The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) Sculpture Garden Design Competition invited Australian and international designers to create a reinvigorated and unique landscape. The gallery aims to reposition the existing Sculpture Garden as an innovative outdoor art gallery that comprehensively embraces the biodiversity of the Australian landscape.

Our Stage 1 submission sought to respect Canberra's 1930s master plan, revitalise the 1970s late modernist garden and building, and reveal the Aboriginal readings and connections that give the site its shape and meaning, as Country that has always been. Deep listening was at the heart of our shared approach to this project.

A set of principles for the project – palimpsest, micro-environments, democratic, anti-didactic, loud, quiet, adaptable, and seasonality – became the foundation for the sites various conditions and armature for our proposition.

We proposed a practical, enticing, grounding and insightful, sequence of meaningful site interventions to heal, engage, question and reveal the layers of the site, its history, and its enduring capacity to generate and nurture culture. Our design supported the evolution of the garden over time, celebrating the dynamic shifts and flux of Country. Through this process Country becomes the curator of a dynamic and shifting NGA garden and Australia’s biodiversity can flourish alongside human culture.