Gallery Shop for Art Gallery of NSW

Akin Atelier designs Gallery Shop for Art Gallery of NSW’s Sydney Modern building, featuring a first-of-its-kind bio-resin installation created in collaboration with Hayden Cox.

Located in the Entrance Pavilion of the Art Gallery of New South Wales’ Sydney Modern building, the Gallery Shop is an immersive, large-scale resin installation developed in collaboration with Hayden Cox—shaping a luminous space defined by shifting perspectives and refractions of light.

Opened in December 2022, the building—designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architects Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA—is the centrepiece of the Sydney Modern Project. It represents the most significant cultural development in the city since the Sydney Opera House.

Fluid contours of bio-resin, a custom formulation developed by Hayden Cox for the project, wrap the shop’s perimeter to form a transparent boundary that operates as both enclosure and display.

The structure captures natural light throughout the day, producing dynamic reflections of the city while holding people, objects and books within its core. Two ‘windows’ sit on a singular axis, allowing a direct sightline from the Domain through the shop and into the Entrance Pavilion—framing key artworks, including Yayoi Kusama’s Flowers that Bloom in the Cosmos on the external terrace.

“At first glance, this work makes a bold and simple statement. Its purpose is defined, and its identity is definite. But with further investigation, its complexity reveals itself—existing in harmony with its natural, architectural, and artistic context.” — Kelvin Ho, Principal, Akin Atelier.

Akin Atelier worked with Hayden Cox over two years in an experimental and collaborative design and research process to realise the complex, large-format application of bio-resin. The project pushed material boundaries—expanding scale, form and volume to harness light and colour in new ways.

With resin as a core material in surfboard construction, the collaboration drew from Cox’s extensive experience, translating surf-based fabrication techniques into an architectural context.

“The experimental nature of what we’ve created has been a huge motivation. It’s not a tried-and-tested concept, but a hybrid of design, architecture, innovation and art. Drawing on 25 years of working with resin, being able to push this material at this scale was an intriguing challenge—and a privilege to realise with Akin Atelier and the Art Gallery of NSW.” — Hayden Cox.

Akin Atelier’s selection of resin aligns with the transparency of SANAA’s architecture, allowing the material to respond to shifting daylight through texture, depth and colour. Its handmade nature enabled a level of experimentation across form and finish.

The result is an unprecedented application of resin within interior architecture—designed to reflect, absorb and transform its surroundings. The Gallery Shop was awarded ‘Retail Design’ at both the 2023 Australian Interior Design Awards and the Architecture NSW Awards.