Bundanon Art Museum & Bridge Wins RIBA International Awards for Excellence 2024

Kerstin Thompson Architects has received architecture’s highest global accolade, having been awarded the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Awards for Excellence 2024 for Bundanon’s Art Museum & Bridge for Creative Learning.

The RIBA International Awards for Excellence is one of the world’s most rigorously judged architecture awards, celebrating buildings from around the world that demonstrate visionary thinking, design excellence and social impact.

Bundanon’s Art Museum & Bridge was among 22 winners from across 14 countries announced on 12 June 2024, and one of only two selected from Australia. Winners will now go in the running for the prestigious RIBA International Prize, awarded every two years to the world’s most transformative new building.

Championing Bundanon’s climate resilience and connection to nature, RIBA notes that the masterplan by Kerstin Thompson Architects “offers a paradigm shift in the way we think about landscape, from the purely picturesque to an ecological one”, further stating that “Bundanon is extraordinary for the manner in which it attunes the visitor to the landscape, and in so doing to nature and climate, place and time”.

“Bundanon congratulates Kerstin Thompson Architects for being honoured in the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) International Awards for Excellence 2024,” said Rachel Kent CEO.

“This prestigious award recognises Bundanon’s Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning on an international stage. These buildings have facilitated a major expansion of Bundanon’s vision and remit, positioning it as a leading cultural institution of national and international significance. Over the past 2 years, our team has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors through these iconic buildings, providing each guest with the opportunity to participate in unique cultural experiences while connecting with the surrounding natural environment.”

“Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge shifts design thinking about climate change from problem to opportunity,” said Kerstin Thompson.

“Fire and flood know no boundaries so here architecture goes with the flow of the regions natural systems and ecology. It learns from ways in which Traditional Owners have over Millenia managed these dynamic forces. Feeling climate and its vicissitudes is fundamental to the visitor experience of being ‘en plein air’, to delight in and connect with this remarkable place.”

This prestigious international award follows Kerstin Thompson Architects design for Bundanon Art Museum & Bridge for Creative Learning receiving the Sulman Medal for Public Architecture in the 2022 NSW Architecture Awards and the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture 2022.

Uniquely located within 1000 hectares of bushland on the shores of the Shoalhaven River, in New South Wales, Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge for Creative Learning, designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects, opened to the public on 29 January 2022 and has welcomed over 100,000 visitors since.

The Art Museum and Bridge are major architectural works that elegantly integrate the site with the prior heritage buildings and the Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre, positioning Bundanon as a centre for culture and learning, community engagement and appreciation of the landscape.

Bundanon Art Museum presents a year-round program of exhibitions of modern, contemporary and First Nations art, as well as new commissions. It includes a state-of-the-art storage facility that houses and protects Bundanon’s extensive $46.5 million collection of some 4,000 items. The design is a collaboration between KTA, landscape architects Wraight Associates with Craig Burton, sustainable design engineers Atelier 10, and structural engineers Brett Wall and Phil Gardiner from WSP.

Throughout 2024 Bundanon will continue work with Kerstin Thompson Architects to reimagine the existing architecture inside the award-winning subterranean Art Museum to create a dedicated gallery for the Bundanon Collection, which will open in late 2024.

For more information, visit bundanon.com.au