A polished stainless-steel pavilion and a carpark full of art will soon transform some of the unloved quarters of a prime piece of parliamentary triangle real estate.
They're the centrepieces of the ambitious new design that's been selected to transform the Sculpture Garden, the three-hectare site between the National Gallery of Australia and Lake Burley Griffin.
The gallery announced the $60 million refurbishment project back in April, and launched a nation-wide design competition to help realise it.
The winner, CO-AP Holdings, is a collective made up of architects, landscape designers, structural engineers, heritage specialists and First Nations and arts consultants, among others.
And their plan, to more than double the space for public art while allowing the gardens to grow and change over the years, is as ambitious as they come, with seven distinct and interconnected gardens that weave their way around the gallery in a continuous circuit.
There'll also be seasonal garden plantings and a new promenade and "multi-use campus square" in the gallery forecourt.
Gallery director Nick Mitzevich, who was on the judging panel, said the revitalisation project, which will be funded by philanthropic donations, was a way of finishing off what has always been an unfinished work, which began in the 1980s.
"There's a lot of love for the sculpture garden, and I think it validates why we're focusing our attention," he said.
"We're working with the government to fix the building, but at the same time, we thought it was important to work on a project of ambition and of newness, to finish work that has yet to be completed."
Today, the gardens, which technically wrap around the whole building precinct, are only half occupied with art and landscaping, with around 65 sculptures, including Rodin nudes, a Japanese fog garden, a beloved series of bronze pears and an immersive Skyspace by James Turrell.
There are also pockets of wasteland, a large, unwieldy staff carpark and multiple accessibility issues, and the gardens are off kilter with the rest of the gallery precinct.
"Our winning designers really maximise the use of the site and essentially double the available space for the Sculpture Garden," Dr Mitzevich said.
After a two-stage process involving five finalists, the competition jury chose Sydney-based CO-AP Holdings based on their three-stage approach.
"What I thought was very interesting - and all of the jury concurred on this - is that the new things that the design team is suggesting are not pastiches or relics of the past, they're thoroughly of the moment.
"That's what we loved, because from our design brief, we want to respect the past, but we also want to add something about today and about the present. We thought that the winning team really balanced those elements quite beautifully."
Architect Will Fung, who's leading the team, was born in Hong Kong but grew up in Canberra, and has strong memories of the gallery's earliest days.
"I grew up in Canberra. I immigrated there in 1980 as a kid, and I remember the gallery opening 1982 ... I had a real nostalgia for the gallery and for the gardens," he said.
"And from there, the others who are also forming part of the team, they all have their individual histories and moments and memories that they share of the garden.
"That was kind of the genesis of our design team and of our approach, is that we need to respect what's there, build on what's there, transform underutilised portions of it."
The centrepiece will be a new polished stainless steel pavilion on the edge of the Japanese fog garden, where there's currently a temporary structure for a seasonal restaurant that "looks a little bit like a wedding marquee".
"We thought that's a great spot to reinvigorate and to transform into something much more permanent and much more beautiful and much more functional," he said.
"It's a pavilion that we envisage would be made of polished stainless steel, so it's incredibly reflective, jewel-like, it reflects the garden that it sits within. And when you're inside, it frames perfectly the view of the fog sculpture, so you're seeing [it] from a completely different perspective."
It will also echo the existing shiny metal Cones sculpture by Bert Fugleman, and Lindy Lee's epic $14 million Ouroboros at the front of the gallery, which will be unveiled to the public next week.
He said the gravel staff carpark, which cuts off the lakefront gardens from the road, would be transformed into "garden rooms" that will be home to new sculptures.
"You can walk through that space and connect those two main sculpture garden spaces, and then continue that skirt circuit all the way around to the portion that is now above the underground car park, what they call the art campus square between the High Court and the art gallery," he said.
"[We'll] also make it really permeable, so you can enter it at every edge, on every side."
Landscape architect Johnny Ellice-Flint said he wanted everyone to be able to experience the gardens the second they stepped into the gallery precinct.
"We had this strong idea that there are all these parts of the site that sit idle at the moment, that should be brought in and feel like that you're not at the back of the building," he said.
"It's not necessarily about visibility. I think even at the moment, there's quite a beautiful experience if you're doing the cycle loop around the lake, which obviously so many people do, it's such a popular thing to do - one of my earliest experiences of Canberra was doing that with my family. It is such a distinct experience, riding past.
"There's not many other places along the lake loop, especially within the centre of Canberra, that you then have this quite significant garden right up against you - it has weight to it.
"We certainly don't want to change that. We think it has a nice presence to it. But we're looking to play off that and enhance that, and where we can make it even feel like the loop comes into the gardens rather than beyond it. But it's still very early days in the process."
Dr Mitzvich said the gallery would spend the next year finessing the design, and, depending on how it goes raising funds, will start construction in 2026.
