As part of the Art Gallery of NSW expansion, Sydney Modern is a stand alone extension that is connects to the existing gallery via a public garden.

Conceived by Japanese architecture firm SANAA, the Sydney Modern Project’s design takes into account its environment and topography, first and foremost. Surrounded by Sydney’s spectacular harbour setting, along with the pristine Botanical Gardens, SANAA’s design offers an abundance of glass windows to welcome the surrounding landscape into the Gallery’s space.

Plenty of natural light filling the Gallery at different times of day calls for precise consideration of lighting.

Eclipse by ERCO served as a high-end solution for the exhibition spaces within the Gallery. Not only providing optimum visual comfort and precise, uniform light, the Eclipse uses innovative technology creating an unparalleled scope for individual lighting solutions. The diversity of the Eclipse system can be refined and customised with the use of interchangeable lens options creating flexibility for the Gallery’s ever changing needs. Casambi technology further adds to the solution with state of the art wireless technology ; enabling the Gallery to be completely in control at all times.

Hidden beneath the Gallery sits WWII naval oil tanks. Beautifully preserved and untouched. SANAA’s response to this hidden discovery was to repurpose this area and transform it into what will be an art space like no other. The 2200 square metre space will become host to a unique gallery boasting 7m high ceilings and a brigade of spectacular concrete columns.

Collaborating with SANAA, the lighting team at ARUP were engaged to illuminate this stunning space, as well as all the fixed lighting that will take up real estate at the new Sydney Modern Project. ERCO Lightscans became a suitably sophisticated solution for expansive space that will become home for a spectacular collection of both Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art as well as performance art and other exciting projects.

Credits : Art Gallery of NSW, Jenni Carter, Felicity Jenkins, Iwan Baan, Jorg Baumann, Adrian Villar Rojas, Brett Hemmings.