Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot selected as winners of Adelaide Contemporary Competition

The Adelaide Contemporary competition has selected the proposal by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Woods Bagot as the winning design entry for a new art space on Adelaide’s North Terrace. 

A shortlist of six Stage Two design submissions was unveiled last month and included international heavy hitters like David Adjaye, Bjarke Ingels, David Chipperfield, and Ryue Nishizawa.

The competition's organizers, Malcolm Reading Consultants, describe the victorious entry as following: "The winning team’s concept design reconciled the brief for a dynamic people-friendly new place with a skilfully-organised gallery, while also incorporating a performance lab, a dramatic ‘Super Lobby’, floating top-floor sky galleries and a suspended rooftop garden. The garden, inspired by ‘Minkunthi’, the Kaurna word ‘to relax’, would display the planting of a pre-colonised South Australian landscape, linking the idea of the contemporary to Kaurna ecological and cultural history."

"The building was described by the team in their presentation as a charismatic soft beacon on North Terrace that would reflect the sky by day and, at night, glow with galleries – allowing visitors to glimpse the art collection as they passed the building outside formal opening hours and, in this sense, ‘giving the art back to the city’."

"The new gallery and public sculpture park is envisaged as one of the most significant new arts initiatives of 21st-century Australia, providing a national focal point for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art and cultures as well as new spaces for major exhibitions, and the opportunity to unlock the hidden treasures of South Australia’s State collections."

The competition jury included Michael Lynch AO CBE (Chair), Chair, Sydney Community Foundation and Chair, Circa; Lee-Ann Tjunypa Buckskin, Deputy Chair, Australia Council for the Arts, Managing Director, L-AB & Associates and Executive, Aboriginal Strategy, South Australian Film Corporation Beatrice; Galilee, Daniel Brodsky Associate Curator of Architecture and Design, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Walter Hood, Creative Director and Founder, Hood Design Studio; David Knox, Deputy Chair, Economic Development Board of South Australia and Member, Adelaide Botanic Gardens Foundation Committee; Toshiko Mori, Founder and Principal, Toshiko Mori Architect and Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of Design; Lisa Slade, Assistant Director, Artistic Programs, Art Gallery of South Australia; Sally Smart, Vice-Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne and renowned contemporary artist; and Tracey Whiting, Chair, Art Gallery of South Australia Board.