2021 Brief — TDPA

TDPA 2021

The site for the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects 2021 design challenge was the multi-award winning Phoenix Central Park designed by John Wardle Architects and Durbach Block Jaggers.

Applicants had a choice of three sites across the integrated art gallery and performance…

Brief:

This multifaceted project, initiated by a passionate private patron, captures the vision of an integrated performance space, garden and art gallery. The performance space and gallery are entered through and linked by a central garden. A collaborative project, each element is authored by a different hand – John Wardle Architects designed the gallery and Durbach Block Jaggers designed the performance space.

The buildings and gardens are linked at many levels, above and below ground, allowing for an intense interlocking of performance, nature and art. Within the gallery a minimal material palette of concrete and timber provides a setting that art works can engage with. Large flexible spaces are paired with small, intimate and idiosyncratic spaces. A continuous external skin of brickwork encloses everything – a skin that was designed by both architects working together.

Phoenix Central Park is envisioned a space in which architecture, interior design, visual and performing arts would each enhance and embrace the other for an immersive total experience – a ‘gesamtkunstwerk’, or ‘total work of art’. Audiences can expect anything from the classics to new experimental music – from solo piano recitals to opera, from contemporary dance to poetry reading, and from chamber music to performance art.