SANAA in Sydney: a new publication exploring the architecture of Naala Badu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales

One of the most significant and anticipated architectural and cultural developments in Australia, SANAA’s new building for the Art Gallery of New South Wales, opened to the public in December 2022. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa – their first project in Australia – the award-winning building overlooking Sydney Harbour is named Naala Badu, which means ‘seeing waters’ in the Sydney Aboriginal language. The expansion is the culmination of a decade-long vision, the Sydney Modern Project, to transform a 153-year-old public institution into an art museum campus that seamlessly connects art, architecture and landscape.

With its five essays richly illustrated with photo essays by Iwan Baan, SANAA in Sydney: The architecture of Naala Badu at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, is a stunning book that takes readers behind the scenes of this ambitious vision, from the international architecture competition, through the design and construction process with architectural documentation, to the building’s opening.

The book considers the design from various perspectives with essays reflecting on its built form and engagement with art, people and the environment. SANAA in Sydneywill engage those fascinated by architecture, art, museums and photography. The book includes a design statement by SANAA founders Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa along with texts by the Art Gallery’s director, Michael Brand; Harvard University architectural historian Eve Blau; professor of architecture at the University of Technology Sydney, Anthony Burke; director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Yuko Hasegawa; and the Art Gallery’s head of the Sydney Modern Project, Sally Webster. A design competition jurist, the Finnish architect and academic Juhani Pallasmaa, has authored the foreword. The book also reunites SANAA’s founders with Iwan Baan, one of architecture’s most sought-after photographers. 

SANAA in Sydney is the final volume in a suite of three books charting the Art Gallery’s history and transformation. It follows The Exhibitionists: A history of Sydney’s Art Gallery of New South Wales by Steven Miller, released in 2021 to mark its 150th anniversary, and The Sydney Modern Project: Transforming the Art Gallery of New South Wales, edited by Michael Brand and published for the opening of the Art Gallery’s expansion in 2022.