Project Type: Commercial / Cultural
Site: Arthur & Yvonne Boyd Centre, Shoalhaven, NSW
Professional Masterclass Architects:
Matt Day (Sydney, Australia)
Arne Erasmus (South Africa)
Aris Garrison (USA)
Tegan Hancock (Melbourne, Australia) of G&T Architecture
Deliverables:
Conceptualisation
Key Details:
Glen Murcutt Masterclass Cohort
Completed: 2015
The brief was to design a multifunctional gallery at the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd education centre at ‘Riversdale’. The gallery was to support the current Boyd art collection, facilitate visiting exhibitions, provide office facilities, supporting amenities for existing staff and a public reception area.
Additionally the brief required a review of existing heritage buildings and to propose consolidation across its usage that included all public amenities and revised parking for buses and cars.
The challenge was to resolve conflicting requirements in respect to the creation of two sites including where character (through context and purpose) across the heritage site be respected and maintained. And secondly, to resolve practical issues including pedestrian and vehicle circulation, access and servicing.
Since the existing heritage cottage building and the Boyd education centre are viewed from the hillside vantage point on approach to the site, the new building required a location setting to avoid visual and amenity conflict. Secondly, siting of new infrastructure required consideration toward daylight access, solar control, wind protection, drainage and integrated strategies to mitigate bushfire threat.
By collating an in-depth understanding of the site and its many unique characteristics. The team processed information into what would become an experiential pathway through the landscape to facilitate built forms and landscape passages.
The integration of an ‘experiential’ concept provided consideration for the total environment, through concealing and revealing the connections to the room - ‘that is the valley that floods’- where the two waterways meet and to the mountain that features so richly in Boyd’s work. The flooded valley is a withdrawn room in the greater landscape and acts as a refuge to see out to gain prospect.