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AKL ART GALLERY | Gallery + News

54K views 157 replies 40 participants last post by  densha otaku 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)


Facts:

- Completion date mid-2011
- Costs $113 million (Central Government $30 million, Auckland City Council $48.1 million, Auckland Art Gallery Foundation $33.4 million)
- Creates 50% more space for displays



After watching the above video, I was shocked at how impressive this project is. IMO the extension enhances the beauty of the original building. I was pretty worried the conflicting styles wouldn't mesh, but I've been proved wrong.
 
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#5 ·
Roof is going up fast, and the front got unwrapped the other day. It's all painted in a new darker gray paint to return the building to its appearance in 1887. Not sure I liked it at first but think its grown on me and think its looking great.

Also notice the nice details of new 'cresting'. Something you'll hardly see from the ground.







 
#9 ·
I like pretty much everything about this development. It utilizes and links with the original building wonderfully, opens up to the park behind and looks great.

It also is quite a large addition considering it is much larger than the original building. Though to be honest, the original art gallery was embarrassingly small. This development will not only take it up to a decent size for a city of Auckland's size and location, but also do it right.

I only wish it was finished when I visited a couple of months ago.
 
#15 ·
Hawkins Construction Ltd and their associated contractor teams have now worked in excess of 500,000 hours on the art gallery building development project.

The daylit gallery (level 2) roof sarking is substantially complete and the installation of roof skylights is progressing. The installation and testing of the roof membrane for the south atrium is also now complete. In the heritage areas, the walls, ceilings and paired columns of the East Gallery are progressing, finished wall surfaces in the Wellesley Wing are painted and floor levelling in the Kitchener Wing has begun.

Concept plans for reducing a portion of Kitchener Street to one lane are being progressed, with support from transport, CBD projects and the gallery project team, for consultation with neighbours. The accompanying widening of the footpath, and the cost to achieve this, is under review.
The area of Kitchener street to be narrowed:

 
#16 ·
Concept plans for reducing a portion of Kitchener Street to one lane are being progressed, with support from transport, CBD projects and the gallery project team, for consultation with neighbours. The accompanying widening of the footpath, and the cost to achieve this, is under review.
Yes Please. This is practical on my doorstep. That end of Kitchener is such a gauntlet with cars hooning it down Wellesley and up Kitchener as fast as their wheels will take em - highly risky area for peds & seen plenty of near misses.
There is a lot of student traffic coming across from Khartoum Place, and also at the Kitchener/Wellesley corner which would really benefit from this. Could tie in nicely with the Khartoum Place upgrade.
 
#19 ·
One of the world's best art collections may go on show when the Auckland Art Gallery reopens next year.

Gallery director Chris Saines said he hoped all 15 Robertson Collection paintings would be here by mid-2011 for the opening, displaying 1875 to 1951 works by Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Piet Mondrian, Salvador Dali, Georges Braque, Andre Derain and others.

"But it depends on whether Julian [Robertson] will be able to get everything here," he said of the billionaire benefactor.

Five adjoining spaces and more than 400sq m of floorspace on level one of the Kitchener Wing will be used for the Julian and Josie Robertson galleries and work there is almost finished.

Floor levels have been evened, partitions built and a new suspended ceiling installed, recessed from the walls to show off the ornate plaster cornices in the 1800s building.

Plywood covers the floor but when the galleries open, these will be clad in American oak.

Other galleries will be named after benefactors. Saines said Harriet and Michael Friedlander had made "a phenomenal contribution to the gallery over the years" and a gallery would be named after them, along with the Gibbs' Family Gallery on level one of the new building to display contemporary New Zealand art, named after Jenny and Alan Gibbs.

The entire gallery has 14,620 works of art, most stored off-site at secret locations until next year's reopening.

Saines said the $121 million upgrade would "oxygenate" the collection and allow about 800 works to be displayed at any one time.

A multi-level building has been developed at the waterfront end, increasing floorspace by 75 per cent but allowing a 130 per cent display space increase, he said.

A learning centre has been built and the Southern Hemisphere's largest glass tension facade will clad the face of the new addition.

"An engineer from Holmes Consulting described it as a 'look-Mum-no-hands' atrium because it won't look like the glass is supported by anything," Saines said.

The East Gallery's mezzanine floor has been removed and the area previously used for storage has become a gallery with natural light flooding down from roof-top windows encased in a railway carriage-style structure.

Ornate plaster work and cornices have been reinstated, true to the original interior and East has been returned to its original configuration.

Hawkins Constructions' tower crane on the site is due to be dismantled soon.

AUCKLAND ART GALLERY
* $121 million renovation/strengthening/extension.
* Hawkins Construction handover early next year.
* Open to the public middle of next year.
* Seismic strengthening, big new addition.
* 75 per cent increase in exhibition capacity.
* 800 of the 14,620 art works to be displayed.
* New "named" galleries almost finished.
* Friedlanders, Gibbs, Robertsons honoured.
 
#20 ·
Sculpture to bridge old and new eras
By Anne Gibson

5:30 AM Wednesday Sep 22, 2010


Auckland Art Gallery's main atrium roof which is made from 11 kauri pods. Photo / Natalie Slade
A large work by Danish artist Jeppe Hein will fill Auckland Art Gallery's new sculpture terrace.

Gallery director Chris Saines said the work was for the new area built between Albert Park and the roof of the 1915-17 East Gallery.

Hein, who has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Tate Liverpool, uses motors, mirrors and fountains in some of his sculptures and installations.

Saines cannot reveal the nature, name or look of the new work but he said the walkway was a significant addition to the gallery, connecting old buildings to new.

The terrace not only allows proximity to the park but gives visitors a close-up view of the Kitchener/Wellesley clock tower and the ornate roof of the original art gallery buildings, he said.

Saines said 17 floors in the old buildings would become just six in the new, making life easier for staff who have had to endure Dickensian facilities for years, including inadequate loading areas and a tiny goods lift.

"Moving art around will be much easier," he said.

The gallery's $121 million restoration and expansion, a collaboration by Richard Francis-Jones' FJMT (Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp) in Sydney and Auckland's Archimedia, will not open until the middle of next year.

Hand-crafted Kauri pods clad the roof of the new waterfront-end extension to the gallery.

Entire trees which had fallen in the North Island, particularly around the Coromandel, were cut into pieces on-site then air-lifted out by helicopter, Saines said.

A team of 30 cabinet makers at Papakura Joinery have worked on the pods for the past 18 months.

But Saines said designing and executing the curved structures was complicated and demanded close co-operation between Archimedia and the joinery factory. Saines said the pods were a work of art in their own right.
 
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