☉ Recalling Something Nice: Garden with Shade and Dappled Light is a finalist competition entry by GFA2 Supercontext and Dean Cross for National Gallery of Victoria in 2023. It is located in Melbourne Australia in a park setting. Its scale is extrasmall. Key materials are fabric and wood. Choirender and Hamish McIntosh collaborated as visualizers.
A big verandah opens the institution toward the garden, inhabiting the moment between the interior and its captive landscape. When exiting the museum, a familiar domestic environment akin to a backyard verandah is encountered. A tensile roof covers the National Gallery of Victoria’s outdoor terrace to create a new rear elevation.
The structure is complex in meaning, but primitive in means (timber beams and posts, cables, and rocks). The space below the fabric is generous yet intimate, allowing visitors to rest in the coloured shadows while being refreshed by water dripping from above. The project is a big verandah, a breezy temporary landmark in the Grollo Equiset garden for a very hot Melbournian summer.