Sydney is home to one of the most recognizable buildings in the world: Jørn Utzon’s Opera House. The shot of its shell-like nesting roofs, with the trussed arch of the Harbour Bridge rising beyond, is without question the image most associated with the city.
But now, half a century since the completion of Utzon’s building, Sydney has an architectural landmark with an entirely different character—the expansion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales designed by the Pritzker Prize–winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, principals of Tokyo-based SANAA. Said to be the state’s largest cultural investment since the Opera House, the museum’s new stand-alone building seems barely there—at least when viewed from some angles from the west, at the edge of the Domain, the city’s expansive public park adjoining its Royal Botanic Garden. From these vantage points, it reads as a single-story glazed pavilion with an adjacent plaza sheltered under a wavy canopy of glass.
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