This important new hardcover book celebrates the design of SANAA’s new building for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney led by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.
One of the most significant and anticipated architectural and cultural developments in Australia, SANAA’s new building for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, opened to the public in December 2022.
Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa – their first project in Australia – the award-winning building overlooking Sydney Harbour is named Naala Badu, which means ‘seeing waters’ in the Sydney Aboriginal language.
The expansion is the culmination of a decade-long vision, the Sydney Modern Project, to transform a 153-year-old public institution into an art museum campus that seamlessly connects art, architecture and landscape.
Richly illustrated with photo essays by Iwan Baan, SANAA in Sydney: The architecture of Naala Badu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is a stunning book that takes readers behind the scenes of this ambitious vision, from the international architecture competition, through the design and construction process with architectural documentation, to the building’s opening.
The book considers the design from various perspectives with essays reflecting on its built form and engagement with art, people and the environment. SANAA in Sydney will engage those fascinated by architecture, art, museums and photography.
SANAA in Sydney includes a design statement by SANAA founders Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa along with texts by:
- the Art Gallery’s director, Michael Brand;
- Harvard University architectural historian Eve Blau;
- professor of architecture at the University of Technology Sydney, Anthony Burke;
- director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Yuko Hasegawa; and
- the Art Gallery’s head of the Sydney Modern Project, Sally Webster.
Design competition jurist, architect and academic, Juhani Pallasmaa, has authored the foreword. The book also reunites SANAA’s founders with Iwan Baan, one of architecture’s most sought-after photographers.
SANAA in Sydney is the final volume in a suite of three books charting the Art Gallery’s history and transformation. It follows The Exhibitionists: A history of Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales by Steven Miller, released in 2021 to mark its 150th anniversary, and The Sydney Modern Project: Transforming the Art Gallery of New South Wales, edited by Michael Brand and published for the opening of the Art Gallery’s expansion in 2022.
SANAA in Sydney editor and contributor Michael Brand is the director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He has led the transformation and expansion of the institution through the Sydney Modern Project.
Prior to his appointment at the Art Gallery in 2012, he led the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto and was director of the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond.
Brand is a scholar of Indian and Islamic art, architecture and landscape design and is a prominent voice in the global conversation about the future of art museums.
Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa founded the architectural firm SANAA in 1995 and have since designed a number of award-winning buildings around the world, including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa and Grace Farms in Connecticut. In 2010, they were awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. SANAA creates spaces that bring people together through openness and lightness.
SANAA in Sydney: The architecture of Naala Badu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales is published by Art Gallery of New South Wales and is available from the Art Gallery of New South Wales Shop and all leading book sellers.
Images: SANAA in Sydney: The architecture of Naala Badu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (supplied) | Aerial view of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ new SANAA-designed building, 2022 – photo by Iwan Baan | Exterior view of the Welcome Plaza of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ new building featuring Yayoi Kusama’s Flowers that Bloom in the Cosmos, 2022 – photo by Iwan Baan