Tabla de contenidos para November 2019 en Architecture Australia

Jury citation In one sense, the Parliament of Victoria Members’ Annexe is a “recessive” work, buried in the landscape and deferring to its context. This reticence and restraint deliver a certain timelessness and remarkable serenity to the offices of the state’s elected officials. In a space where favour and hierarchy formerly dominated, the architecture produces egalitarian and equitable offices and facilities. The project exploits, or relies on, the landscape and the sensitive horticulture to give a dignity to the annexe. It exploits the existing garden to create a refreshing sense of relaxation and quietude that is particularly welcome in the context of a political epicentre. Although not open to the public, this is a project of the public and for the public good. One can’t help but hope that its…

Jury citation Port of Sale is an important project that supports both community life and tourism in the small Victorian regional city of Sale. The architecture breathes life and lightness into an existing brutalist building, combining a regional art gallery, a library, council chambers, community meeting spaces, an information centre and a cafe within a single facility. The transformation of two existing courtyards into significant public rooms as the basis of the project’s organization is effective and resourceful. The integration of new services throughout is deft, and interventions to balance light with view, open the interiors to the broader context and realize strategic civic connections to the Sale waterfront are skilfully executed. Architect FJMT; Project team Richard Francis-Jones (design architect), Geoff Croker (principal), Louise Goodman (associate), Anne-Marie Cooke, Sophie Coquet,…

Jury citation Adelaide Botanic High School offers an optimistic and progressive approach to the expansion of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning for high school students in South Australia. The school’s design by Cox Architecture and DesignInc gives a new spatial and organizational structure to teaching and learning, allowing students more agency in both their educational development and their social interactions. The building operates as a dynamic matrix of public movement and respite; dedicated workspaces and flexible classrooms; intimate, group and large teaching rooms; and an openness and airiness that exploits the vertical structure. Architects Cox Architecture and DesignInc; Cox Architecture project team Zoe King (director), Justin Davis-Bishop (project architect), Adam Hannon (design director), Chin Tan, Kirsty Fraser, Jonathon Kirby (architects), Patrick Scott (graduate of architecture), Rachel Pargeter, Coby…

Jury citation A private art storage facility in an inner-city Sydney suburb, Dangrove constitutes a masterful arrangement of sublime spatial sequences. This exquisitely robust space is industrious and functional at the ground level and transitions to a series of connected curation and evaluation spaces on the upper level. The arrival and procession through the building is an experience of immense theatre. Designed to house an expanding and internationally significant contemporary Chinese art collection, the interior of this state-of-the-art facility is formed through the combination of muscular and controlled formalism, and a calm and ordered material palette. It deftly and expertly blends pragmatic storage, technical facilities, and exhibition and event spaces. A hierarchy of experiences has been created by these spaces, their interrelationships and the dramatic use of filtered natural light.…

Jury citation Dangrove is a two-storey private facility designed specifically for the storage, evaluation and curation of one of Australia’s largest private art collections. In this masterful project, Tzannes engages complex technical pragmatics and the sublime in equal measure. The building’s lower level provides state-of-the-art facilities for core operations: storage, restoration, curation, preparation for transportation, security station, covered delivery and parking. The upper level is organized in two parts with an adjoining sculpture garden. Intended as a front-of-house, it is primarily focused around art evaluation. The first art evaluation space is a long room that runs along the street with a scalloped concrete ceiling. The second is a wedge-shaped space of impressive scale, characterized by a wall of diffuse light above a panelled concrete datum. Known as the Great Hall,…

Jury citation Daylesford Longhouse is utterly extraordinary – challenging in its questioning, enchanting in its outcome. Situated in rural Victoria, the house aims to nourish and sustain. The strategic starting point was a roof large enough to collect water to support a small number of people, some animals and a produce garden on a remote and exposed site. The core activity to be sustained by the architecture was food production, preparation and sharing. The roof – roughly twelve metres by 130 metres – marks out a linear territory that, together with walls of sheet metal, translucent polycarbonate and agricultural mesh, preserves the interior (which includes the verdant produce garden) as a discrete climatic zone. The translucent skin, punctuated only by carefully curated picture windows, protects the garden from predators and…

Jury citation Bates Smart’s 25 King in Brisbane sets a new benchmark as the tallest engineered timber building in Australia. Globally, there is presently no taller commercial timber building with a larger floor plate. Glulam and cross-laminated timber (CLT) form an all-timber structural system that significantly reduces the building’s embodied carbon compared with conventional construction methods using concrete and steel. The carefully detailed expressed timber structure is the hero of the interior, encouraging a light touch for subsequent fitouts. Working within the limitations of CLT, an efficient six-by-eight-metre structural grid with a side core delivers large, unencumbered floor plates for maximum workplace flexibility. 25 King is valuable, particularly as a potential catalyst for positive change in the construction of mid-scale commercial buildings. Architect Bates Smart; Project team Philip Vivian (director),…

Jury citation A community newsletter pinned to a noticeboard in a new riverside cafe in Maitland proudly proclaims the area’s economic and urban renewal. At its centre is an image of a monolithic brick portal that frames a canopy of river red gums, bringing the trees and the river into the Maitland streetscape. Clearly, a remarkable urban proposition has been realized here. For decades following a devastating flood, the connection between Maitland’s main street and the Hunter River was lost. Originally engaged to design public ablutions, Chrofi, working in collaboration with McGregor Coxall and the Maitland City Council, saw an opportunity to recalibrate the aspiration of the initial brief. What has followed is a masterstroke in urban intervention. Beyond the original prosaic requirements of the project, the architects convinced the…

Jury citation Doubleground exemplifies the opportunity for the creation of powerful spatial and temporal experiences through the amalgamation of landscape and architecture. In this project, Muir and Openwork have worked together to create memorable spatial sequences through a complex and skilful overlay of theory and practice. Rather than an object in the landscape, Doubleground becomes the landscape. The expressive combination of curated “memories” and formal motifs that exist in the building and landscape at the National Gallery of Victoria have been reconfigured into a single meandering work that sensitively occupies the original courtyard. The project gives us an opportunity to see a familiar public space with fresh eyes and brings Roy Grounds’ original intentions to the surface. It is at once an homage to Grounds’ 1968 design and a creation…

The beginnings of disciplinary transformation Review by Sam Spurr A conference on the subject of collective agency in architecture necessarily asks two questions: What would this look like for the discipline? And how do we make it happen? The 2019 National Architecture Conference grounded these questions in a radical reconfiguring of Australian architecture through its relationship to Indigenous knowledge. While other issues emerged during the two days, this will be the remarkable legacy of the conference. Across diverse scales of practice, we heard how engagement with the First Nations people of Australia is not only a necessity but a way to enrich and propel the design of our built environment. I can’t imagine a more important topic to be brokered at this point in time. The conference plunged participants directly…

To be part of the National Architecture Awards jury was a great privilege in my year as immediate past president of the Australian Institute of Architects and a wonderful opportunity to experience our country’s most outstanding projects of 2019. In assembling the jury, I considered diversity of experience, location, practice mode and contribution to the practice of architecture. It was a delight to judge this year’s awards with Rachel Neeson (New South Wales), Emma Williamson (Western Australia), Mat Hinds (Tasmania) and Donald Bates (Victoria); I am personally grateful for their tireless commitment to what is a physically demanding experience that impacts greatly on work and family life. This year, we travelled more than fifteen thousand kilometres in twelve days to visit fifty-six projects across Australia. The National Awards judging process…

Jury citation A generative project for a new cultural precinct on the Gold Coast, the HOTA Outdoor Stage is the first project to be delivered as part of a vast riverside masterplan by ARM Architecture. Rather than an object-based approach, the masterplan uses an ingenious relational strategy that is inspired by a Voronoi diagram, allowing shifts in scale that accommodate the varied future program. A tessellated motif knits a continuous narrative through the work, informing the planning and detail resolution of the architecture. Conceived as a traditional black box theatre, a giant openable front allows the stage to be almost endlessly reconfigured, depending on the size of the audience and the nature of the performance. The stage is conceived entirely in the round. The backstage area is carefully accommodated under…

Jury citation Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Primary School delivers a high-quality and safe learning environment for a growing and vibrant student community in Sydney’s west. The architecture, which implements a careful spatial program that facilitates a deep learning experience, both informs and is derived from the pedagogy of the school. In this project, BVN has demonstrated, through design research, genuine collaboration and a future-focused strategy, an exemplary approach to radically transforming existing buildings for new functions. The architects have used a methodical approach to materialism and spatial crafting, and they aimed for ambitious sustainability targets in their adaptation of the 1970s Telstra training centre. The result provides innovative, uplifting and inherently flexible learning spaces that will serve the school well into the future. Internal spatial relationships have been…

Jury citation In QUT Creative Industries Precinct 2, Kirk and Hassell have created a theatre of learning. Their design delivers a dynamic tertiary research and teaching environment on a demanding site. Heritage-listed military structures are carefully absorbed into the overall strategy of the project, consolidating a new creative precinct. An interdisciplinary learning approach informs the design, which uses a sectional strategy of administrative “blocks” and “verandahs” to orient the social spaces towards the east and mitigate the environmental impacts of the adjacent highway to the west. Louvred elevations modulate daylight and consolidate the formal language. Considered detailing supports the dynamic section, allowing engagement between communities of creative research, practice and learning. — QUT Creative Industries Precinct 2 was reviewed by Michael Keniger in Architecture Australia Jan/Feb 2017. See architectureau.com/articles/ creativeindustries-precinct-2-qut…

Jury citation The University of South Australia Cancer Research Institute interiors are both refined and restrained, working to strengthen a clear architectural parti and distinguishing between work spaces, meeting places and circulation areas. A beautiful building section organizes research communities vertically, with meeting spaces, social spaces and terraces surrounding a northern atrium. Despite being centred around highly controlled work environments (laboratories), this building program enables remarkable workplace flexibility, openness and interaction, supporting the institute as a genuinely contemporary research hub. Impressive in a building of this scale and typology, the presence of natural light is felt throughout the interior, from the public areas to the lift lobbies and meeting spaces. Even within the work areas, the careful design enables every workspace to sense a connection to daylight. The material palette…

Jury citation The experience of this house lingers in the mind. Situated on a bustling and unremarkable arterial road in suburban Perth, the strength of its exterior belies a quality of neighbourliness. There are no fences, and the pervious paving and garden are shared with the street. Entry is through a deep threshold created by the mass of a recycled rammed-concrete wall. An eidetic move of enclosure and void establishes the primary parti of the plan. The house is zoned to enable compact living but readily expands to accommodate guests and family, with subtle differentiation provided by deep concrete ceiling beams that partition the main volume. Externally, a series of deep rammed-concrete surfaces softly redirects natural light into the depth of the plan, reducing glare and focusing the interior towards…

Jury citation North Melbourne House is a project that speaks to the future and, more specifically, to the important issue of ageing in place. Its social program drives a spatial inventiveness that is truly adaptable, allowing for multiple unprescribed modes of occupation. The architecture invites nesting, its considered detailing relying on neither material richness nor asceticism, but rather a sophisticated accumulation of the prosaic. Representing a clever assembly on the site and within its urban context, this house is modest and fundamentally sustainable. — North Melbourne House will be reviewed by Andy Fergus in Houses 131. Architect NMBW Architecture Studio; Project team Marika Neustupny, Nigel Bertram, Lucinda McLean (design architects), Byron Meyer (graduate of architecture); Builder CB Maintenance; Structural and civil engineer Perrett Simpson Stantin; Building surveyor PLP Building Surveyors…

Jury citation The new Members’ Annexe for Victoria’s Parliament House is an impressive benchmark for sustainability in our public buildings. To fully understand the impact of this building, it is necessary to understand the former Members’ Annexe in the neighbouring heritage building. Inequitable rooms, insufficient access to natural light and poor thermal and acoustic performance all combined to create stressful working environments for our democratically elected representatives and their staff. In dramatic contrast, Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design has delivered a project that, through skilful planning, provides equity in room allocation as well as generous and universal access to light and views. It maintains thermal comfort through the use of a progressive geothermal energy exchange system, eliminating the need for conventional chillers. A masterful design strategy repurposes the building’s…

Jury citation The University of South Australia Cancer Research Institute is holistic in its approach to sustainability, from construction impacts to ongoing operation, robust building detailing and urban legacy. Notably, this project employs planning and services strategies that significantly curtail energy use in a typology that is customarily energy-intensive. Manifold laboratory exhausts, C02 monitoring and materials selection create a clean-air environment internally. Natural light is carefully modulated and the sectional strategy organizes research communities vertically, with diverse meeting and social spaces making for a healthy and socially sustainable working and learning place. Architects Swanbury Penglase with BVN; Swanbury Penglase project team Andrew Phillips, Wayne Grivell (project directors), Jason Timberlake (project architect), Joshua Budarick, Marty Frost, Matthew Raven, Paul Rawinski, Peter Morris (architects), Ted Bourchier (graduate of architecture), Elizabeth Swanbury (interior…

Jury citation At Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station, Lovell Chen has undertaken a forensic process to repair water-damaged original fabric, increase structural and seismic stability, and introduce new structure and servicing into an iconic civic asset. Every millimetre of the extant fabric has been carefully assessed, and a rigorous program of restoration and retention implemented, with all works adhering to the Burra Charter and undertaken while the critical transport infrastructure remained fully operational. An immense task of painstaking assessment, preservation and restoration, this vital exterior work sets a quality precedent for the future adaptation of the building’s interiors. Architect Lovell Chen; Project team Peter Lovell (project director), Deirdre Heffernan (project leader), Suzanne Zahra (heritage architect); Structural engineer Bonacci Group; Building surveyor Philip Chun; Quantity surveyor Donald Cant Watts Corke; Services engineer…

Jury citation The Parliament of Victoria Members’ Annexe is an ambitious yet restrained contribution to Melbourne’s parliamentary precinct. It gives clarity and coherence to an assemblage of government buildings that, over many years, had devolved into a rabbit warren of additions, subdivisions and haphazard enclosures. What has been accomplished is not only of high architectural merit; it is transformative to the practice of government for the state of Victoria. In contrast to the previous cramped and inadequate spaces, all new parliamentary offices have natural light and external views. Where inequitable space and amenity reinforced hierarchy and temporal political power, all members of parliament now enjoy equal facilities. The design is as much a piece of landscape as it is a building. It is a “building-scape,” where a new cloister courtyard,…

Jury citation Somewhere Other is an installation, a piece of furniture, a series of frames, a “camera” and an experience – as well as a meditation on the architecture of memory and place. Produced for the Sixteenth Venice Architecture Biennale, Freespace, this multifaceted object-instrument is an intricate multimedia/multi-spatial environment, displaying sophisticated architectural, cinematic and carpentry skills and sensibilities. Designed and developed by John Wardle Architects, it includes commissioned work of filmmaker Coco and Maximilian, and installation artist and filmmaker Natasha Johns-Messenger, and was constructed by joiners/fabricators Jacaranda Industries. In the context of its original site, Venice, Somewhere Other connects and overlays multiple sensory experiences through apertures, viewing frames, refracted and mirrored images and filmic sequences. All the while, it links Italy to Australia, Venice to Geelong, with memories and fantasies…

Jury citation The Fish River Ranger Accommodation project was undertaken by the University of South Australia’s Design Construct program for the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation. Students and rangers collaborated to adapt existing steel-framed tent structures to improve the comfort, amenity and privacy for users in the remote location. The result is a model that delivers better insulated, ventilated and insect-proof accommodation for rangers and a viable tropical Indigenous housing alternative. Architect Design Construct, School of Art, Architecture and Design, University of South Australia; Project team David Morris (project architect, project manager), Joti Weijers-Coghlan (graduate of architecture, construction manager)…

Jury citation Maitland Riverlink is an exacting work, civically generous and courageous. Beyond the realization of an appropriate form for communal amenity, the design revitalizes and fortifies the communal consciousness. The project offers the people of Maitland a public place that is both carefully scaled to the grain of its urban context and highly transformational. It is a public living room, an outdoor cinema, an urban stage, a covered plaza, a forecourt to a restaurant and cafe, a gallery for urban art and a threshold to a new riverside promenade. The reintroduction of the Hunter River to the context of the main street has turned an economic and cultural tide. Shops and businesses are extending their frontages and reorienting to an expansive riverside network of public walkways and promenades. Maitland…

Jury citation Set on (at present) a sparse and fairly featureless paddock, with a view to Hanging Rock, Braemar College is a vibrant experiment in new forms of spatial organization, seeking to transform teaching and learning. The current design is only part of a larger masterplan and therefore sits somewhat isolated and vulnerable in the open landscape. The real dynamics and energy are confined primarily to a set of six connected, linear teaching modules, each a variation on an extended form, which sets up a clear diagram for the overall sequence of classrooms, educational levels and progression. An external, covered, linear “street” – both a connector and a series of learning venues – defines a clear edge to the east and is the referent from which the teaching modules emerge.…

Jury citation Rarely has an interior work been so singular, so “on message,” as the interior design and fitout of Denton Corker Marshall’s new offices in Melbourne. A design and execution of profound consistency, every metre of the office floor seems to reaffirm the attitudes and sensibilities of the practice. Such an unrelentingly limited palette and resolution of details could easily become overwhelming; however, by DCM, this combination has produced a very provocative, very noncommercial interior architecture. As a branding exercise – which undoubtedly it is not – it serves to make it quite clear that DCM does not stand for all things – only some very considered things. No client entering the minimalist lobby/foyer would believe that this is a practice where anything goes, or where all client demands…

Jury citation In the Bae Tas, an apartment with a tiny footprint located on the top floor of a 1970s walk-up block, Work by Liz and Alex has created a spatial richness and a remarkable interior. Original walls have been removed to create a single larger living space, with all the necessary accessories of domestic life – bed, kitchen, bathroom and storage – completely concealed. The architects have found additional volume by making use of the existing roof space. Pitched ceiling planes, lit by a skylight, add a new scale dimension, fundamentally changing the experience of the space. The ceiling and walls are lined entirely in birch plywood and sit lightly upon a mute concrete floor plane. The singularity of material and balance of natural light imbue a strong sense…

Jury citation Kerstin Thompson Architects’ confident addition to the premises of this longstanding institution on a narrow laneway in the heart of Melbourne demonstrates a deep understanding of a complex client. The project – a new level consisting of a garden room – is testament to the agency of architecture in the evolution of our cultural organizations and supports a sustainable business model. Discreet works to upgrade existing spaces for compliance and services are handled with a light touch that retains their essential character, which is highly valued by many of the club’s older members. The new level offers a different spatial experience, reinvigorating the club by helping to attract new and younger members, and providing revenue through its 150-person function capacity. The design responds beautifully to specific contextual drivers…

Jury citation House in the Hills initially presents as an abstract intervention in the rural Victorian landscape, challenging our perception of rural domesticity. A hovering parasol, inspired by steel-framed hay sheds, performs as place-maker, defining the habitation precinct within the rolling twenty-five-hectare site. Restrained and expansive, it establishes a datum line within the landscape, emphasizing changes in the topography. Beneath this parasol, a new landscape is established, with two pavilions and the reshaped ground plane surrounding an inner courtyard. Above, the parasol’s operable louvres permit varying degrees of light and shade, depending on the time of year and day, and protect the house from pummelling southwesterly winds. In contrast to the unashamedly rigorous metallic exterior, the house’s plywood interior is warm and inviting. Inside, the vast landscape views and broad…

Jury citation In Terrarium House, John Ellway has completely transformed a former single-bedroom timber cottage into a rich and delightful home with space for guests. A surprising spatial diversity is achieved through a series of simple but radical strategic moves. On a site in inner Brisbane that slopes steeply away to the north, the original cottage was built with its verandah opening directly onto a narrow street. The architect has carefully repaired the cottage and retained its cellular rooms as bedrooms. New kitchen, dining and living spaces have been introduced within the former open undercroft at garden level. Upper and lower levels are united through a large internal void that both creates a feeling of spaciousness and draws sunlight into the plan. The front verandah floor has been removed in…

Jury citation Empire is a deftly executed project that balances fine craft and detail with an intelligent response to the larger issues of suburban living. Initial design decisions and confident planning approaches have energized the existing postwar home by creating clear sight lines through a logical and curated sequence of interconnected spaces. Via the considered placement of two modestly sized pavilions, the relationship of the house to its site has been liberated and refigured, framing views and extending the experience of the interior into the garden. Empire creates a conversation between old and new that can be appreciated at every level. — Empire will be reviewed by Eugenie Keefer Bell in Houses 131. Architect Austin Maynard Architects; Project team Andrew Maynard, Mark Austin (design architects), Ray Dinh (project architect); Engineer…

Jury citation Heritage awards seem to either laud historical absolutism or accept heritage fragments as a mere backdrop to the contemporary commercial requirements of a redevelopment. Displaying neither of these tendencies, Premier Mill Hotel is refreshing and revelatory in its deep integration of a plethora of heritage artefacts and spatial leftovers, textures, materials and images that don’t simply invoke a past but celebrate its ingenuity and authenticity. This is a project that exhibits sincere and respectful care without being museum-like or overtly deferential. It celebrates the past by making it visible, relevant and part of the commercial allure of the hotel. The building is effectively a spatial and material superimposition. A sophisticated and well designed boutique hotel has been integrated into the fabric, the volumetrics and the residual hardware and…

Jury citation Melbourne’s Abbotsford Convent is on Australia’s National Heritage List as the largest intact example of an institution dedicated to the care of “fallen and wayward women.” Works by Kerstin Thompson Architects to accommodate a vibrant multi-arts community within the Sacred Heart Building are bold and brave. An articulated philosophy of “leave well enough alone” has guided every design decision so that the existing fabric is respected, but reworked where necessary to support the building’s new uses. The result is an architecture that intrigues and enlightens. New elements – most visibly, a bridge connecting one part of the building to another – are distinctive and united through material (almost exclusively galvanized steel and light-filtering mesh). The project serves as an admirable precedent for further works at Abbotsford Convent and…

Jury citation Yagan Square is a critical project that sets a new standard for the potential impacts of genuine collaboration and informed consultation in the design of urban spaces. By layering existing and historical circulation, Yagan Square physically reconnects the entertainment and cultural precinct of Northbridge with Perth’s CBD, re-establishing the site as a natural meeting place for people. The design turns the combined challenges of access and substantial changes in site levels into opportunities for compelling and previously unrealized views of the city and surrounds. The dense and cleverly crafted landscape is both engaging and robust as it weaves across the topography, moving pedestrians effortlessly from upper to lower ground levels. Multiple spaces are formed by these topographical shifts, allowing the public domain to be used by large groups…

Jury citation Located adjacent to Victoria’s busy Calder Highway south of Bendigo, the Jock Comini Reserve Amenities building is a welcome rest stop that appears crystalline during the day and radiates a welcome glow at night. Commissioned by Vicroads at a strategic location for travellers, the building has a low-lying roof that forms a distinctive intervention between the highway and the landscape. As part of a building typology that prioritizes hygiene and safety, the project deploys a resilient material strategy to ensure durability, ease of maintenance and graffiti removal. Simultaneously, it offers a light-filled experience of beauty and delight. Composed of a minimal palette of glass and stainless steel, the walls shift in plan to reflect the surrounding bushland – an unexpected discovery for the visitor. A concealed structure supports…

Jury citation At Yagan Square, steel is celebrated as both a robust and delicate material, oscillating between background and foreground to a narrative that celebrates our past and offers a contemporary public space for the future. Yagan Square is a place created from a rich and dense overlay of stories, ideas, culture and community. Its carefully considered material palette is at the centre of its public expression and the articulation of a significant cultural landscape. Beyond the use of steel as a structural system, perforated, etched and meticulously crafted Corten steel is deployed as a storytelling device in its own right. Its weathered surface absorbs the harsh Western Australian sun, conjuring up images of the state’s mining and infrastructural heritage as well as the ferrous stone gorges and vast deserts…