Sydney Architecture Festival brings unbuilt architecture projects to life through virtual reality exhibition

Australia’s exhibition from the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale will be premiered in Australia as part of the 2014 Sydney Architecture Festival, which runs from 1 until 10 November 2014 at locations across greater Sydney.   Augmented Australia 1914 – 2014 is a virtual exhibition launching on the eve of the Festival and presented free of charge until 15 December 2014 at Sydney’s Customs House and experienced by downloading a free smartphone app. 

Augmented Australia 1914-2014 pushes the boundaries between architecture and technology, taking visitors on a virtual journey of 22 of Australia’s most intriguing unrealised architecture projects. It showcases 11 historical and 11 contemporary projects from around the country designed over the past one hundred years that, for various reasons, were never built.  Virtual 3D models, images, voiceovers and animations, activated by the specially designed Augmented Australia App, will bring the projects to life giving visitors a unique insight into the projects that could have been.

Varying in scale and typology, the projects include an alternative vision for the Sydney Opera House and a Roman Catholic pilgrimage site in Western Australia. Other projects include a different design for the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, a new ’skin’ for Sydney’s UTS building and a different concept for the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park. Australia’s new pavilion in Venice by Denton Corker Marshall, currently under construction, also features in the exhibition.