SANAA in Sydney

224 pages

This important new book celebrates the design of SANAA’s new building for the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney led by Pritzker Prize–winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa.

The building, named Naala Badu, meaning ‘seeing waters’ in the Sydney Aboriginal language, opened to the public in December 2022. It 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 with a seamless connection between art, architecture and landscape. It is Australia’s newest and most significant cultural landmark of the 21st century.

Richly illustrated, SANAA in Sydney takes readers behind the scenes of this ambitious project – from the international architecture competition, through the design and construction process, to the building’s opening – and offers reflections on its built form and engagement with art, people and the environment. It includes a design statement by SANAA architects 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. Design competition jurist, 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.