This art gallery is primarily designed for the purpose of staging temporary and travelling exhibitions and has been developed in consultation with the Regional Galleries Association of Queensland and the Exhibitions Section of the Queensland Art Gallery. To this end, it represents a new standard of regional galleries in Queensland. Emphasis was on providing appropriate environmental security conditions in order to take advantage of the vast range of travelling exhibitions envisaged for Regional Galleries in the future. There has also been a strong emphasis on the development of an integrated landscaping design with the existing surrounding buildings.
The site is located immediately between the existing Warwick City Council Administration Building and Library on Albion Street. The Cunningham Highway is the major link between the states of Queensland and New South Wales, supporting large volumes of traffic between Sydney and Brisbane. The existing buildings are bland 1960s cream brick structures with painted facias and flat roofs offering little connection to the main street and lacking a square or significant public space on which to focus.
The design was developed as a response to the particular local climate of hot wet summers and cold dry winters, the need for a sense of physical and acoustic protection from the highway to Albion Street, and the desire to use materials familiar to Warick in order to avoid competing with the adjacent buildings or showing them up in any way. The new building employed similar materials but in a more refined way with the intention of highlighting its cultural and tourist significance. The plan of the building was generated by the directions of the entry with access with access to the building being possible from Albion Street to the road frontage and from the public carpark at the rear.
