The National Gallery of Victoria is inviting architect-led teams to submit proposals in a competition to design its annual 2018 Architecture Commission.
The commission is a temporary structure or installation in the NGV’s Grollo Equiset Garden. The 2017 commission, Garden Wall, was erected in December 2017 and designed by Retallack Thompson and Other Architects.
“The gallery is specifically inviting design proposals that promote collaboration and multidisciplinary thinking,” said the NGV in a statement. “Proposals should demonstrate the capacity of design to actively engage the community.
The NGV is seeking site-specific, low-impact design proposals that could include a hospitality venue, a performance space, speculative architecture, landscape intervention, playful interaction or an immersive space for reflection.
“Architecture increasingly displays a curiosity to explore new thresholds of practice, knowledge, skills and engagement,” said Ewan McEoin, senior curator of contemporary design and architecture at the NGV. “This NGV Architecture Commission competition creates opportunities to realize works of architecture that enable good ideas to become a reality, and through doing so, to create new ways for architecture to engage with people, crafting opportunities for broad audiences to experience first hand the ideas of architecture as something with which they can interact, participate, examine, communicate, think and feel.”
The competition will be conducted in two stages. Stage one will be judged anonymously and five shortlisted teams will be invited to further develop their designs in stage two. The winning design will be built by the NGV.
The jury comprises Corbett Lyon (chair, co-founder of Lyons Architecture and NGV trustee), Eugenia Lim (artist, board member of Next Wave and founding editor of Assemble Papers), Isabelle Tolland (director of Aileen Sage Architects and a creative director of Australia’s exhibition at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale), Stefan Preuss (Associate Victorian Government Architect), and Rachel Nolan (principal of Kennedy Nolan).
Registrations are open until 13 March 2018. The shortlist will be announced on 23 March during Melbourne Design Week (15-25 March). To access the full competition brief, register here.
The 2018 Architecture Commission will be the fourth iteration of the project. Previous commissions included Haven’t you always wanted…? by M@ Studio Architects (2016) and the inaugural commission by John Wardle Architects (2015).
