Innholdsfortegnelse for May - June 2015 i Architecture Australia

NGV launches summer pavilion series The National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) has launched the Commission for Ephemeral Architecture, an annual architecture commission for a temporary outdoor installation over spring and summer. The initiative gives architects an opportunity to design an innovative outdoor structure in the NGV International’s garden. Melbourne practice John Wardle Architects has designed the inaugural commission, due to open in September 2015. FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE COMMISSION AND CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS, VISIT architectureau.com/articles/ngv-launches-summer-pavilion-architectural-commission ARM to make a “Splash” on the Gold Coast In November 2013, ARM Architecture and Berlin-based landscape architecture practice Topotek1 won a commission to design an amphitheatre for the Gold Coast Cultural Precinct, to be located at Evandale, a seventeen-hectare site bounded by Bundall Road and the Nerang River. Construction of the performance venue,…

In late 2014, Ashton Raggatt McDougall’s Galleries of Remembrance at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance were completed to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of World War I. The additions conclude the initial extension (2001–03), which added the first pair of excavated entry gardens to the north-east and north-west of the Shrine. All four gardens are now linked by a Visitor Centre, which runs under the Shrine’s north assembly apron. The project includes a museum, with an exhibition grain of large and small that recalls ARM’s National Museum of Australia, Canberra. Philip B. Hudson and James H. Wardrop’s original Shrine of Remembrance (1923–34) has been hallowed if not fraught ground indeed since its competition victory.1 Subscription-built, the Shrine was a labour of love, large by any standards. It teems with…

Over the past two decades, there has been a rapidly rising level of investment in healthcare and health facilities across Australia and architectural design has proven to be a valuable factor in the improvement of the delivery of healthcare across all scales of development. The relentless need to renew and upgrade existing health facilities has been matched by the demand for a significant number of additional and seemingly ever larger and more complex acute-care hospitals. This demand has been driven by the increase in population numbers and by changes in underlying demographics, primarily an ageing population, with a related increase in the incidence of chronic diseases. It is anticipated that investment in health-related capital works over the next decade is likely to be in the order of $20 billion, with…

DESIGN ARCHITECT Conrad Gargett LOCATION Hervey Bay, Queensland CLIENT Uniting Care Health PROCUREMENT METHOD Lump sum SIZE (FLOOR AREA) 15,000 m2 NO. ROOMS/BEDS Currently 96 beds; 180 beds once all work completed COST $96 million TIMEFRAME Initial phase completed October 2014…

For more than fifty years, researchers have investigated the impact of the built environment on the health outcomes of hospital patients and the general wellbeing of the staff who care for them. Despite this significant history, our knowledge base can often be incomplete or contradictory, arguably due to a lack of long-term post-occupancy research. But why is this the case? In any discussion on evidence-based design, there are two polar concerns to bear in mind. First, as a profession, we rarely seek the kind of detailed knowledge that can only be generated by a rigorous post-occupancy evaluation (POE) process, perhaps because of the limited performative demands or because our training in brief development methods is equally limited. Increasingly lean fee proposals certainly don’t encourage us, but it’s possible we’re also…

From Hidden Valley We are in Miriwoong ancestral lands, which sweep from the Ord River and Hidden Valley to Dingo Creek and the canyons of the Keep River in the Northern Territory. Rugged and red, it is the midst of the “Wet.” Boab trees are swollen – it is hot, very hot. In Hidden Valley, we are embraced by a diorama of crusty, red ochre striated sedimentary stone shaped over aeons by wind, rain and seepage. This is the red, the red of Australia that starts in the Top End and goes to the edges of the south. No driving, so we walk through gorges and slots – at last, there is a breeze. From this crusty ochre embrace we drive into the green, irrigated flat lands and Kununurra. The…

The passing of Ian Athfield (1940–2015) on 16 January 2015 marks the end of an era in New Zealand architecture, which, owing largely to the magnanimous presence of Athfield and his architectural work, is tinted with a persistent pursuit of idealism rarely seen elsewhere since the middle of the twentieth century. Lovingly known as “Ath” by those around him, he will be remembered, first and foremost, as a man of extraordinary humanity. Athfield’s life was defined by the high visibility of his architectural forms and his colourful personality. The Athfield house and office is Athfield-idiom par excellence: a white-plastered Greek village, somehow remoulded by the hands of a wayward alien, spattered boundlessly on the hillside of Wellington’s genteel suburb of Khandallah, like an uncontrollable exotic plant growing aggressively among its…

A living culture involves preservation and renewal. When East Kimberley artists from Waringarri Aboriginal Arts were asked to contribute to their latest civic building [the New Kununurra Courthouse, for which I was the art coordinator; see review, page 80 ], their focus turned to family. They saw the project as an opportunity to demonstrate how law and culture are passed from one generation to the next. Six family groups worked to produce the artworks as a way of teaching and sharing knowledge about Country. Over an extended period, senior artists worked with children and grandchildren to create a series of artworks that have been infused into the public spaces. Woven through the fabric of the building, the artworks are subtle but constant reminders of where you are. Both art…

University of Newcastle’s new city campus building The NSW Government has approved plans for a new building at the University of Newcastle’s city campus. Dubbed “NeW Space,” the building, designed by Lyons Architecture and EJE Architecture, will house 14,000 square metres of lecture theatres, teaching and learning spaces, offices, retail spaces and a library. The project also includes the refurbishment of the heritage-listed University House. The proposed new building will be located at the adjacent disused site on the corner of Auckland and Hunter Streets. READ MORE ABOUT THE $95 MILLION CAMPUS PROJECT architectureau.com/articles/university-of-newcastles-new-city-campus-building Sydney becoming a dumb city for the rich? Philip Thalis, a principal of Hill Thalis Architecture + Urban Projects in Sydney, weighs in on the New South Wales government’s plans to sell off the Ultimo…

Wherever you are and at whatever stage of life, hospitals are sites of intense emotion. They are foreboding presences and they haunt us. Individuals, families and communities unite to combat their closure or erasure. And these emotions attract political posturing. Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital, a new “quaternary” or top-level comprehensive treatment, training and research facility in South Bank, Brisbane, aims to combine site, urban location, internal spatial logic and innovative regimes of care in a facility that attracts new allegiances at a city scale. This is a daunting task because the project brings together two hospitals – one from the north of the river, one from the south – each imbued with community and professional loyalty. Complex negotiations set the scene. These moves, often legal, always political, required a design…

DESIGN ARCHITECT Bates Smart HEALTH PLANNING ARCHITECT Silver Thomas Hanley LOCATION Bendigo, Victoria CLIENT Lend Lease PROCUREMENT METHOD Novated contract SIZE (FLOOR AREA) 99,000 m2 NO. ROOMS/BEDS 2515 rooms COST $630 million TIMEFRAME Due for completion December 2016…

DESIGN CONSULTANT Studio 505 LOCAL EXECUTIVE ARCHITECT CPG Consultants MEDICAL AND HOSPITAL PLANNING CONSULTANT HOK, San Francisco and Singapore LOCATION Jurong East, Singapore CLIENT Ministry of Health Singapore and Jurong Health Services PROCUREMENT METHOD International design competition SIZE (FLOOR AREA) 169,000 m2 NO. ROOMS/BEDS 700 beds (Ng Teng Fong General Hospital), 400 beds (Jurong Community Hospital) TIMEFRAME Due for completion late 2015…

ARCHITECT Sunshine Coast Architects – joint venture between Architectus and HDR Rice Daubney LOCATION Kawana, Queensland CLIENT Queensland Health PROCUREMENT METHOD Public–private partnership SIZE (FLOOR AREA) 160,000 m2 NO. ROOMS/BEDS 738 beds COST $1.8 billion TIMEFRAME Due for completion 2016…

“All great thoughts are conceived while walking,” said Friedrich Nietzsche, who wasn’t short on great thoughts. Walking is not only handy for thinking – it is crucial to a vibrant public realm around institutions that have been co-located specifically to encourage collaborative partnerships. But is simply co-locating hospitals and universities enough to generate the innovation expected of these institutions? And what effect do these growing clusters have on their surrounding communities? In 2014, I was awarded the National Association of Women in Construction (NAWIC) International Women’s Day Scholarship. The award allowed me to investigate urban design issues in hospital knowledge precincts in the USA, the UK, Europe and Australia, and resulted in a report entitled Walk, Talk, Work: The Importance of Pedestrians and Public Space for Collaboration in Hospital Knowledge…

It is impossible to write about the new UTS Science and Health Building in isolation. Designed by Sydney practices Durbach Block Jaggers (DBJ) and BVN, it is one of four major new buildings at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and part of a wider $1 billion campus redevelopment. The Science and Health Building is neither the most prominent of these buildings, nor the best known. A chain mail-clad colossus looming over Broadway, Denton Corker Marshall’s Faculty of Engineering and IT is easily the most visible of the new projects, while the addition with the highest profile is inarguably the Dr Chau Chak Wing Building – the new Business School – designed by World Famous Architect Frank Gehry. The other day, as I stood gawking up at Gehry’s massively hyped…

Design professionals are embracing walls beyond their main purpose – a supporting structure – and exploring their full potential to create inspiring and interesting commercial spaces. According to Laminex marketing manager, Joanna Baker, the “do more with your walls” design thinking is seeing architects, designers and specifiers use walls as a stand-out, functional feature. “In the name of functional design, there is a rise in walls being used as writing surfaces, creative storage solutions, wall dividers and moveable wall systems to create reconfigurable spaces in commercial interiors, from offices to retail and hospitality fitouts,” Baker explains. Incorporating durable and decorative walls into functional commercial spaces can be achieved with the wide range of Laminex Wall Panel solutions. The offer includes Clipwall™, the latest revolutionary Laminex product: a wall-lining system that…

LOCATION Royal Prince Alfred Hospital Campus, Camperdown, New South Wales ARCHITECT, INTERIOR DESIGNER AND CLINICAL PLANNER HDR Rice Daubney CLIENT Chris O’Brien Lifehouse PROCUREMENT METHOD Design and construct SIZE (FLOOR AREA) 43,000 m2 NO. ROOMS/BEDS 140 beds COST $250 million TIMEFRAME Completed 2013…

KEY DESIGN CONSULTANTS Silver Thomas Hanley DesignInc (STHDI in joint venture) Bestec LCI Wallbridge & Gilbert and KBR (WGKBR in joint venture) Tract HP LOCATION North Terrace, Adelaide CLIENT Government of South Australia PROCUREMENT METHOD Public–private partnership, design and construct contract SIZE (FLOOR AREA) 175,000 m2 NO. ROOMS/BEDS 800 beds (including 100 day beds) COST $1.85 billion TIMEFRAME Due for completion 2016…

Cameron Bruhn: Tell me about your research project and what you hope to achieve. Corbett Lyon: There has been extensive evidence-based research undertaken over the last ten years to identify environmental factors that have been shown to reduce stress for patients and families and that contribute to a patient’s wellbeing and recovery. As designers, we’re interested in understanding how these attributes can be incorporated in a meaningful way into a hospital’s design. We see this project very much as applied research: how these existing, evidence-based findings can be translated into a form that is useful for our design discipline. Julie Willis: Within that evidence-based research, we can point to a whole series of design factors that are shown to positively influence patient outcomes, but these tend to test one element…

The Australian Open tennis championship means big bucks to Melbourne, Australia’s “sports capital.” In 2007, the City of Melbourne estimated it brought over $240 million into the state’s economy, along with more than 554,000 visitors. Melbourne Park, located less than a kilometre from the offices of Collins Street in the CBD, has played host to the Open since 1988. The park, along with the adjacent Olympic and Yarra Parks, forms part of the Sports and Entertainment Precinct, a key staging ground in Melbourne’s attempt to project itself as a “world-class” events city. So imagine the panic when, in 2008, a covetous New South Wales launched a bid to pinch the Australian Open, one of the crown jewels of Melbourne’s annual events calendar and the raison d’être for Melbourne Park and…