjaye Associates and BVN

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Adjaye Associates and BVN

The atrium culminates in a skylight, which dissolves the building into light, leading visitors upwards, towards a deeper understanding of culture.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Adjaye Associates and BVN

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.

BIG – BJARKE INGELS GROUP AND JPE DESIGN STUDIO
with United Natures, Arketype, BuildSurv, Virtual Built, Future Urban Group, Lewis Yerloburka O’Brien, Marijana Tadic, Erica Green, Peter Dungey, Brian Parkes and Lindy Lee

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and Jpe Design Studio

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and Jpe Design Studio

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and Jpe Design Studio

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © BIG – Bjarke Ingels Group and Jpe Design Studio

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.

DAVID CHIPPERFIELD ARCHITECTS AND SJB ARCHITECTS
with Jane Irwin Landscape Architecture and Arup Lighting

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © David Chipperfield Architects and Sjb Architects

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © David Chipperfield Architects and Sjb Architects

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © David Chipperfield Architects and Sjb Architects

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © David Chipperfield Architects and Sjb Architects

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.

DILLER SCOFIDIO + RENFRO AND WOODS BAGOT
with Oculus, Pentagram, Right Angle Studio, Klynton Wanganeen, Dustin Yellin, Studio Adrien Gardère, Australian Dance Theatre, Deloitte, Ekistics and Katnich Dodd

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © 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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot

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.

HASSELL AND SO-IL
with Ali Cobby Eckermann, Arup, Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, Fabio Ongarato Design, Fiona Hall and Mosbach Paysagistes

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Hassell and So-Il

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Hassell and So-Il

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Hassell and So-Il

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Hassell and So-Il

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.

KHAI LIEW, OFFICE OF RYUE NISHIZAWA AND DURBACH BLOCK JAGGERS
with Masako Yamazaki, Mark Richardson, Arup, Irma Boom, Taylor Cullity Lethlean and URPS

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Khai Liew, Office Of Ryue Nishizawa and Durbach Block Jaggers

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Khai Liew, Office Of Ryue Nishizawa and Durbach Block Jaggers

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Khai Liew, Office Of Ryue Nishizawa and Durbach Block Jaggers

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.

Adelaide Contemporary
Image © Khai Liew, Office Of Ryue Nishizawa and Durbach Block Jaggers

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.

Source and images Courtesy of

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