Since 2016, the NGV’s annual Architecture Commission series has become a mainstay of the summer calendar at the NGV, offering a unique opportunity for Australian architects and designers to propose a compelling design idea for presentation within one of Australia’s great civic and cultural spaces – the Grollo Equiset Garden.

Awarded via competitive submission, the commission series was inaugurated in 2015 with John Wardle Architects’ I Dips Me Lid, a playful steel, timber and textile structure which provided a theatrical centrepiece offering shade, retreat and a place for performance and workshops.

In 2017 M@ Studio’s hyperreal suburban carwash Haven’t you always wanted…? won the Melbourne Prize in the Victorian Architecture Awards. In 2018 Retallack Thompson and Other Architects’ Garden Wall, a maze-like series of openair passageways, corridors and rooms was awarded a commendation in the Victorian Architecture Awards Small Projects category. In 2019 Muir + Openwork’s Doubleground was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects national award for small project architecture and the Victorian chapter’s Kevin Borland award for small project architecture.

Most recently, in 2020, Yhonnie Scarce and Edition Office’s In Absence won the Victorian chapter’s Kevin Borland award for small project architecture and been shortlisted for the small building of the year at the 2020 Dezeen Awards. The work sought to highlight the rich legacy of architecture, agriculture and industry of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The NGV Architecture Commission returns in 2021 to mark the sixth iteration of the competition. The winning design will be announced as part of Melbourne Design Week in March 2021.