Presention Drawings

Interior Perspectives

Fourth Gallery re entered
View out of gap of facade into king street

Circulation Corridor with views of surrounds buillding's wall
Fourth Gallery
Main Gallery re entered
Park Gallery
Main Gallery

Entry

Lighting Details

The circulation corridors are lit by a series of skylights that are flush with the grass roof. Due to the thickness of the roof sunlight is bounced multiple times as it makes its way down the skylight. The long grass also filters the light to a small extent since the skylights are flush.

The Park Gallery is lit naturally with a single large skylight that allows sunlight to skip accross its grass roof before being directled downward and into the gallery.

Park Gallery

The park gallery is the second largest and is identifiable because it has a large window angled down towards the public area below. The window has a very deep frame that means it can be occupied and when within the frame one is also cantilevered outward and downward toward the park, encouraging interaction between those below and in the window.

Main Gallery Space

The main gallery space is a double height room that contains a ramp and stairs that leads to the other galleries. The space is intended to be used mainly for performance, scultpure and installations, as the wall space isnt adequate for hung images. The important feature of the space is that it links to almost all the circulation paths, meaning that the space itself can be reentered at different elevations and from different directions as one moves throught the gallery sequence.

The space is naturally lit by a combination of sunlight boundcing off the southern wall, which is angled down to reflect more light and to accomodate the thickness of the grass on top of the wall, and by bounced light entering the four skylights.

Final Concept

The final gallery design was based around maximising the outdoor public space created, and composing an accidental gallery experience that encourages members of the community, who may not usually venture into a gallery to have look around and bump into others from the community. The gallery would once discovered become a casual meeting spot that people would return to several times a month, noticing new installations and rediscovering old. The design attempts to partly return the site to its precolonial state, with open, quiet space. Another feature of the sites precolonial condition was the abundance of Kangaroo Grass, which can still be found in and around Newtown growing out of cracks in the road and through fences. For this reason Kangaroo Grass used as roofing as well as decoratively, to bring the precolonial condition of Newtown into the consciousness of the community.

Two tall masses suppurated by small gaps between each other and the nearby buildings, makeup the facade, passers by can catch thin short lived views through these gaps, through the gallery and into the public space on the other side. Because of the orientation of the site sunlight will burst through these gaps, projecting a thin line onto the pavement.

Concept Development

I progressed through a series of different concept that I developed to varying degrees. Each concept tried to address a similar major theme, that is, the creation of a new public space that provides the community with a new green space that can be easily accessed from King St.

Site History

Prior to white settlement, the area now known was Newtown was part of the land of the Cadigal band of the Eora people and consisted of grasslands of predominantly Kangaroo Grass. King St follows the spine of a ridge line that rises up at Sydney Uni and extends to the south. The street reputedly follows an ancient Aboriginal track that lead to the coastal plains near Botany Bay. According to the colonial diarist Watkin Tench, when Europeans first arrived in Sydney it was possible to walk from Sydney Cove to Botany Bay in only a few hours, through a grassy and lightly wooded area that Tench described as being like "English Park lands."

Site Analysis