The Lost Garden: National Gallery of Victoria Pavilion
National Gallery of Victoria Architecture Commission 2019
Client: National Gallery of Victoria
Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Type: Installation / Cultural
Status: Competition Proposal
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The jury commends this finalist proposal’s transformation of the site and the manner in which the design reimagines the topography of the garden. The proposal presents an ambitious use of space that resonates with the NGV building and draws into focus the relationship between people and nature, creating a bold, yet entirely viable intervention in the garden.
Jury Members:
Andrew Clark - Deputy Director, National Gallery of Victoria
Jill Garner (Chair) - Principal of Garner Davis Architects & Victorian Government Architect
Corbett Lyon - Co-founder Lyons Architecture & NGV Trustee
Clare Cousins - Principal of Clare Cousins Architects & AIA National President (2018-2019)
Timothy Moore - Director of Sibling Architecture
The Project
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The Lost Garden explores a future in which the natural landscape we take for granted has become increasingly scarce. Conceived for the National Gallery of Victoria's 2019 Architecture Commission, the proposal considers how temporary architecture can create a moment of reflection on our relationship with nature, culture and time.
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The proposal transforms the garden from a backdrop into the subject of the architecture. A new circular ground establishes a spatial centre within the existing landscape, creating a sequence of spaces for gathering, contemplation and encounter.
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Located within the National Gallery of Victoria's garden, the proposal responds to the architectural language of Sir Roy Grounds' original building while creating new relationships with the surrounding landscape and sculpture collection.
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Shortlisted as a top five finalist out of over 100 entries nationally.
Design
A Garden That Might Be Lost
The garden has long been a place of refuge: a space removed from the pressures of the city, where people can pause, gather and reconnect with the natural world.
But as cities continue to grow and natural landscapes become increasingly scarce, even the garden can no longer be taken for granted.
The Lost Garden imagines this possibility.
Rather than treating the temporary pavilion as an object placed within the garden, the proposal asks what architecture might become if the garden itself were the subject.
The project explores the tension between permanence and disappearance, asking how a temporary work of architecture might draw attention to the landscapes we risk losing.
A New Ground
The proposal establishes a new circular ground within the garden of the National Gallery of Victoria.
Rather than competing with the existing landscape, the intervention creates a new point of orientation from which the garden, architecture and sculpture collection can be experienced differently.
The circular geometry establishes a sense of enclosure while remaining open to the landscape beyond. Paths converge and diverge, creating moments of arrival, pause and discovery.
The architecture becomes less an object and more a place within the garden.
A new ground from which to experience what is already there.
Past, Present, Future
The garden contains its own history.
The proposal creates a journey through this history, connecting visitors with the artworks and landscape that already occupy the site.
The experience begins with Rodin's Monument to Balzac, establishing a relationship with the cultural past. From here, visitors move through the pavilion and garden, encountering moments of reflection, gathering and observation before arriving at Henry Moore's Draped Seated Woman.
These encounters become a meditation on time.
Past. Present. Future.
The pavilion exists between them, creating a temporary condition through which the existing garden can be seen anew.
An Architecture That Disappears
The pavilion is temporary by design.
Its eventual removal is not considered an end to the project, but part of its architectural proposition.
Materials are conceived for reuse, recycling or biodegradation. Planting can be redistributed to civic and public institutions, allowing elements of the garden to continue beyond the life of the pavilion.
In this way, disappearance becomes a form of continuation.
The architecture leaves the garden, but its materials, plants and ideas remain in circulation.
The project therefore asks whether temporary architecture can have a lasting impact without seeking permanence.
We are too few to be divided.
We are too many to be lost.
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