Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2017 i Architectural Review Asia Pacific

For a dyed-in-the-wool, sad old lefty I’ve still always believed in at least trying to see both sides of the argument. Two of the most fascinating and enlightening weeks of my life were when I did jury duty in London nearly 30 years ago. I was put on one case, the details of which are hazy now, but I think a chap was charged with standing lookout while his associate stole the stereo from a car. While the evidence was pretty damning and my 11 colleagues had little hesitation in coming to a guilty verdict, I begged to differ. Maybe I’d just seen Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men at much too young an age, but I simply wasn’t convinced of his guilt ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. Without Fonda’s eloquence…

“I KEPT WAITNG FOR THEM TO PUT A FOOT WRONG OR SAY SOMETHING ARROGANT OR CHAUVINISTIC. AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF I COULDN’T FIND A REASON TO SAY ‘NO’.” DIMITTY ANDERSEN The award-winning Adelaide-based practice Grieve Gillett Andersen (GGA) was originally established by founder Steve Grieve in 1982 as Steve Grieve Architects. Grieve Gillett Pty Ltd was formed when Paul Gillett (who had joined the company in 1993) stepped up to a directorship in 2000. And now it has evolved into something of a Cerberus model, with Gillett and Grieve joined by Dimitty Andersen, merging her own 15-year-old practice with the studio two years ago. Many people will tell you that three is a tricky number when it comes to relationship dynamics – we all remember what Princess Diana…

Follow head and heart to decide which country or countries to focus on. __________ Visit and identify the best contacts in likely collaborating practices to build a client base and reputation. __________ Have senior people move to the city in which you wish to open a new offi ce. __________ Allow time for the relationship, and cultural and design immersion. __________ Establish the fastest, most secure network for your outreach. __________ Keep up-to-date with fast-developing market sectors be it ‘urbanisation’ (GHD) or ‘design for older people’ (PTW). __________ Do not parachute people in; it is the long haul that counts. __________…

Advanced composite materials (ACMs) have come a long way since their crude beginnings, and it is these technological advancements that are utilised by ShapeShell to make it a leader in architectural advanced composite solutions. Once used solely in the aerospace industry, today advanced composites are being employed across many different industries. Indeed, they are used anywhere that requires superior strength and weight, as well as in environments where there is an element of risk; for example, the rail industry where trains, both inside and out, are built from composites. First things first, however; the term ‘composites’ is extremely broad. It’s like calling a specific type of wood ‘wood’ – it doesn’t take into account the immense diversity between the materials or make any differentiation between, for example, a lightweight chipboard…

ON A BASIC HUMAN LEVEL, PREPARING AND SHARING A MEAL TOGETHER IS A POWERFUL WAY TO BUILD BONDS. When you change the workspace, you change the way people behave. Many companies make the mistake of thinking that a good workplace culture comes from Friday night drinks or perks such as performance bonuses. However, the design of your workspace can be a fundamental factor to creating the right culture for your company. Design should enhance emotional agility to allow workers to operate at their best in any situation. In creative work, empathy and emotional intelligence are critical attributes that can be improved through physical design. For innovation and creativity to truly flourish and take root, workplaces need to express and encourage human traits such as curiosity, empathy, optimism and resilience. Connection…

The best thing about merging. It means you’re sharing some of that responsibility of all that decision-making, which is fantastic and there’s a big relief actually, to be able to say, ‘Hey, what do you think about this at that high level, which I never had before, which is great.’ (DA) Starting a practice. Give it five years before you decide whether it’s a good idea or not. Architecture is a game of stamina. It can take you two years to start and finish a project, so you’ve got to give it five years before you really find out whether you can make it work. (DA) Weighing up risk. Understand your appetite, it’s not an endeavour for the faint-hearted and understand your strengths and your weaknesses and make sure you…

There is a cliché that is so often true regarding the starting of a new practice. The first commission is usually a family member and, while undertaking this first project, you follow the oft given advice to network, network and network in order to find the next project. If you are either lucky or good at networking, you find more work and the practice grows, leading to the direction and specialisation of the practice being determined by chance, and it is hard to change direction as time goes by. So how can practices better target potential clients in order to win the work that they wish to specialise in? In business parlance, this is done by segmenting the market and understanding what it takes to compete in each segment, as…

Growing up in regional Tasmania, Thomas Bailey spent his earliest years surrounded by rolling pasture and wilderness, but even in this country setting, far from rising skyscrapers and state-of-the-art structures, he found a compelling wonder in the buildings around him. “There were beautiful sheds and fantastic early modernist school buildings to look at,” he says. “I had a great deal of time then, and I spent a lot of it wondering what it was that made something beautiful. My bedroom window had a framed view of a grand shed that I would stare at as the late summer light faded into night. I think this incidentally sparked my interest in architecture.” Since then, Bailey has tightly grasped that interest with both hands and, after running various small creative businesses, he…

Everyone knows what door handles are, but what about door furniture? Simply put, it’s a catch-all expression referring to any fixtures and fittings that can be attached to doors and other portals. This covers not just handles and knobs, but also locks, knockers entry pulls, hinges and door closers. Also referred to as door hardware in North America, it includes “any items that are attached to a door or drawer to enhance its functionality or appearance” (Wikipedia). In Australia though, the term is generally understood to refer to lever handles of the type seen on most internal doors, as opposed to pull handles, which are the long fittings that would normally be seen on the front of an office building or other commercial space. Door furniture has long been an…

WHEN ASKED IF A FIRE LIKE GRENFELL COULD HAPPEN IN AUSTRALIA, OUR ANSWER IS A POSITIVE YES. / SCOTT WILLIAMS, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, FIRE PROTECTION ASSOCIATION AUSTRALIA Recent media coverage of fire protection in Australia has been dominated by discussion of products that don’t conform to building codes and standards, and whether the codes and standards we do have are working. Driving that coverage have been two key events: the Lacrosse apartment fire in Melbourne in 2014, and the recent Grenfell apartment fire in London, which to date has claimed 87 lives. The tragic event at Grenfell has resonated so strongly in Australia because of its uncomfortable similarity to the earlier blaze at Lacrosse, a fire that took the industry and the general public by surprise. While Lacrosse began a…

“WHEN ASKED IF A FIRE LIKE GRENFELL COULD HAPPEN IN AUSTRALIA, OUR ANSWER IS A POSITIVE YES.” / SCOTT WILLIAMS, PAGE 64 “THE MORE LAYERS AND PHYSICAL BARRIERS YOU PUT BETWEEN YOUR COLLEAGUES, THE HARDER IT IS TO GAIN TRUST.” / EMMA DAVENPORT, PAGE 12 “ARCHITECTS WILL LOSE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THEIR DESIGN, BUT A PHOTO CAN REPRESENT THAT FOREVER.” / SHANNON MCGRATH, PAGE 22 “FIRMS WITH MORE THAN ONE OFFICE ARE GENERALLY LESS PROFITABLE THAN FIRMS OF THE SAME SIZE WITH A SINGLE OFFICE.” / OLIVER HAYDON, PAGE 28 “THE REALITY IS THAT THE SEGMENTATION IS SO GENERAL THAT IT IS LITTLE MORE THAN COSMETIC.” / SIMON NELSON, PAGE 30 “WE WANT TO GO TO THE MOON, BUT YOU CAN’T GO TO THE MOON IF YOU HAVE A…

Architecture is a very visual language and it pays to have that vision, as well as the wealth of thought that goes behind every project, communicated in striking images captured by a professional photographer. While there is a cost impost to consider, the pay-off is a lasting record of achievement that can then be used to best represent the work of your architectural practice, whether that be in competitions, magazine spreads or on the company website. Here we speak to four prominent photographers working in the industry and ask them why it’s worth engaging a professional and what practical tips to consider if you do. Why engage a professional? An industry stalwart with more than 40 years in the business, Melbourne-based John Gollings has shot everything from award-winning public buildings…

Architect’s statement. How was GGA chosen for the project? Grieve Gillett Andersen was shortlisted from an Expression of Interest process and we were subsequently interviewed before being appointed for the project. What were the specific challenges other than the size of the envelope and the limited area under the main roof? Rather than a new building project, the challenge was to modify an existing modest residence situated on the new winery site, within a restricted budget. Grieve Gillett Andersen had to create a unique, expressive and memorable facility that reflected the Petaluma heritage, the diversity and quality of the product, the terroir, the production process, the market identifiable colour and brand. Due to the variety of functions that needed to be accommodated at the facility, ranging from business strategic and…

Remember the story of the three little pigs? It turns out they got it wrong. The house of straw may actually be the best choice after all. Australian straw-bale construction and education company Strawtec has been building homes for 20 years using structures made of straw, and founder Frank Thomas is passionate about the health and environmental benefits of this type of construction. Originally from Germany, Thomas moved to Australia in the early 1990s and, following an interest in alternative building techniques, he became involved in constructing straw-bale homes. Straw-bale construction involves a building method using bales of straw (typically wheat, rice, oat, barley and rye straw) as the structural and/or insulation elements of a building. It consists of stacking rows of straw bales on a raised foundation, with a…

Swanston Academic Building (SAB), designed by Lyons Architects, was completed in 2012. As the new building for the College of Business at RMIT University, it is located on Melbourne CBD’s main axis of Swanston Street, an area that has become a contemporary architectural precinct for some of Melbourne’s most innovative architectural design. Impressive in scale, the SAB building is 10 storeys high, and has an impressive footprint of approximately 35,000 square metres. The brief for the project, developed by RMIT, includes a 300-person lecture theatre, 85 flexible learning spaces, 11 informal student ‘portals’ and accommodation for 800 staff from the Colleges of Business, all of which the architects have described as a ‘virtual campus’. Most of these spaces feature vivid colours or bold geometric patterns. According to principal architect Carey…