HASSELL and SO-IL

The world is changing rapidly, and so is how we relate to our history and the environment. Beyond providing South Australia with a state-of-the-art facility for exhibiting art, Adelaide Contemporary also needs to anticipate, respond to, and evolve with the increasing importance and expanded presence of arts in public life.

We have taken inspiration from what makes Adelaide special. Like the River Torrens Karrawirra Parri – a powerful and gracious river that gives life to Adelaide – Adelaide Contemporary will carry and deposit fertile ideas along the course of culture, constantly attracting, hosting, and transmitting pulses between the Australian heartland and locations abroad. 

The architecture we propose hosts both the formal and the informal; the everyday and the exceptional. It is humble enough to be open-ended as well as audacious enough to generate more energy than it consumes. It experiments outside the conventional tropes of institutional architecture. Through sensitivity and lightness, the building will restore the parkland to a state of balance between nature, art, and people.