Phoenix Central Park Gallery
The vision of remarkable arts philanthropist Judith Neilson, the building is a partnership of architecture and artistic fields. The intention is to have the spaces working together, to have visual arts interwoven with the performing arts. Two architects bring the design together: John Wardle Architects designed the gallery in the east wing and Durbach Block Jaggers designed the performance space. The components are linked centrally by a courtyard and garden.
Inherently, both gallery and theatre need to be separated from the outside world to control light, humidity, temperature, and acoustics. This allowed each architect to explore their own language of material and forms within their interior worlds. As such, gallery and theatre are in perpetual dialogue through their function, and their proximity. They are bound together by a continuous external skin of brickwork that encloses everything ? a skin that was designed by both architects working together, iteratively, with conversation and debate, both rigorous and polite, with irreverence, humour, and respect. Photography by © Tom Ferguson
Through this exterior surface, the idiosyncrasies of each interior emerge and erupt in windows, doorways, and portals. A defining element exists in the dialogue between gallery and theatre, inside and outside ? an exploration in how a building can be two things at once, both/and as it were.
Neither house museum nor public gallery, this sequence of gallery spaces...