Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2017 i Architecture Australia

The National Architecture Conference is the most important part of the calendar for the Australian Institute of Architects, so it was wonderful to experience such a dynamic and well-attended event in May. Praxis explored the essence of the practice of architecture, asking a diverse group of local and international speakers to talk about the how and the why of their practice. Presentations were well considered and communicated and the conference has been widely applauded for its richness and intellectual breadth. The success of the conference and the insightful selection of speakers are due to the efforts of the curators Helen Lochhead and Ken Maher, whom I thank greatly. There was a particularly poignant moment when the energetic Indian architect Rahul Mehrotra observed, “As architects we face a complete misalignment [between]…

John Hedditch, mayor of the City of Brimbank, is almost erupting with happiness and pride in the new building in which we are standing. Along with the architects, Carey Lyon and Clare Connan of Lyons, we are up on the sixth-floor roof/deck/balcony of the Brimbank Community and Civic Centre, looking out over the suburb of Sunshine and the heat and flatness of Melbourne’s western suburbs. Hedditch says that four thousand people came through the building on its first open day, thrilled and amazed that the council would build such a thing for them to use. But he makes the most interesting point in passing, as we turn to descend. “People used to think there was no tree cover in Sunshine,” he says. “Until this building was finished and they came…

Working in Asia brought together five women in architecture – all with experience in Asia and some with family backgrounds there. The focus on women’s architecture and ambitions and not on what had prevented, curtailed or restricted their careers was refreshing. Of the five speakers, three – Anya Meng and Christina Na-Heon Cho (both of Cox, Brisbane) and Natasha Chee (now a project manager at CBRE, Brisbane) – identified as 1.5-generation migrants: those who moved to Australia as children or whose families moved here shortly before they were born. They learned Asian spoken language skills from their parents but were schooled and studied architecture here. Their approach seemed to demonstrate that the world is where they belong, not one city or country, and this attitude has propelled them into career…

The global market for built environment expertise is creating new opportunities for Australian architecture. The profession’s international growth over the past thirty years has been nothing short of remarkable. It has expanded the reach of Australian architecture and has the potential to reshape its identity. Australian practitioners have been living and working internationally since the 1960s. Significant achievements from this foundation period include buildings in Canada and the United States by John Andrews, who is arguably Australia’s first internationally recognized architect. University and banking projects by James Birrell in Papua New Guinea from the early 1970s and the regionally sensitive buildings of Kerry Hill, who relocated his eponymous practice from Australia to Asia in 1971, started a new conversation with the region. In the mid 1980s the construction of the…

United Petroleum’s new service station by Peddle Thorp Architects stands as something of an architectural marvel on the industrial outskirts of the second city of Victoria. Glinting in the sun, with its bold blades cutting into the sky, it could be an arts centre or a sculpture. As a futuristic petrol station in Corio, north Geelong, it represents perhaps a number of futures in fuel retailing and industrial building design. Entering Geelong from the booming metropolis of Melbourne along a flat and featureless road, drivers have long been confronted with the messy edges of this city – box retailers selling fitness and discount furnishings, a supermarket and modest housing – as well as some of its critical employers – the Shell oil refinery and the Ford engine plant as well…

01 — Dylan Brady Conductor Decibel Architecture Over the past fourteen years I have been privileged and honoured to design (many) and actually build (about ten) major projects throughout South-East Asia. The opportunity to work in Asian cultures and communities has been truly life, and practice, changing – from the Australian Pavilion at the World Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan (my first commission that kickstarted Studio 505), through to Decibel Architecture’s current project for a major new theatre and cultural centre in Vietnam’s capital, Hanoi. One consistent element in these cultures, one trait that is eminently transferable and deeply effective, is that relationships must be built and maintained. It is impossible to “make it” on your own – architecture has a long, complex and tentative fuse at the best of…

The story of how a Sydney architect became involved with not-for-profit education in Papua New Guinea (PNG) began four years ago when I read Drusilla Modjeska’s novel The Mountain. Her book documents the struggle for modernity in traditional clan-based cultures in postindependence PNG. It unveils some of the myths and the shared history and brings to the fore all the colours and smells of the country, particularly the landscape. Because I was born there, her writing evoked strong memories for me. When I finished the book, I wrote to Modjeska. I didn’t know her. But we met shortly after, which is when she asked me to join her on a trip to the fjords of Tufi. She explained that she had an elusive project there that needed an architect. Tropical…

BVN has made designing bespoke workplace buildings for enlightened corporate clients with design-literate CEOs its enviable specialty. South East Water’s new building in Frankston is the latest in a line of such projects by BVN. It builds on the famed NAB at Docklands in Melbourne and the more recent ASB Bank project in Auckland – part of a series of industrial-style waterside buildings with integrated interiors and exteriors, workplace buildings pioneering new egalitarian styles of workplace. BVN has been central to the evolution of Australian workplace design from the beginning. The story goes that when Lend Lease and MLC’s Rosemary Kirkby wanted to shift the paradigm in the mid 1990s, they chose a practice that had never done an office space before. The outcome spoke for itself and Campus MLC…

International Towers Sydney is a trio of commercial buildings and associated podiums constituting the majority of the first stage of Barangaroo South. Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners (RSHP) was responsible for the masterplan of Barangaroo South, the three towers and the podium of the central tower. Given the politics of the international competition, the procurement process and the subsequent adoption of the “developer’s” masterplan, any review of Barangaroo is potentially a poisoned chalice. This review will focus on the work of RSHP, a firm that accrued an international reputation as part of the British high-tech movement of the 1980s. As RSHP is renowned for an architecture of tectonic expression, it will be interesting to see how it fares with the challenge of building developer-driven commercial offices and, equally, how the…

Consistency is difficult to achieve in architecture and nearly impossible to maintain. As offices grow, changes in staff and the types and scale of project work, not to mention the changing demands of clients and architectural fashion, can all shift the output of an architectural practice in unpredictable ways. It is for this reason that the singular work of Vokes and Peters stands out. For more than fourteen years, the work of the office and its partners’ antecedent firms has remained strikingly consistent – a fact that Stuart Vokes attributes to the partners’ profoundly similar design sensibilities, which they have regularly applied to a common set of design problems in suburban contexts. It’s a clear strength of the practice, which has built an impressive portfolio of mostly residential works with…

When I agreed to give this talk there was only one catch – the title was needed two months in advance. So I chose “footprints,” thinking it would give me plenty of latitude. But of course, it’s never that easy. Footprints are something left behind and in architecture they are most clearly seen in the plan. They also manifest in form, volume, materials, tradition and culture, all of which shape buildings and inform the appropriateness of architecture. However, it seems that most conversations today centre on the future – topics such as “The Future is Now” or “What Future?” and, more recently, “The Edge of Tomorrow.” So I started to think that perhaps I had chosen a dumb topic for a group of young, forward-looking architects. But then I remembered…

Sixty years ago, Bates Smart and McCutcheon left its mark on the North Sydney skyline with the MLC Building on Miller Street. This building was groundbreaking in Australia due to its innovative steel structural systems and its modular double?glazed facade. Beyond the technical advancement introduced with its construction, its monumental presence within the urban fabric of North Sydney and its uncompromisingly modernist form made this glass?box building an icon of Australian architecture and an integral component of the identity of North Sydney. Now Bates Smart has the opportunity to reshape the skyline it helped create with 177 Pacific Highway, a commercial project that could be considered just as innovative as its predecessor, though designed within a set of very different parameters. The 1957 MLC Building set a promising tone for…