The site for the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects (TDPA) 2023 design challenge is the multi-award winning Bundanon Art Museum designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects.

The Bundanon Art Museum is situated on the 1100-hectare property gifted to the Australian people by Arthur and Yvonne Boyd in 1993. It includes a world-class creative learning centre for school students, a contemporary visitor hub, accommodation and a light filled contemporary art gallery - partially buried into the landscape.

Sensitively embracing the existing landscape and its ecology, the design responds to current and future climatic conditions with inspiration drawn from rural Australia’s trestle flood bridges. The facilities are housed within a new 140-metre-long by 9-metre-wide structure that at one end abuts the Art Museum within the sloping hillside, continuing along to bridge an existing gully. A counterpoint to the bridge structure the new gallery is subterranean, buried within the reinstated hill.

The new Kerstin Thompson Architects designed facilities are intended to re-establish the historic Boyd cluster of buildings as the heart of the experience.

“The design concept both preserves and transforms, is equal parts subtle and dramatic. Renown aspects of the current setting are maintained, and their presence enhanced with an array of new and compelling visitor experiences.’’

It integrates architecture and landscape within the broader continuum of the sites ecology and environmental systems.  

Applicants may submit a tapestry design in response to the following site:

LOCATION

Shoalhaven, New South Wales, Australia
Traditional Custodians of the land Dharawal and Dhurga language groups

SELECTED AWARDS

Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture, National Australian Architecture Awards 2022  
Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture, National Australian Architecture Awards 1999 

FURTHER RESOURCES

Bundanon
Kerstin Thompson
Dezeen