Tabla de contenidos para January 2025 en Architecture Australia

Late last year, the National Council conducted a nationwide consultation with our chapters to identify the priorities for the continued growth and success of our profession. From this, the National Council established five key focus areas: Advocacy; Culture and Communication within the Institute; Design Literacy and Public Understanding of Architecture; Education and Research; and Sustainability and Climate Action. Each area is accompanied by advocacy and policy objectives – a tall order, but architects are ambitious and our agenda reflects this. Across Australia, states and territories are undergoing significant reviews of building regulation, which flow from the 2018 Shergold-Weir report into building confidence. The report identified serious compliance failures in the building industry – including water ingress, fire safety and structural issues – and recommended the licensing of all professions involved…

Georgia Birks: What is the agenda for Indigeneity in architectural education today, compared to when you first started studying and teaching? Carroll Go-Sam: When I began studying architecture at the University of Queensland (UQ), I came with an ideal of wanting to change Indigenous people’s housing. From the community that I came from, I thought the housing was rubbish. Since design is what architects did, I naively thought better design was the missing piece to fix housing. But what I was exposed to in the architectural curriculum had no Indigenous content and no in-depth exposure to any other cultures outside Western traditions in architecture. It wasn’t until my fourth year that I did a course which had Indigenous content in it. Deidre Brown: When I entered the University of Auckland…

If you ask me, society’s faith in architects seems to be dwindling. In the face of seemingly immeasurable challenges – rapid climate change, decreasing housing affordability and the increasing privatisation of our cities’ public spaces, to name a few – it seems architects are increasingly relegated to the sidelines to watch on as policymakers enact powerful changes in our cities and communities. Not only this, but the architecture of faith is itself in decline. Once widespread in our suburbs, local church buildings are diminishing in number: being closed, sold, abandoned or demolished altogether.1 Churches – much like architects – must adapt to their time and place in the twenty-first century. While serving ongoing (and evolving) religious traditions, today’s sacred spaces must also contend with changing demographics and complex, occasionally stigma-laden…

In Eight Mile Plains, Queensland, wedged between one of the country’s busiest motorways and an unlikely patch of remnant bushland, is a collection of sturdy buildings known as Mari-Mari-Ba. Mari-Mari-Ba (“butterfly place” in the local Jagera language) provides supported transitional housing for First Nations women and children and is operated by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Health Service (ATSICHS). Belying the understated outcome is the complexity of designing for vulnerable residents on a site that includes bushfire and koala habitat overlays among the familiar challenges of design and procurement. Accommodation for Indigenous women, children and Elders has persisted on the site in various guises since the One People of Australia League repurposed a motel and established the Joyce Wilding Home (later the Joyce Wilding Hostel) in the 1970s.…

(JURY CHAIR OVERVIEW) As our lives become more dependent on digital technology, it is increasingly important to prioritise our relationships with nature and with one another. This cause is a common theme across the submissions of the 2025 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work. Acts of repair and connection are drivers for a majority of the schemes, whose designs consider solutions to contemporary issues such as social isolation, cultural acknowledgement, and the climate and housing crises. Repair is explored as regeneration of ecology, recognition of cultural histories and reinvigoration of dormant existing buildings. Common-wealth by Nicky and Nicole (honourable mention) speculates on ways to incentivise circular building technologies. The scheme experiments with the balance between landscape revitalisation and local manufacturing. The Mill by Ariani Anwar (honourable mention) considers the future of…

Dr Graeme Cecil Gunn AM, LFRAIA, passed away peacefully on 1 October 2024 in Hamilton, Victoria, the town where he grew up. He was born in Geelong on 6 August 1933 (the second eldest of five brothers) to Amy Ella Williams and Athol William Gunn and moved to Hamilton two years later. He would return to Hamilton in 2018 following the death of his second wife, Suzy a’Beckett Boyd (1954–2016), and continued to work right up until his death – the proposal for a New Hamilton Gallery in the heart of the town owes much to his vision and advocacy over the past five years. Gunn, or “Gunny” to his very close friends, spent his last six years in what he called his “bothy,” located on the outskirts of Hamilton.…

Ronald Jack “Gus” Ferguson was born on 26 November 1931 in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. He completed his schooling at Perth Modern School, where he was awarded a scholarship to study architecture at Perth Technical College, eventually graduating with an associateship in architecture in 1955. In his final year he was awarded the inaugural Morawetz Travel Prize, which enabled him to travel extensively after his studies. In 1957, Ferguson, together with his wife Clare, set off on a journey that took them across Africa and Europe before spending 18 months in London where Ferguson worked for Chamberlin, Powell and Bon on the new Barbican development. They then spent seven months travelling back to Perth, mostly by car. This was to be a life-changing experience for Ferguson. He would later establish a…

Post-occupancy evaluation (POE) – the process and product of gathering systematic feedback about a building’s performance – is a vital yet perpetually underachieved part of the design process. It can help architects measure the intangibles of great design; it can identify problems from the use and perception of places; it can improve strategies for contemporary architectural practice. If used well, it can demonstrate the architect’s abilities to satisfy and persuade current and future clients. So, why do so few want to undertake POE? Research in Australia and abroad points to the following barriers: ownership and legal liabilities; cost, procurement and absence of incentives; minimal institutional support; education and lack of agreed-upon methods; defence of professional and competitive territory; structural problems across industries; and a risk-averse culture.1,2,3,4 The POE process is…

Carroll Go-Sam Carroll Go-Sam (Dyirbal, Gumbilbara Bama) is a senior lecturer at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Queensland, with interests in Indigenous architecture. (CONTRIBUTOR, PAGE 12) Merrick Morley Merrick Morley is a PhD candidate in architecture, building and planning at the University of Melbourne. (WRITER, PAGE 40) Deidre Brown Deidre Brown (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Kahu) is a professor of architecture at the University of Auckland with specialist interests in Māori architecture and art. (CONTRIBUTOR, PAGE 12) Emma Healy Emma Healy is Principal Architect for the City of Moreton Bay and previously co-founded multidisciplinary practice Landings Studio. (WRITER, PAGE 50) Jemima Retallack Jemima Retallack is a director of Retallack Thompson, a Warrane/Sydney-based architecture office. Through both her practice and research, Jemima has an interest in examining…