Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2015 i Architectural Review Asia Pacific

Over the past 40 years AR has seen many editorial changes and our transition from Michael Holt to a new editorial team is underway. During his two-year tenure, Michael brought his own style and passion to this journal, and incited another level of discourse within the profession. In the coming issues we are working with a selection of guest editors, with the explicit intent to bring a diverse range of voices to the fore. Our first guest editor Joe Rollo comes to AR with a deep knowledge and extensive experience of architecture. His approach is a diversion from the past two years but continues the traditions of the magazine, stimulating debate, provoking ideas and inspiring action. Our aim is to engage you with a unique set of elements that reflect…

In 2008 Hamton commissioned Rothelowman to design a large campus-style residential development in Abbotsford, Melbourne. Located adjacent to the Yarra River corridor, the project comprises three stages, Eden, Haven and Sanctuary, each with 190 apartments. Driven by a desire to deliver a sustainable and regenerative solution to inner-city housing, the project focuses on establishing a community and fostering social connections. Extensive communal facilities are provided for residents, with the masterplan also encouraging an active dialogue between the development and its wider context. A new public spine bisects the site, connecting the urbanism of Victoria Street to the tranquil natural landscape of the river corridor. The architecture bridges the two contrasting environments and, in doing so, the residential development is embedded into the local fabric and has given life to a…

Penny Craswell This issue focuses on the topic of small architecture. A lot of your projects seem to combine big and small. Can you tell me about your latest project, the Learning Hub in Singapore? Thomas Heatherwick The brief that emerged in discussions with the university and the professors was to create a place where you could bump into someone, encouraging the interaction between students rather than just getting them from tutorial room to tutorial room. So we set out to design a building with lots of nooks and crannies, lots of spaces for ambiguous interactions. The tutors wanted to reduce the master/guru relationships in traditional teaching, so we created rooms with no corners. Each of the 56 tutorial rooms is rounded. The existing buildings of the campus very much…

Penny Craswell is a writer and communications specialist in design and architecture. She is a former editor of Artichoke and has held editorial positions at Indesign and Frame magazines. She is currently communications and business development manager of Bijl Architecture and is completing a Masters of Design (Hons). Her blog is www.thedesignwriter.com.au. Graham Crist is a senior lecturer in design at RMIT and a member of the design practice, Antarctica. Ray Edgar is a Melbourne-based freelance writer. He writes regularly on art and design for The Age newspaper. Chris Knapp is a director of the design and fabrication practice, Studio Workshop, and assistant professor at the Abedian School of Architecture. A current practice-based PhD candidate at RMIT, Chris has degrees in architecture from the University of Michigan and Princeton University.…

Out of a small studio in Melbourne’s CBD, a bold architectural practice is making its mark. Established in 2012 by managing partner, Jonathan Lee, and principal, Nicholas Ling, Particular Architects cites OMA, Kazuyo Sejima and WOHA as inspiration, with a rigorous design approach demonstrating an enquiring examination of the wider architectural discourse. Particular’s office is, in many ways, a small-scale working representation of its design approach – liberating the footprint of spaces and buildings beyond physical dimensions. The convertible entrance to Particular’s office effortlessly adapts to the team’s changing requirements. Sliding shelves are situated at the fore, introducing an easy flexibility while encouraging new modes of interaction within the space. The office is compact yet accommodating, making strengths out of spatial limitations and providing considered solutions for the practice. Airy…

New Zealand’s natural environment has a distinctly visceral presence an overwhelming scale that engulfs built structures within it. Dramatically scenic, the landscape dares architects to design buildings worthy of its vast splendour – each presenting a manmade point of contention, which must justify its place among vertiginous craggy peaks and primordial vistas. Presented with such a backdrop, a wilful architect might make a statement of diametric contrast, minimalist clean lines and sharp geometry. Others may seek instead to complement or achieve continuity with the scenery, maximising views through expansive glassed walls. Fifty years ago, at Khandallah in Wellington, Sir Ian Athfield did none of the above. In 1965, the single-minded architect, known as ‘Ath’, sought to create a building to house his family and studio practice. Rambling down a sheer…

With its intricate stonework and soaring pinnacles, the unique form of Antoni Gaudí’s La Sagrada Família seems anathema to prefab construction. Dispelling the connotations of bland standardisation that prefab conjures, La Sagrada Família is a potent symbol that even the most intricately detailed and iconic architecture can be produced offsite. ‘Instead of having people up 80 or 90 metres in the air laying stone in the old manner, they’re bringing in large panels where the stone’s already assembled in place much more safely and efficiently,’ says Mark Burry, University of Melbourne’s professor in urban futures, who has been a consultant on La Sagrada Família since 1979. ‘There is a revolution in producing bits of buildings offsite,’ says Burry. Universities like ETH Zurich are conducting experiments with robots and drones laying…

Miao Design Studio Project: Lake Yangcheng Visitor Centre Location: Kunshan, China Photography: Courtesy Miao Design Studio The wall is a potent cultural symbol in China, representing the line between what is sacred and what is not. That line has now been drawn across the entrance to Lake Yangcheng Park in Kunshan, where the profane – in the guise of rapid development – is being held back from encroaching on this sacred green space. Kunshan is a satellite city outside Shanghai that has become, within just 10 years, one of the most economically dynamic regions in China, named as the National Model City of Environmental Protection and the National Model Zone of Ecology. Its 40-hectare Yangcheng Park is a welcome respite from noise, congestion and pollution for its many thousands of…

In On Trial: Christchurch (p024) author Barnaby Bennett reminds us that ‘to disclose is to “allow (something hidden) to be seen” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2014)’. This overt vocabulary lesson cuts to the overall substance of AR139–Disclosure, the last of 10 issues edited by Michael Holt. While rather obvious, this stated definition drives the content selected for this issue, exploring the spectrum of meaning and opportunity for the term – from nefarious to productive. This interplay is typical of the layered and semantic probing that became an unpredictable strategy of Holt’s editorship. This trajectory was also characterised by a dramatic widening of geographic scope to encompass the Asia Pacific region but, more importantly, to engage Australia with a global cross-section of architectural debate. In AR139, as elsewhere, Holt is polarising and agitating…