A sculpture garden for the twenty-first century

In October 2024, multi-disciplinary team CO-AP Holdings, comprising CO-AP, Studio JEF, TARN and Plus Minus Design, was announced as the winner of the National Sculpture Garden Design Competition.

For Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich and jury members Nici Cumpston OAM, Professor Philip Goad and Teresa Moller, what CO-AP Holdings’ proposal made clear was that they knew the Garden well. Says Mitzevich, 'They understood that renewal was an important part of maximising and celebrating the existing garden. But there was also a sophistication in the ways they’re proposing to stitch together the landscapes that make up the footprint of the Gallery to enhance our heritage. They had a clear understanding of the architectural gravitas of this site and the new architectural statements they’re proposing build on that in such new and exciting ways. We were all incredibly impressed by that balance between care and ambition.'

Considering the past was as important as imagining the future of the garden and the CO-AP Holdings team position their proposal as a 100-year plan for the Garden that considers planting, First Nations consultation, sustainability and ongoing maintenance and care.

Winning the competition is just the first step and work begins now for the team. But they have a sense already of what they hope success will look like. Says architect Philip Arnold (Plus Minus Design), 'If we can design an experience that people are nostalgic about, if people can have the love for our work that we feel for [original Sculpture Garden landscape architects] Buchanan and Howard, and [lead building architect] Madigan’s work, that would be success for me.'

'To be able to continue that legacy of Harry Howard, Barbara Buchanan, Roger Vidler and Colin Madigan, heroes of ours, that we get to be part of this future is amazing,' says architect Will Fung (CO-AP).

The members of the CO-AP Holdings team all knew each to varying degrees before the Sculpture Garden competition. While some had collaborated previously on projects, this proposal was their first time working collectively as a team.

Each member had their own formative experiences of the Garden–from Fung as an impressionable six-year-old, recently arrived in Canberra from Hong Kong, to New Zealander and landscape designer Robert Champion (TARN), who only visited for the first time several years ago but was left with the impression that it was the best native public garden he’d seen in Australia. This deep love for the Garden is what compelled them to enter. Says Arnold, 'Some of us really don’t like to participate in competitions but this is one where we all made a commitment to it. We weren’t looking for a job, we were looking to work on the Sculpture Garden.'

The team brought their respective skills to every aspect of the design proposal. 'If someone asked, "well, who designed what?" I don’t think any of us would know how to answer that,' says Arnold. 'During Stage One, we established our first principles of doing less; of revitalisation and renewal. We had a list of things we were trying to achieve and once we were all on board with them as a group, everything else just fell into place,' explains Champion.

'There’s an idea in architecture of a type of space that is a "non-space" and there’s a lot of argument about that,' says Arnold. 'Some people have suggested that a shopping centre or an airport is a non-space, that they’re not designed as proper places and the [staff] car park and arguably even the forecourt felt a bit like that. They could be proper places but at the moment, it feels like leftover space and we don’t want any part of the grounds to be leftover space. We want it all to be considered and all to be part of a greater whole.'

Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich agrees. 'What their proposition does is take perfunctory spaces and fold them into the fabric of the garden through design, turning them into important civic and celebratory spaces, and that is the mastery of this scheme.'

'We had the idea of [making these] tweaks to the road surface and footpath, making it flush, for instance, so that it can become ambiguous or even pedestrianised for certain events or occasions,' explains Fung. 'The idea to flood the car park roof was a no-brainer. It’s designed as a shallow roof garden so if you took up all the soil and flooded it, all of a sudden it becomes another platform to place and reflect sculpture.' The proposal to elevate sculpture up to the level of the bridge in this way addressed part of the initial brief, which was to reinvigorate the former Gallery entrance space. 'We thought, rather than putting things on [the bridge], it can become instead the place that you can look at the garden from,' says Fung.

'If the [public] car park was there, it probably wouldn’t have occurred to us to put a big pond there,' says Arnold. 'But the car park existed and it might sound silly, but we love the car park. And at every turn we were trying to work with what was already there and to see everything as an opportunity.'

Encountering the marsh pond and Fujiko Nakaya’s Foggy wake in a desert: An ecosphere 1982 for the first time is one of Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich’s enduring memories of the Garden and the beloved fog sculpture was an important reference point for CO-AP Holdings too. 'I think what’s really powerful, particularly with the fog, is that it becomes part of the landscape… We’re really interested in the ways that landscapes can interact with works, the way the wind affects the fog’s movement, for instance. So are there other potential ways in which landscape can interact with sculptures and vice versa?' says Champion.

When it came to reconsidering the pavilion, the team again wanted to work with what was already there. 'That part of the garden is one that’s really important to us, with the fog sculpture, and we don’t want to mess with that. So we wanted to do something that was gentle and hopefully feels a little bit ephemeral too,' says Arnold. 'At a prosaic level, that platform already exists and it’s a really great thing. It has a back of house and a kitchen and we want to use that.'

When the team first considered what a new pavilion might look like, the first idea that came to mind was that it should be made of Madigan-inspired concrete. 'But then we just stopped and thought, well actually, it’s about the garden and in order for it to be integrated into the landscape—to be beautiful—this piece of architecture needs to reflect its surroundings, to be reflecting the sky, reflecting the fog sculpture, reflecting the pond, and framing the view when you’re inside it,' says Fung.

When Mitzevich looked at their design, it looked to him like the future. 'CO-AP thought deeply about the architecture of this site, and rather than emulating elements from Madigan's architecture, what they’ve done is distil it into an essence. This reflective stainless-steel pavilion, that reflects and absorbs the world around it, is their architectural statement for the future.'

'We weren’t thinking about the pavilion as an object,' says Arnold. 'We were thinking of it as something that would do something, depending on where you stood. What would it do if you were looking across the fog garden? What would happen if you were in the pavilion looking out? What would the relationship between patrons on either side of the garden be like? We want them to both see, and not see, people through the glass. We were thinking, too, about certain artists who do that kind of work, like [the late American conceptual artist] Dan Graham, for example. So we were thinking about ideas of translucency and reflection, that was important to us as well.

A central theme in the CO-AP Holdings proposal was of connection. 'The Gallery is in a garden setting, so it should be experienced in the round,' says landscape architect Johnny Ellice-Flint (Studio JEF). 'So, a big part of this proposal is connecting and wrapping the Gallery with the garden so that at any point where you might enter, you feel like you are in the Sculpture Garden.'

CO-AP Holdings’ plans to wrap the Gallery features seven distinct landscapes, each with their own particular character and biodiversity. The gardens would also thread through and connect the lake to Bowen Place and the National Portrait Gallery.

'With the new spaces we’re proposing there’s a sense of a journey or change as you move through them. Going from landscapes that are dense and dark to areas that are bright and open or have dappled light. From small, intimate spaces to larger, expansive spaces and using plants as a means of creating a lot of that, instead of built materials which is environmentally undesirable,' explains Champion. 'Something we’re thinking about a lot is, how can we create this experience where you move through these seven gardens, each with their own character and qualities, and how can those qualities inspire and provide space to hold sculptures within them?'

CO-AP Holding’s approach to the plan was that everything that was already there was valuable. Says Arnold, 'Even the [staff] car park was important. It has no heritage significance, as far as I’m aware, but our first port of call with any decision, including for "boring" things like the car park, was, "how do we do as little as possible?" So the idea of transforming the car park into a series of garden rooms came from the plan of the car park.'

'With the car park garden we wanted to respond to the fact that there’s very little tree canopy there at the moment,' says Ellice-Flint. 'We wanted to play with the idea that you can see the sky in an open sort of setting here. So the proposed planting and spatial character here really expands on that and we’re going to create a series of garden rooms that have a much more intimate character and a lot of detailed planting that you won’t then find anywhere else [in the garden.]'

The increased footprint of the garden is hugely exciting for Gallery Director Nick Mitzevich. 'It will allow us to really expand and widen our appreciation of public sculpture and the representation of women and First Nations art in particular,' he says.

'Hopefully there’s a lot more [for artists] to respond to [across these seven landscapes], with site-specific works, or with light and sound works,' says Ellice-Flint. 'We think there’s a lot of opportunity in these new spaces for things that are much more evocative and experiential.'

Part of that experience will also be updating and reimagining wayfinding through the gardens, integrating sculpture and planting into that strategy. 'Wayfinding and whatnot, maybe that’s a bit boring but it doesn’t have to be,' says Arnold. 'These kinds of practicalities are another opportunity to tie everything together into a greater whole.'

Further information on the National Gallery Sculpture Garden Design Competition is available here.