Kerstin Thompson

Situated on an 1,100-hectare property once home to artist Arthur Boyd and gifted to the Australian people, the Bundanon Art Museum & Bridge for Creative Learning repositions Bundanon as a cultural landmark — a place where art and environment meet in equal measure.


The project expands Bundanon’s role as a centre for creative arts, education, research, and ideas, while making its $46.5 million collection publicly accessible for the first time. Developed as a suite of new buildings and landscapes, the scheme weaves together layers of history — Indigenous, pastoral, the Boyds, and the Bundanon Trust — into a single, centralised campus.


Two primary new buildings anchor the work: the subterranean Art Museum, embedded in the slope and designed to be fire-resistant, and the Bridge, a 165-metre-long, 9-metre-wide structure suspended over a reinstated wet gully. The Bridge houses 32 bedrooms, creative learning and dining spaces, a public café, and breezeways that frame the surrounding landscape. It connects directly to the museum and existing heritage buildings via a shared forecourt and arrival hall.


Climate resilience is central to the design. The Art Museum is concealed underground to shield it from bushfire, while the Bridge is treated as flood infrastructure, allowing overland flow to pass beneath it unimpeded. Together, these strategies aim for net-zero energy use and long-term adaptability to an increasingly volatile environment.


The project’s success lies in the precision of its contrasts: a building that burrows into the earth and another that floats above it; solid defence and open resilience; a landscape both protected and engaged. In its completion, Bundanon has become not only a regional gem but a site of national and international significance.