The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is the largest privately-owned museum in Australia built into a sandstone peninsular on Hobart’s Derwent River. The gallery accommodates rare and extraordinary collections from Egyptian antiquities, ancient Greek and Roman coins, to sensational contemporary Australian, British and American art.

The master plan, completed by OCULUS in collaboration with Fender Katsalidis Architects, attempted to satisfy two main objectives for the 16-hectare estate.

The first was the need to create a spatial logic out of the existing accreted developments on the site, connecting inherited events including a winery, function centre, brewery, two heritage listed houses by Roy Grounds, and an antiquities museum. The second objective was to site a major new museum as well as a number of luxury accommodation units, outdoor performance spaces and a new ferry stop. The landscape response was generated through an emphasis on spatial compression and spatial expansion, structuring new events and installations and providing new connections to existing program.