With a patron who plays by her own rules, it was clear from the outset that nothing about Phoenix Central Park, a striking cultural center completed at the end of last year, would be conventional. The client, Australian billionaire art collector Judith Neilson, said she sought “something as close to the perfect ideal of architecture itself,” and commissioned not one but two firms to achieve it.
“There was almost no brief,” recalls John Wardle, whose Melbourne-based studio formed a unique collaboration with Sydney firm Durbach Block Jaggers (DBJ) on the design of a building that would combine visual with performing arts. Wardle tackled the taller, gallery space on the east end of the rectangular site, where a burned-down factory once stood, and DBJ the shorter space for performance on the opposite side. “It was a real trial for us,” says Wardle of the division of labor between the friendly offices, “but also the joy of the commission.” Though they worked independently to develop their respective aspects of the nearly 13,000-square-foot project, they “came together constantly” to create a cohesive brick-clad concrete structure separated by a triangular courtyard on the ground floor but connected through several levels above and below grade.
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