Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2015 i Architectural Review Asia Pacific

Life often takes you on pathways you least expect and the fact that I am writing an introduction to this edition of Architectural Review Asia Pacific is a perfect example. I have lived, for 15 years, in a 1967 flat-roofed Sydney School house of timber and brick, designed by architect Bruce Rickard, who educated me in architecture by default. A reluctant public speaker, he encouraged his clients to speak on his behalf and this taught me both to think about, and articulate, what I valued about living in one of his houses. While a magazine editor I turned my hand to book publishing, starting with my own house and researching nationally I produced two books – 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses and its counterpart 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses. I met, interviewed…

Karen McCartney's two excellent books on Australian domestic architecture, 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses: Three Decades of Domestic Architecture and its companion follow-up piece 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses, were terrific if for no other reason than they traced to some extent the development of residential architecture in Australia over a period of 50 years. The first book, 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses, struck a particular chord with anyone interested in the development of housing in those glory years following the end of World War II. In it, McCartney presented 15 significant examples of homes spanning the period, each designed by a different architect and reflecting international influences by the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe. With each house McCartney explored the relationship between architect and owner,…

Charles Correa, 1930–2015 The atmosphere in India in the 1950s and 1960s was instilled with a profound sense of optimism in the role architecture might play at a critical stage in nation building. In an era when Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret, Louis Kahn et al completed significant commissions, Charles Correa returned to India to set up his practice. Along with his contemporaries, architects who were not seduced by the dogma of modernism, Correa discovered a resonance with Indian tradition and a call to discover a distinctive architectural language. This aeration of values followed a rigorous process of assimilation, especially as he sought to reconcile his experiences in the US, a legacy of local architectural history dating back millennia and the opportunity in this new landscape. Correa was critical of the…

The existing house The house sits on a north-facing steep-sloping ridge in Bulimba, with glimpses of the Brisbane River and views of the Hamilton hillside and its interesting composition of houses and apartments. The house is a short walk over the ridge to the high street of Bulimba, a quintessential neighbourhood stitched together by shops, cafes, restaurants, a pub, church, large public parkland and a city river ferry terminal. The original house was built in the late 1940s. While ‘Queensland’ in style, with painted weatherboards, tin roof and piano nobile elevated above the ground, it had the hallmarks of a postwar house, with an austerity manifest in a hipped roof (no gable) and an absence of external decorative features. Internally, there is an unexpected level of decorative plasterwork, particularly on…

Architectural Review Asia Pacific is marking an editorial transition in two ways: having Joe Rollo guest edit the last two editions and introducing a regular annual feature – publication of the recent work of a single practice. Both are good moves. Rollo, first and foremost a journalist, brings to the magazine a clarity and a refreshing minimum of arcane prose, while AR141 features four recent projects of Sean Godsell Architects (SGA). The latter offers readers the opportunity to compare projects from a single practice across a range of building types, sites and programs, providing a deeper coverage of the work, including conceptual sketches and construction drawings. It also allows for publication of articles related to the featured work, which are also of general interest, such as Nick Dowse’s piece 'Sean…

Melonie Bayl-Smith is a director of Bijl Architecture and adjunct professor at the University of Technology Sydney. A keen advocate for the profession, Melonie is a regular writer and commentator on architecture and design. Eleanor Chapman is an Australian architect, independent researcher and advocate for housing as a right, not a commodity. She currently supports the organisations Architects for Peace, Melbourne and id22: Institute for Creative Sustainability, Berlin, in the pursuit of this concern. 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 (Honours). Her blog is www.thedesignwriter.com.au. David Harrison is a…

At the height of their fame, Pink Floyd staged numerous concert tours on a scale and monumentality like few others at the time, setting a new standard for stadium music performances. An interesting inclusion in the parade of pigs, walls, projections and pyrotechnics was an elegant cluster of inverted umbrella structures – in fact, a group of self-draining weather protection devices prototyped and designed by German architect and design visionary, Frei Otto. As a core part of the staging for Pink Floyd’s 1977 In the Flesh concert tour, such was the impact of the 4.5-metre diameter umbrellas, that their opening became a standard feature of the band’s future performances. It is with novel facts such as this – especially where experiments rapidly become reality – that one is reminded of…

The ‘crowd-sourced’ multi-residential project is emerging as an alternative approach in an increasingly impenetrable Australian housing market. Among the first was Breathe Architecture’s much-celebrated The Commons, with the Nightingale soon to follow. Meanwhile, online property development platform, Citiniche, is offering a range of themed potential development interest groups to would-be owner-occupiers. There is talk of a “revolution”.1 Plans to “radically transform” the market, “empowering individuals […] without necessarily reducing profit margins” are announcements made on the Citiniche website. The prospect of a power shift is undeniably welcome, in a housing climate increasingly dominated by developers’ profit agendas. In May this year, the Senate Inquiry into housing affordability released its findings. While the mammoth 496-page report was optimistically sub-titled ‘The Australian Housing Affordability Challenge’, it’s doubtful that anyone seriously believes we’re…

The Infinite Happiness is a feature-length documentary about 8 House, an apartment complex designed by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG). Located on the edge of a new suburb, Ørestad in Copenhagen, the building consists of 467 apartments, as well as shops and offices. Filmmakers Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoine observe daily life at the complex, interviewing subjects and capturing daily life. Unlike a true fly-on-the-wall documentary, the filmmakers get involved in the action, whether saving baby birds who have been stunned by flying into the glass of the building or chasing gleeful children through the cloakroom of the kindergarten. The architect looms large in the film without actually appearing in it. Nor do the filmmakers explicitly ask about Bjarke Ingels, or the architecture directly, instead, the marketing savvy of BIG has…

One of the things that struck me while researching for the Superhouse book is the often tenuous relationship between the design and build of a house and its interior treatment. Quite often a finished house is artfully propped with a few designer pieces and photographed, with the architect using these images to market their practice. The owner then moves in with pre-loved possessions from a house of a different style and, probably feeling the financial pinch of a large build project, lacks the money, or energy, for the interior. Alternatively, an interior decorator is brought in with ideas of their own, or their client, and empathy with the building goes out the proverbial window. I tell you this because Fearon Hay is an architecture practice that excels equally at interiors.…

Australian metropolitan regions present an identity crisis: the motives of a megacity, mired by the outlook of a regional town. This polarity poses severe challenges to the intensification of cities, more critically the precision and the efficiency of the delivery model. Successive urban policies promote the polycentric city but have proven inchoate in detail. The current Federal Government report, ‘State of Australian Cities’, confirms the schism along economic grounds and a direct relationship with density and income. From an urban and architectural perspective this is a typological issue with broader implications on infrastructure and an increasing burden on sprawling outer-urban areas. The subsequent piecemeal distribution of projects and approvals into respective local councils implies that in the absence of a comprehensive agenda, the contemporary city is to be understood by…