Adjaye Associates+ Daniel Boyd Team Up to Design the New Sydney Plaza

The City of Sydney, Australia, has selected Adjaye Associates, led by David Adjaye, and contemporary Aboriginal artist Daniel Boyd to design a new public square, community building, and public artwork. The project attempts to uncover the lost history of the site, reconcile cultures and define identities, a ‘found place’ that offers respite away from the busy streetscape.

The artwork, a 27 x 34 meter (89 x 112 ft) canopy, shelters and unites the community building and the plaza below. Daniel Boyd, who was inspired by aboriginal dot painting, perforated the canopy with multiple, randomly scattered, circular, mirror-lined openings.

Rendering. New Sydney Plaza Adjaye Associates+ Daniel Boyd. Image courtesy of Adjaye Associates

Located near Circular Quay in Sydney, the new Plaza will be a focal point to retrieve the Eora origins of this part of the coastal city. In fact, the concept based on the meaning of place, heritage, and identity, will generate a space of dialogue, discovery, and celebration, where “lost history” can be uncovered and displayed. “A dialogue around the complex relationship colonizers have to their indigenous communities”.

"Inspired by simple unitary forms and place-making in Aboriginal culture, we imagine the new community building and plaza as a ‘found place’ based around the notion of the shelter, a symbolic respite away from the busy streetscape that is discovered and dissolves through light. To connect this profound center with the sites heritage and origins, we have collaborated with Daniel Boyd, a renowned contemporary artist of Aboriginal descent, on the projects key feature – a 27x34m perforated canopy that shelters and unites the community building and the plaza under a poetic layer of light and darkness."

Adjaye Associates

With a hybrid form that merges the Aboriginal origins with the legacy of early settlers and the industrial materiality and language of the nearby harbor, the program that includes an open plan café, gallery space and garden terrace, is scattered in a flexible, free-flow space “with activated connections to the plaza and adjacent developments, where encounters with art and community are made easy”.

Daniel Boyd, inspired by Aboriginal dot painting, will curate “a cosmic journey of light that filters and refracts through multiple, randomly scattered, circular, mirror-lined canopy openings”. In fact, these patterns continue onto the paving through a series of steel circles and cylindrical glass skylights, in order to extend the play of light down into the bicycle facility under the plaza.

"We have envisioned a highly interactive environment that connects holistically to its neighboring buildings and the public realm. Our proposal, in addition to the new community building, includes the George Street public plaza, Circular Quay Tower pedestrian bridge as well as the integration of the proposed cycle parking facility. Incorporating these public interventions with our design proposal ensures a building which is tied to its location and community. We believe the new community building and George Street public plaza can become a newly cherished destination in Sydney’s CBD, a generative place for people to connect, recharge, reflect and take a pause from the rhythm of a fast transforming city."

Adjaye Associates

Adjaye Associates is known for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, opened in 2016 in Washington D.C.

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DAVID ADJAYE

David Adjaye was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1966. The son of a Ghanaian diplomat who has lived in Tanzania, Egypt, Yemen, and Lebanon before moving to Britain at the age of nine, he led a privileged life and was privately educated. He earned his BA at London South Bank University, before graduating with an MA in 1993 from the Royal College of Art. In 1993, the same year of graduation, Adjaye won the RIBA Bronze Medal, a prize offered for RIBA Part 1 projects, normally won by students who have only completed a bachelor's degree.

Previously a unit tutor at the Architectural Association, he was also a lecturer at the Royal College of Art. After very short terms of work with the architectural studios of David Chipperfield (London) and Eduardo Souto de Moura (Porto), Adjaye established a practice with William Russell in 1994 called Adjaye & Russell, based in North London. This office was disbanded in 2000 and Adjaye established his own eponymous studio at this point.

Recent works include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, and the Skolkovo Moscow School of Management completed in 2010. On April 15, 2009, he was selected in a competition to design the $500 million National Museum of African American History and Culture, part of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., planned to open in 2015. His design features a crown motif from Yoruba sculpture.

Alongside his international commissions, Adjayes work spans exhibitions, private homes, and artist collaborations. He built homes for the designer Alexander McQueen, artist Jake Chapman, photographer Juergen Teller, actor Ewan McGregor, and artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster. For artist Chris Ofili, he designed a new studio and a beach house in Port of Spain. He worked with Ofili to create an environment for the Upper Room, which was later acquired by Tate Britain and caused a nationwide media debate. He also collaborated with artist Olafur Eliasson to create a light installation, Your black horizon, at the 2005 Venice Biennale. He has also worked on the art project Sankalpa with director Shekhar Kapur. Adjaye coauthored two seasons of BBC's Dreamspaces television series and hosts a BBC radio program. In June 2005, he presented the documentary, Building Africa: Architecture of a Continent. In 2008, he participated in Manifesta 7.

In February 2009, the cancellation or postponement of four projects in Europe and Asia forced the firm to enter into a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA), a deal to stave off insolvency proceedings which prevents financial collapse by rescheduling debts – estimated at about £1m – to creditors.

Adjaye currently holds a Visiting Professor post at Princeton University School of Architecture. He was the first Louis Kahn visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and was the Kenzo Tange Professor in Architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design. In addition, he is a RIBA Chartered Member, an AIA Honorary Fellow, a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Senior Fellow of the Design Futures Council. He also serves as member of the Advisory Boards of the Barcelona Institute of Architecture and the London School of Economics Cities programme.

The studio's first solo exhibition: "David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings" was shown at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in January 2006, with Thames and Hudson publishing the catalogue of the same name. This followed their 2005 publication of Adjaye's first book entitled "David Adjaye Houses".

http://www.adjaye.com