Two buildings become one: the example of Sydney’s Phoenix Central Park

John Wardle Architects and Durbach Block Jaggers Architects respectively design the complex’s gallery and performance space, cooperating to define its impressive envelope.

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Trevor Mein

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Julia Charles

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Kien Van Young

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Trevor Mein

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Tom Ferguson

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Martin Mischkulnig

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Trevor Mein

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Martin Mischkulnig

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Trevor Mein

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Gavin Green

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Julia Charles

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Kien Van Young

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Tom Ferguson

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Trevor Mein

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, site plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, basement three plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, basement two plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, basement one plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, ground floor plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, first floor plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects e John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, second floor plan

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, north elevation

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, east elevation

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, cross section

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, longitudinal section

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Alessandro Benetti
05 August 2020
Sydney, Australia
Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects
717 sqm
gallery, performance space
2019

Generally speaking, a gallery and a performance space are introverted functions, because of the need to monitor the levels of light, humidity, temperature and noise that their content and users are subject to. Therefore, the client of Sydney’s Phoenix Central Park, which is comprised of both and gather them around a central courtyard, decide to involve two different firms, virtually leaving them complete formal and linguistic freedom.
The gallery, designed by John Wardle Architects, is made of an alternate sequence of decidedly enclosed and suddenly oversized spaces. Amongst the others are a small underground room, whose ceiling is perforated by a single skylight, bringing in light from the internal court, and an open space on the top floor, crowned by a continuous surface of deep, almost monumental skylights, flooding the interior with diffused natural light.

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Martin Mischkulnig

Durbach Block Jaggers’s performance space is a single bell-shaped clearing, made by stepped and countered timber ribs, and conceived as an Elizabethan theatre, with the scene visible from different vantage points. Distribution spaces break into the auditorium, just to become themselves observation platforms. Designed jointly by both offices, the building’s skin is entirely made of flat, elongated brick, with a thin veil of mortar washed over them to emphasize their continuity. Their solid mass, though, is relentlessly warped, twisted, pierced. This envelope under tension, which reacts to the conformation of its interiors and stresses it, “staging” it as a spectacle offered to the city, is probably the most interesting element of Phoenix Central Park’s design.

Durbach Block Jaggers Architects and John Wardle Architects, Phoenix Central Park, Chippendale, Sydney, Australia, 2019. Photo © Martin Mischkulnig

Phoenix Central Park
gallery, performance space
Sydney, Australia
Durbach Block Jaggers Architects (performance space); John Wardle Architects (gallery)
717 sqm
2019