Phoenix Central Park
This multifaceted project, initiated by a passionate private patron, captures the vision of an integrated performance space, garden and art gallery.
The performance space and gallery are entered though and linked by a central garden. A collaborative project, each element is authored by a different hand – Wardle designed the gallery and Durbach Block Jaggers designed the performance space. The buildings and gardens are linked at many levels, above and below ground, allowing for an intense interlocking of performance, nature and art.
Within the gallery a minimal material palette of concrete and timber provides a setting that art works can engage with. Large flexible spaces are paired with small, intimate and idiosyncratic spaces.
- Traditional Custodians Gadigal people of the Eora Nation
- Collaborators Wardle (gallery) and Durbach Block Jaggers (performance space).
- Client Judith Neilson
- Location Chippendale NSW
- Procurement Private commission
- Project Duration 2014–2019
- Floor Levels 5
- Site Area 717m2
- Floor area 1185m2 (entire project)
- Selected Awards
- NSW Architecture Medallion, AIA New South Wales 2020
- Harry Seidler Award for Commercial Architecture, AIA National Architecture Awards 2020
- Emil Sodersten Award for Interior Architecture, AIA National Architecture Awards 2020
- Sir Arthur G. Stephenson Award for Commercial Architecture, AIA New South Wales 2020
- John Verge Award for Interior Architecture, AIA New South Wales 2020
- Cultural Building of the Year, World Architecture Festival 2021
What is certain has been imagined. More importantly, ‘what is uncertain’ has also been allowed to emerge, and in this space alone, exists enormous architectural potential and the possibility for real design excellence.
Jury Citation - Sir Arthur G. Stephenson Award for Commercial Architecture
Phoenix is a project that confers on our profession a certain hope; that latent in our culture is something important to the human condition and architecture might be the medium to express it.
Jury Citation - NSW Architecture Medallion
