Geelong Arts Centre Hassell

Built on the lands of the Wadawurrung people and completed in November 2019, the new Geelong Arts Centre by Hassell has dramatically reshaped the city’s arts and cultural precinct. Once largely concealed from Ryrie Street behind the facade of the former Mechanics’ Institute and Plaza Theatre, the arts centre now asserts its presence as a glowing, translucent box that rises to match the scale of the neighbouring Barwon Water Headquarters by GHD Woodhead (see Architecture Australia July/ August 2018).

Seen from afar, the new channel glass facade of the upper volume and the clear-glazed curtain wall of the foyer spaces below may initially read as somewhat independent formal gestures. In reality, however, the project has been carefully knitted into a series of existing structures in and around the site, most noticeably the remnant fabric of the Presbyterian