The pavilion housing the new Asian galleries is a floating white glass and steel cube, pivoted with modern stainless steel lotus flowers. Cantilevered on top of the original Asian gallery, when lit at night it glows softly like a paper lantern over Sydney Harbour.
"The first thing that came to my mind when I was thinking about the building was a lantern, something consistent with a number of Asian cultures," says Sydney architect Richard Johnson of Johnson Pilton Walker.
"The simple pavilion is a consistent idea through a number of Asian cultures, so too is the idea of a pavilion on a platform," says Richard Johnson, who was involved in the design of such buildings as the Australian Embassies in Beijing and Tokyo, the Museum of Sydney, and who is currently working in collaboration with Joern Utzon on the renovation of the Sydney Opera House.
"The idea," says Anne Flanagan, the Art Gallery's General Manager of Building and Exhibitions, "was to design an extension that would be visible from the Gallery's main foyer and respect the ensemble of existing buildings." The original part of the Art Gallery, Walter Liberty Vernon's classically inspired sandstone structure, was constructed around the turn of the 20th century, while Andrew Andersons' additional concrete and glass wings were opened in 1972 and in 1988.
It was important to Edmund Capon that the new Asian galleries "subtly add another element" to what was already there, something "symbolic of the collection and having some Asian sensibilities."
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