Innholdsfortegnelse for AR138 i Architectural Review Asia Pacific

Considering the plethora of local and international magazine publications focused on design trends in housing projects, it is curious that AR follows suit with its annual residential issue. The latest Residential instalment, though, remains true to recent form by pushing well past the typical preoccupations on bespoke dwellings. Unsurprisingly, Residential took this mandated review of the typology in its stride, featuring compelling works from high-density development through to idylls in remote locations. Further, the geographic net now cast by AR allows for thoughtful work from across the region and, as such, New Zealand was awarded the strongest presence this year. The Antipodean projects were counterbalanced by a clear editorial overlay focused on the courtyard – introduced by way of its origins, history and urban manifestations. Arguably, the courtyard is the…

Melonie Bayl-Smith is director of Bijl Architecture and adjunct professor at University of Technology, Sydney, where she also conducts design-based research. Graham Crist is a senior lecturer in design at RMIT and a member of the design practice, Antarctica. Thomas Hale is an architect at Woods Bagot (Sydney), specialising in urban design and infrastructure. He previously worked at Zaha Hadid Architects, London. Hao Ma is a graduate architect and critic practising in Shanghai and a graduate from Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. Anna Johnson is a lecturer at RMIT University, a freelance writer and architecture critic. Clare Jacobson is the author of New Museums in China, former editorial director at Princeton Architectural Press and a design editor and writer based in Shanghai. Stephen Loo is professor and head of school, architecture and…

At the outset of the twenty-first century the architecture profession has undergone a digital revolution. Without question, digital platforms, also known as computer-aided design (CAD), existed before, but the expansion of CAD into a plethora of softwares that aid visualisation, documentation and representation in architecture is now growing at an unprecedented rate. In contemporary practice, an architectural firm needs to understand and operate across multiple platforms, but oftentimes, to the layperson, such softwares sound more like zoo taxonomy than architectural tools. Notably, Rhino, Grasshopper, Ladybug and Honeybee. Furthermore, the recent shift from CAD to Building Information Modelling (BIM) has redefined how buildings are documented, including changing how consultants interact in a three-dimensional virtual environment and the delivery of three-dimensional models for clients at the end of projects, as a working…

A sweeping elevated concrete walkway greets visitors at the campus of the Institute of Foreign Languages (IFL) in Phnom Penh – the oldest and largest university in Cambodia. Walking along the path one’s eyes are drawn towards the rhythmic vertical fins along the linear balconies and led up to the lofty hexagonal roof beams that form the datum between building and sky. To the left of the main building stand four whimsical lecture halls perched on zigzagging columns, with roof elements reminiscent of the Greek key. Between the academic building and the lecture halls is a circular library building enclosed in a glazed facade, providing panoramic views; deep concrete columns surround the exterior, providing both structure and shade. While it is 32 degrees Celsius outside, the space inside the buildings…

Thomas Hale Is architecture experiencing an ‘end of ideology’ by endlessly replicating as opposed to inventing or critiquing and does architecture even need ideological positions? Camilla Block I think there are people trying to steer the boat and those in the wake of the boat; those trying to steer are the people making policies and deciding the framework under which architects work and those in the wake are the small practitioners. You’re not necessarily guiding your own projects – it’s a bit of a top down approach. Architects are easily manipulated because it’s easy to pit them against each other. I think so much of our profession’s lack of control in the industry has to do with our inability to work together on practical matters – having a voice in…

An office and retail complex that acts as a beacon on the horizon, conceptually conceived as ‘Chinese fans that circle and embrace each other in an intricate dance’, Zaha Hadid Architects’ (ZHA) Wangjing SOHO is located in the Chaoyang District (northeast Beijing), between the Fourth and Fifth Ring Roads. It is home to an array of multinational corporations, such as Microsoft, Daimler, Caterpillar, Panasonic, Nortel and Siemens, as well as various Chinese start-up companies. Conveniently located along an infrastructure corridor en route to the Beijing Capital International Airport, the context is typically varied: banal corporate high-rise, set off against surprisingly generous public space. As with any commercial, retail or office business complex there is a curious sense of the ‘seen it all before’ as the non-descript urban landscape homogenises architecture,…

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Welcome to the first Architectural Review Asia Pacific supplement. Our focus for this edition is on the healthcare sector. In future versions we’ll seek to address the key areas of specialisation in the architecture profession and highlight expertise and intuition. As a fast growing sector, health and medical facilities are achieving widespread acknowledgement beyond their basic functional requirements. No longer are medical centres and hospitals seen as cold, industrial buildings only serving a programmatic purpose. Architecture critic, Charles Jencks, was a firm believer in the ability of a building to inspire, so when his partner, Maggie Keswick Jencks, was diagnosed with a terminal illness it was their shared goal to provide buildings that would significantly hearten their users throughout their cancer care: Maggie’s Centres are now as synonymous with medical…

When appointed to the project by the Department of Human Services, Bates Smart in association with the Irwin Alsop Group explored how architecture could evolve away from the archetypal mental health facility. They sought to create an environment where the buildings would enhance treatment and healing, and where staff, visitors and the public viewed the environment as welcoming and therapeutic. The design aimed to deinstitutionalise the building and to help contextualise the project in its low-rise education buildings and single-family housing suburban environment. To create an appropriate scale, the architects have grouped the living, dining, staff and support spaces, and 120 single bedrooms, into 38 pavilions, and arranged them around 16 landscaped courtyards. Internally, the extensive use of natural timber for the walls and ceilings, together with the external cladding…

What does it mean to die well? Attitudes to death vary greatly depending on culture. Many ancient (and not so ancient) cultures believed that death in battle was a good death, while some cultures believe that suicide can be a good death. In others, a good death was dependent on status. In Greek, the phrase eu thanatos – literally ‘good death’ – means dying well in a painless manner, whereas kalos thanatos means dying beautifully in an exemplary manner, a concept that is closer to the present day mainstream idea of a good death. Death in the early Middle Ages was a public ceremony carefully organised along shared social protocols. Death was to be awaited in bed with children present and the clergy called on to assist with an orderly…

The transferability of the term ‘margin’ is under investigation. It is assumed the profession is experiencing a false consciousness that disables any possibility of a disciplinary position being formed. In Preview (published in Residential) I queried in ‘a profession with no margin for error, where is the room for manoeuvre?’ As architects we are hemmed in, claustrophobically unaware of our own inevitability. We are no longer aware of the external, exploitative assertions impacting on daily practice or pedagogy; indeed, the very notion of formulating an argument or ideological stance leaves many architects or academics marginalised – architecture is on society’s margins. However it is evident that a manifesto will not suffice alone, but the engagement of the discipline to seek to ask questions rather than to repeat answers is paramount;…

Architecture and literature are not uncommon bedfellows, whether it is a novel inspired by architecture or a narrative arc reliant on the figure of the architect. Downfall, The Architecture of Excess – the first publication from RightAngle International Publishing – is an attempt to recount contemporary architecture. A novel depicting the profession is not without precedent, with by far the most renowned being The Fountainhead (1943) by Ayn Rand. With Howard Roark as the self-willed luminary, it is a fascistic account of a desire for control, suggestive of heroic individualism. Infinitely more enjoyable though are Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (1972), a work of immense imagination that regales the reader with descriptive tales of cities as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence…

An example of adjectives used to tell us what architecture is and to avoid the need to say what architecture actually does, delaying the real argument until the building. In the meantime, see Atlas of Novel Tectonics (Reiser and Umemoto, 2006). EFG Taiwan’s push in Kaohsiung, Keelung and Kinmen to integrate global systems of transport and exchange with leisure and civic functions collects and scrapes sea and sky. RUR Architecture’s (Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto) 38,800sqm Kaohsiung Port and Cruise Service Centre, the first in this series, sets the stage for novel architecture for global cities. Alongside a masterplan for a raised promenade for Kaohsiung’s bustling waterfront, RUR also presents a distinctly elegant engagement with building possibilities and means. In general, within the three-part scheme, the centre’s public and retail…

Thomas Hale Are architects currently marginalised in the procurement and production process in the construction of the built environment? Ben Hewett One of the statements [in ‘Preview’ to AR138–Margins] was the idea that the profession’s posturing is leaving it marginalised. That’s an important point for the profession to recognise. As architects, we do have a ‘false consciousness’ and we’re unaware of how we project our skill sets or our value. This is not limited to architects, but it’s that basic understanding of your audience. We can be apathetic, not as a representative group, but more in the roles architects are choosing to play, leading us to fall into the margin. If you understand the profession in simplistic terms as a dichotomy – the design architect versus the business of architecture…

The phrase ‘less is more’ is usually attributed to Mies van der Rohe, although according to a recent monograph, it was something he overheard Peter Behrens say in 1907. In architectural terms it has long meant: ‘to reduce and distil buildings and their components into simple forms.’ But, almost by definition, it conveys far more than that. Firstly, it expresses the idea that simplicity has honed an object to its essentials, just as an engineer, for example, might strive for slenderness. This is not to say that a simple building requires less effort to understand – simplified does not equate to ‘dumbed down’. In fact, sometimes it is more difficult to understand a simple piece of architecture than a heavily detailed one. An ornate building, for example, may have been…

The recent conjunction of significant events in the economic, social and political landscape of higher education in Australia has prompted many in architectural academia and practice to deeply consider what constitutes the education of an architect in relation to contemporary professional practice and their contributions to social and environmental well-being. These events have of course a larger backdrop of accelerating epochal and global volatility: pressing climate change emergencies, unpredictable international economic systems, dazzling proliferation of new materialities and computational technologies, as well as the seemingly un-mappable rhizomic definitions of social life and spectral cultural imaginations. These events severely challenge the practical and ethical efficacy of architectural education, as we know it, with a call for an urgent reconfiguration of its strategic and policy domains. At the time of writing, the…

Healthcare design is changing: it is at the forefront of new technologies and continues to implement design strategies that help to revolutionise architectural design as well as medical practice. Undoubtedly, the rise and development of smart technology systems in nanotechnology, biomimetics, molecular electronics etc continue to transform medicine, but they are now beginning to impact on architecture. Cutting edge innovations in ecological sustainability and energy efficiency influence design trends across the healthcare sector. But it is not simply technological aides that change design; recently the provision of interior spaces that cater more adequately to patients’ needs has been thoroughly researched and implemented in projects across Australia. Indeed, Anjali Joseph, director of research at the US-based Center for Health Design, suggests core design strategies – instituted to facilitate patient recovery –…

The Nepean Mental Health Centre is a new insertion into the existing hospital campus at Nepean Hospital in Sydney’s north-west. Designed to respond to the increase in demand for mental health services as a result of the growing and ageing population, the design of the facility provides restorative health care integrated into the local community and linked to the adjoining health precinct. The centre is an example of how mental health care is shifting towards creating regenerative, healing environments for a patient’s recovery. With the provision of 64 mental health beds, servicing high dependency and acute or specialist mental health services for older persons, the centre also includes a dedicated inpatient ward and new facilities for the outpatient day program. Designing for mental health requires detailed consideration of a number…

Margin for error = room for manoeuvre; room for manoeuvre = risk-taking; risk-taking = evolution. MGR The counterpoint here is ‘in relation to whom?’ Thinking of the broad range of things we produce and, as importantly, how we produce them. AB I don’t fully agree. Architects give form to the spaces the ruling class allows, except where architecture becomes uncomfortable and disruptive. Read Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) as the perfect diagnosis of contemporary practice. MGR An important contradiction to consider throughout the issue. How does an architect discuss ideas and how do they communicate them externally? Not only from the perspective of the architectural theorist or critic as marginalised, but in relation to the contemporary voice of the architect and how they discuss…

Out of Place (Gwalia) is a collection of essays exploring historical, geographical and cultural factors contributing to an understanding of places and settings characteristic of Australian transient communities. From Gwalia and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, Charters Towers in Queensland and Queenstown in Tasmania, the places provide opportunity to revisit sites of history from the different angles of architecture, landscape theory, social history and visual arts. They also provide a springboard for thinking through the pressing issues for contemporary Australians and counterparts in other ‘post-settler’ societies. With essays from notable academics such as William M Taylor – commenting on such topics as the politics of displacement in a transient society and ‘The moral economy of prefabrication: The curious case of the Brown Hill Mine building and Kalgoorlie Health Laboratory, c.1899-1923’ –…

Michael Holt MoMA’s architecture exhibitions were established by the architect Philip Johnson and will soon be curated by academic Martino Stierli, what did you bring to the role as chief curator? Barry Bergdoll The main thing I brought to [the role] was an interest in the two-way street between contemporary concerns and historical work – given the museum has always struggled with what it means to be modern or contemporary,1 since Alfred H Barr diagrammed what a ‘modern’ museum could be. Art is a consciousness as to the relationship between the historical and the contemporary. I was interested in that specificity of MoMA, which brought its own history and was one of a handful of collecting institutions in the world. I had a determination to work with original materials, so…

US architect and landscape designer, Linda Pollak, suggests it is precisely at the threshold between one condition and the next where architecture is located. She writes: ‘thresholds are where transformations begin, where exchanges between unlikely things occur and where identities are declared […] threshold as an operation involves the preservation of differences, as well as the creation of something new.’ McGauran Giannini Soon Architects’ (MGS) recently completed New Generation Bendigo Library redevelopment presents a literal threshold in the historical precinct of Bendigo. Reworking the existing 1984 library building and curating a new public axis across the site, this new development forms an urban threshold between old and new, as well as between Hargreaves Street and Lyttleton Terrace. This strategic urban manoeuvre opens up the relationship to the site and to…

The physical manifestations of Modernism in India can be found in seminal projects scattered across the country, notably Chandigarh and Ahmedabad. Modernity, however, is also linked with sweeping political and social reforms following independence. Charles Correa, BV Doshi and Raj Rewal are notable examples in a generational shift for architectural practice during this period. Their work, steered by contextual nuance, offered a new thrust to the emergent International Style proposed by US architects, Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson. Through revisiting the primary conditions of architecture, their projects informed an evolving local canon that sought to reconcile universal technique with an Indian sensibility. Rewal’s Visual Arts Institutional Campus is located in Rohtak, a suburban district in the state of Haryana in Northern India. Rohtak forms part of the National Capital Region…

Former US President Richard Nixon addressed the nation on 15 August 1973 in regard to the Watergate investigations, believing that ‘full disclosure of the facts’ would render him unimpeachable. Needless to say, his edited version of the ‘facts’ did not prevent his demise and yet the current political context again yearns for full disclosure and greater transparency. A prescient example is funding disclosure thresholds. However, public scrutiny is now infinitely more difficult, with the flow of information and critical commentary significantly controlled. In business transactions, disclosure means to tell the ‘whole truth’ about a contractual arrangement so to prevent anyone knowingly falsifying or concealing any significant fact. While other manifestations of contemporary aspects relating to disclosure are security risks, surveillance, privacy measures and the declassification of secret records or factual…

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The Chris O’Brien Lifehouse, Sydney, by HDR Rice Daubney takes an innovative approach to cancer care focusing on the patient experience – a particularly prescient approach. It is the first integrated cancer treatment centre in the country, offering everything a patient needs in one place, including ambulatory care, allied health, clinical trials, research, education, complementary therapies and psycho-social support. Although integrated with the existing functions of the Royal Price Alfred Hospital and research facilities at The University of Sydney, Lifehouse is a private, not-for-profit facility serving both private and public patients; and so as a registered charity all income is reinvested for the benefit of patient care. Lifehouse is the realisation of the vision of Chris O’Brien, a leading Sydney-based head and neck oncologist. Its goals are simple: to make…