WALKING THROUGH HISTORY

THE HISTORIC SANDSTONE Quadrangle has long been the first, and most impressive, thing people notice when entering the grounds of Sydney University. But, with the opening of the Chau Chak Wing Museum, housed in a sleek concrete box designed by Sydney design practice JPW, it is having to share the at the audacity of encroaching on the sight line of such venerable and storied buildings, it is hard not to see a lovely symmetry (intentional or otherwise) in the two strange bedfellows: the divergent architectural styles are both resolutely of their time; the sharp, modern exterior of the new building is softened at ground level by emulating the same warm sandstone tones as the ‘Quad’ and they both share a common purpose of increasing knowledge through the study and consideration of history, art, science and the natural world.