The winner of the NORD Architecture Drawing prize has been announced. Brad Mitchell, a student architect from Techne Architecture and Interior Design taking out the competition with his drawing ‘Gathering thoughts, layer and fluctuate in memory’.

“Gathering thoughts, layer and fluctuate in memory and new encounters. Jorn Utzon’s legacy provides a cross hatched environment of a Danish and Australian architectural relationship. Utzon strived for contrast. “The difference in character of the two components forming the building, the massive and imposing base, and the light and graceful shells on top of it…” However the tensions in the architecture provide a graceful connection to site, harbour and water. Clouds, of water, cycle as ocean and as vapour, but are the same in components. Utzon’s cities, Copenhagen and Sydney, are connected to and by water.

The drawing was created digitally using hand drawn elements that were layered and folded into a form. Pattern hatches were added to strengthen the relationship to Utzon’s architecture.”

– Brad Mitchell 

 

Jury Citation – Shaun Carter

“Sydney is a city located on water. Copenhagen too. Both are sailing cities. Utzon’s love of sailing was widely known. The sight of a sail under load vividly reminds us of the sails of the Opera House. All angles offset by the organic curve of natural forces.

Mitchell’s ephemeral “clouds” floating above water is a delightfully evocative image of infinite responses.  Clouds and water, elements as common as they are fundamental, remind us that we are each bound by the same finite earth. Distant but connected.

We find Mitchell’s work dances beautifully between the joy and playfulness of whimsy and the strength of a single image that sits in the imagination like a persistent friend, inviting our curiosity.  This is what we seek in a drawing. Compelling us to look for answers and finding great satisfaction in what we think is our “knowing”, irrespective of whether this is truly Mitchell’s intent.

This is the power of singular drawing to conjure up numerous responses, but instantly linking the disparate ideas of Sydney, Copenhagen, and our shared loves and common bonds, and the architecture and the people that has inextricably links us forever. This is what the competition was about, and Mitchell’s beautiful work is a great example of this.”

– Jury members Shaun Carter (President NSW Chapter) Carterwiliamson Architects Sydney & Edmund Capon, Chair of the Foundation, and who was Director of the Art Gallery of NSW for 33 years