Adelaide Contemporary is a government project in the city of Adelaide associated with its main museum, the Art Gallery of South Australia. The building for the new institution will be built nearby, on the same North Terrace street, on the site of the closed Royal Hospital. The purpose of Adelaide Contemporary is, as the name suggests, to showcase the latest art, as well as to serve as a space for major exhibitions, including Aboriginal art and works from the South Australian state collection.
The international architectural competition for Adelaide Contemporary was attended by 107 teams (made up of about 525 institutions of various profiles), of which six finalists were selected. Besides the winners, DS + R, among them were David Chipperfield, BIG, David Adjaye. The team of laureates, in addition to New York architects currently involved in the reconstruction of the MoMA Museum, included their Australian partners Woods Bagot, as well as Oculus, Pentagram, Right Angle Studio, Klynton Wanganeen, Dustin Yellin, Studio Adrien Gardère, Deloitte, Ekistics, Katnich Dodd and Australian Dance Theater.
The new building, according to the authors, should become a multifunctional tool that allows curators to cover a wide variety of art eras and regions, including the festival format (Adelaide hosts the largest arts festival in the country). The nine-squares spaces include rooms with natural light upstairs and rooms with artificial light below, a performance laboratory and a roof garden showcasing the flora of Australia before the arrival of Europeans. There is also a “super lobby”, a lobby that “lets in” the city and adjacent parks, an educational center with a “Gallery of Time” in the center and a sculpture garden. DS + R see their museum as an incubator for culture, not only on a statewide scale, but throughout the world.
The glass facades of the building will reflect the sky during the day, and in the dark, pedestrians will be able to see through them the interiors of the exhibition halls - even when Adelaide Contemporary is closed. Thus, "the gallery will return art to the city."
