More than almost any other city, except perhaps Paris with its Eiffel Tower, Sydney is visualised through an architectural icon, the Opera House. Whether manifested as hats, glasses or logos, the various clouds, sails or copulating turtles of Jørn Utzon’s masterpiece have provided limitless grist for designers of merchandise and advertising campaigns.
The Sydney Modern project, a major expansion and rejuvenation of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, has been billed as the most significant cultural project in the city since the Opera House opened in 1973. Yet the presence of this building, designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of the Japanese firm Sanaa, is almost the Opera House’s antithesis. Half-buried in the hillside; camouflaged on its sloping site with light and transparent surfaces; Sanaa’s characteristic limpidity and subtlety gives little purchase for the impatient eye to fix upon.
