New York architect Diller Scofidio + Renfro has been chosen to design a contemporary art gallery and sculpture park in the southern Australian city of Adelaide.
A six-team shortlist for the competition was announced by Arts South Australia and Malcolm Reading Consultants, in January this year. It also included Adjaye Associates, Bjarke Ingels Group, David Chipperfield Architects, Hassell and Khai Liew.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro will work with architect Woods Bagot, a firm that was founded in Adelaide.
The completed gallery and public sculpture park will contain what Diller Scofidio + Renfro describes as a "super lobby," as wells as "floating top-floor sky galleries and a suspended rooftop garden".
The design of the garden is inspired by "minkunthi", which means "relaxing" in the south Australian indigenous language of Kaurna, and it will display a pre-colonial South Australian landscape.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro said the building will reflect the "sky by day and, at night, glow with galleries".
Charles Renfro, a partner in the firm, said: "The project will be uniquely Adelaide but with a global reach, celebrating the city’s world-class cultural offerings – from its vibrant festival scene to its diverse art collection, distinguished by its outstanding holdings of Aboriginal work.
"Our approach will coalesce museum, city and gardens into a new arts centre that welcomes everyone, that provides a curatorial tool box which anticipates the future of culture."
Diller Scofidio + Renfro recently won a competition to design the US Olympic Museum in Colorado Springs, but missed out on the chance to work on the Kanal Pompidou Centre in Brussels.
Images courtesy of Diller Scofidio + Renfro
