Innholdsfortegnelse for May 2025 i Architecture Australia

“For everything we do, there should be three good reasons why.” This ethos, as described by Ashley Dunn of Dunn Hillam Architecture and Urban Design, is not intended to be prescriptive, but rather reinforces the practice’s approach to projects – to avoid adding for the sake of adding. The firm’s recent renovations to The Gunnery, a three-storey, heritage-listed gallery and art space in Woolloomooloo, Sydney, exemplify this outlook. The project takes a surgical approach that preserves and reveals the building’s layered history while adapting it to contemporary needs. Yet, while Dunn Hillam’s interventions allow The Gunnery’s past to resonate within its present, they also challenge the notion of a “white cube” gallery, resulting in a context-rich environment where the building’s architecture is as present as the art on display. This…

“[However] unexpected our encounter with the beautiful might be, it gives us the assurance that the truth does not lie far off and inaccessible to us, but can be encountered in the disorder of reality with all its imperfections, evils, errors, extremes, and fateful confusions. The ontological function of the beautiful is to bridge the chasm between the ideal and the real.” — Hans-Georg Gadamer, The Relevance of the Beautiful Really good architects teach us something, and like all really good architecture, Timothy Hill’s has to be experienced to be felt and believed. Hill’s work carries intense physical and emotional force, as well as formal precision, encouraging curiosity and delight. Light and shadow are key to their climatic “attunement” obviously, as in a lot of Australian architecture, and the sensual…

As editors, conversing with esteemed architects is part of the job. We are continually inspired and enlightened by these discussions – but there are a special few who really challenge our thinking (and our ability to keep up with their thinking!). The 2025 recipient of the Australian Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal is one of these people. Timothy Hill has been awarded the highest accolade for, as the jury outlines, his “unique combination of architectural poetics allied to a critical leadership discourse – a discourse that defines the larger territory in which architects can operate, all the while advocating for architecture’s greater purpose and value.” Our tribute to this year’s Gold Medallist (page 75) is the centrepiece to the announcement of the Institute’s suite of National Prizes (page 67). Congratulations…

Bondi Junction is one of those parts of Sydney where commercial development pressures have always outmanoeuvred urban design considerations. The streetscape is jarring and disjointed, though vital with commercial activity. It is not that Waverley Council has not tried to bring the beast under control – several strategies and reviews have been completed over the past ten years. But the public domain remains overwhelmed by private interest and traffic, and dominated by the behemoth that is Westfield Bondi Junction. The small, the historical and the people-centred places are pushed aside. The Boot Factory could have gone the same way. This sweet little three-storey brick cube had been in developers’ sights since it was closed in 2007 amid claims that it was unsafe. It could so easily have been demolished, as…

Architects and landscape architects across Australia are exploring ways to heal Country. Clues to this healing can be found at Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve – a significant 1960s remediation project located about 18 kilometres from Warrnambool, in the western district of Victoria on Eastern Maar Country. In 1961, architect Robin Boyd was commissioned by the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife to design a natural history centre on the reserve. Boyd’s design drew on the natural geological conditions of the magnificent dormant volcanic site, both visually and physically. Competed in 1969 and opened in 1971, the small one-roomed circular building was constructed from limestone rubble walls, with a scoria-coated roof supported by radiating laminated timber beams. The building’s mushroom-shaped roof form echoed the surrounding volcanic landscape with views of the sky…

The idea of “companionship” is palpable in much of the work of Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA) – companionship between what already exists on site and what is new. There is always a deeply considered response to the layers of history, built and unbuilt, that results in buildings comprehensively embedded in their context. Even though the new Eva and Marc Besen Centre at the Tarrawarra Museum of Art is a standalone building, it has evolved through an understanding and respect for the layered history of landscape and significant architectural works on site, and for the legacy of its late founding patrons and philanthropists, Eva Besen AO and Marc Besen AC. “Tarrawarra” is a Woi-wurrung word that translates to “slow-moving water” and is the name given to the area in the Yarra…

When Singapore’s WOHA comes to town, it’s tempting to focus on the practice’s penchant for striking vertical gardens or the “urban verandahs” elevated several storeys above the ground floor. These are trademark WOHA architectural moves, found in well-known buildings such as the Parkroyal Collection Pickering (Architecture Australia, Vol. 102, No. 5) in Singapore. Each of these design assets can be found at 443 Queen Street, a Meanjin/Brisbane residential tower designed by WOHA. (Local firms Architectus and Kris Kowalski Architects contributed to the project as design, documentation and delivery architects.) More than just a translation of WOHA’s ideas into a subtropical context, it’s a building that asks, and answers, questions about what buildings mean to Meanjin. WOHA has previously worked in Australia, contributing to the design of Forbes Residences in Perth…

(68) Gold Medal (69) National President’s Prize (70) Paula Whitman Leadership in Gender Equity Prize (70) Leadership in Sustainability Prize (71) Student Prize for the Advancement of Architecture (71) BlueScope Glenn Murcutt Student Prize (72) Dulux Study Tour (GOLD MEDAL) Timothy Hill The 2025 Gold Medal is awarded to Timothy Hill, director of Partners Hill since 2013, and an architect responsible for numerous exemplars of Australian architecture. His contribution to our profession extends to education, professional lectures and various forms of advocacy that, in combination, make him a most influential architect whose impact is felt nationwide. Timothy’s is an intellect that combines rigour with lateral leaps, and an incisive legalistic wit with a phenomenal spatial instinct. He challenges, provokes, entertains, and uses design to demonstrate a deeper appreciation of architecture’s…

A conversation with Timothy Hill will likely elicit a fair few laughs for his nimble wit and fine turn of phrase, but more likely for the shock, delivered through biting humour, of acknowledging the strange circumstances in which we find ourselves – as individual architects, as an industry. How did we get here? What can we do? Presented here in his own words recorded during a freewheeling, two-hour conversation (edited for length and clarity), Timothy dives into issues facing the industry – constructive, optimistic musings on expertise, judgement, design, and the important task of redesigning the system. — Kerstin Thompson On the “little-a” architect Timothy Hill: I’d like to focus, optimistically, on what an architect is exactly. You see, every day the term “architect” is used, but it's “little-a” architect.…

Timothy was admitted to the architecture program at UQ via an interview and portfolio review. His work indicated a strong sense of enquiry and a creative energy that underpinned a secure confidence in his potential. I recall several of the adventurous and imaginative projects he completed during his time at UQ. Yet, I also remember my occasional nail-biting anguish. Such was his ability to reshape a scheme while continuing to explore further design options that there were times when it seemed he might risk not reaching completion. On one occasion, as his final fifth-year project was weaving towards a close, I asked if he was more interested in macramé than in completing the design. I need not have worried; he was in complete control and passed with flying colours. In…