A Total Work of Art – Phoenix Central Park by John Wardle Architects and Durbach Block Jaggers

Phoenix Central Park was conceived by arts philanthropist Judith Neilson as a gesamtkunstwerk, or ‘total work of art’, encapsulated in the motto ‘art has moved off the wall’. Channelling this idea, John Wardle Architects and Durbach Block Jaggers teamed up to create a building that is not merely a receptacle of art and performance but an active participant in both.

Galleries and performance spaces demand a certain interiority, closed off from the world at large to maintain a controlled environment. The continuous, mostly impermeable brick skin of the façade addressing the narrow street in Sydney’s Chippendale acknowledges this. Yet, there is a liveliness to the undulating surface and almost whimsical form that gestures to Phoenix Central Park as an immersive place of intersection for the arts. It is not only that the building can be described in artistic terms – although this is certainly true; the taut billowing brick façade recalling something of Jean-Paul and Christo’s wrapped buildings, for one – but rather, there is a more intriguing sense that the spaces within are at points emerging or about to emerge through the external surface, as though the activity inside may at any moment burst forth.

More important than simply offering a range of informal viewing options, the space – and indeed the building as a whole – lends itself to untold modalities of performance

Inside, voluminous circulation spaces that immediately evoke movement draw one through the building to experience all that it has to offer. The east wing, designed by John Wardle Architects, contains the galleries. Unlike the prototypical stark white box gallery, these spaces are emotive and, it may be said, even theatrical. In one gallery, a dramatic ceiling of crosshatched voids injects defined beams of light through embedded skylights. In other spaces, the tactile materiality of the in-situ cast concrete walls creates an acute awareness of the architecture’s presence – far from receding into the background to allow the displayed art to take centre stage, it takes a leading role in shaping the experience.

Similarly, performances held in the theatre, designed by Durbach Block Jaggers, become intimately inseparable from the architecture. Not only are the works informed by the very particular qualities of the design, but the space itself is so finely calibrated to the nuances of light, acoustics and motion that it, in turn, is alive to the dynamic of the moment and appears to shift accordingly. Seemingly carved from timber – in reality, it is lined in contoured ribs of cross-laminated timber prefabricated and assembled on site – the remarkable bell-shaped clearing is modelled after an Elizabethan theatre, such that the action is ‘in the round’. Spectators may be arranged, or arrange themselves, at a variety of vantage points, from a projecting balcony to a number of stepped landings.

Inside, voluminous circulation spaces that immediately evoke movement draw one through the building to experience all that it has to offer.

More important than simply offering a range of informal viewing options, the space – and indeed the building as a whole – lends itself to untold modalities of performance. The choreography of Sydney Dance Company’s Touch showcased this, exploring not only the main theatre but ancillary areas such as stairwells, dressing rooms, car park and basement. True to its name, the performance embraced physical interaction with the building, the dancers grappling with the architecture and so reinventing it as part of their artistic process. Touch also encompassed another medium – film. The short film by creative production company Entropico further informs an understanding of the architecture, highlighting the drama of surprising moments of vivid colour, the rhythm of the theatre’s timber escarpment, the geometry of the floor. Viewed through the filmmaker’s lens and edited without any of the context provided by physically moving through the building, the spaces took on the singular intensity of sets, their qualities heightened and almost abstracted.

In the two years since Phoenix Central Park opened, it has undergone a fractured operation marked by periods of closure due to Sydney’s lockdowns. Yet, in testament to the vision shared by the architects and client, the show has very much gone on, not simply in a rapid pivot to streamed shows previously intended for live performance but, as Touch exemplified, through curated productions made solely for digital viewing. That so seamless a combination of the live and the pre-recorded has been possible is an indication that, already, Phoenix is fulfilling its purpose of acting as a nexus of art and culture – one where the architecture has a formative and boundless role to play.