Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2018 i Architecture Australia

The Institute’s mission is “to make the world a better place through architecture.” As we stand at the start of a new year, we must re-calibrate ourselves to this mission. It allows us to see beyond our drawing boards to the broader scale and impact that architecture can, does and must have on the condition of the world. Currently, the world is sitting on the edge of acceptable carbon dioxide emissions. We are on the precipice between the now urgent, necessary reduction of human-caused CO emissions 2 and exceeding the cap that will induce climate change’s most catastrophic effects. In 2017, a resurgence in global emissions of CO from fossil fuels and 2 industry saw a 2 percent rise to a record thirty-seven billion tons – the most significant increase…

The Gold Coast suburb of Robina was privately developed in the 1980s after Singaporean real estate developer Robin Loh and local landowner and real estate agent Arthur Earle founded Robina Land Corporation and purchased 1658 hectares of what was at that time predominantly grazing land. Moshe Safdie, an Israeli-Canadian architect, urban designer and academic, prepared the original concept masterplan, which was only ever partially completed, setting aside an area for Robina Town Centre on a site known as the “Great Swamp.”1 The town centre opened in 1996 and was designed by architects Cameron Chisholm and Nicol. Its original layout had a clear, five-legged star diagram that reached out to its surrounds but over the ensuing years it has undergone a number of redevelopments and had become a closed, triangular plan,…

Global sporting events like the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (GC2018) are not only about athletic ideals and reinforcing connections between seventy member nations and territories. Visitors are also invited to experience the cultural achievements of the host nation and GC2018 has prompted vast investment in physical infrastructure and cultural development programs to meet these expectations. The expansion of the region’s cultural infrastructure reflected in ARM’s 2014 Gold Coast Cultural Precinct Masterplan elevates the critical role architecture plays in projecting cultural identities on the world stage. Launching off the region’s so-called “blank canvas,” this vision boasts a vibrant hub at Evandale that connects cultural institutions with communities of diverse local and international spectators. However, in the staging of GC2018 and its supporting cultural vision, Indigenous culture and landscapes are arguably…

 Over the next twenty-five years, the population of the Gold Coast is set to grow by approximately 350,000 people. Although this growth rate is no faster than in other Australian cities, it requires that local government, professionals and residents engage in the planning and design of our city’s future. In addition, the Gold Coast is one of Australia’s most popular tourist destinations – visited by 12.9 million people in 2016. This tourist flow adds a complex layer for the City of Gold Coast to contemplate in balancing entertainment and permanent lifestyle considerations. The City of Gold Coast’s City Plan and the recently released South East Queensland Regional Plan both state that future planning for our region will focus on infill development, limiting the release of greenfield land to prevent urban…

There is some irony in an award-winning building landing on a Gold Coast floodplain because a Russian family’s holiday was diverted from a tsunami-ravaged island resort to Queensland’s tourism playground. Denis Shtengelov and his family, who own KDV Group, were so taken with the ambience, climate and openness of the Gold Coast that they entertained dreams of a golf and tennis academy as a new venture rather different from their business interests in confectionery and snack foods. The much-loved Carrara Gardens Golf Course, popular with oldies, tradies, locals and amateur ball bashers, and in the heart of Commonwealth Games sporting territory, was an obvious choice for the realization of a twelve-hectare sports academy. KDV Group acquired the site in 2011 and stage one of the KDV Golf and Tennis Academy…

One of the most enduring images of the Gold Coast for my generation is P. J. Hogan’s acclaimed 1994 film Muriel’s Wedding. Like protagonist Muriel Heslop, the Gold Coast has at times taken on the metaphoric qualities of the black sheep. The seminal January–March 1959 Gold Coast special issue of Architecture in Australia (the precursor to this magazine) described something well outside of the mainstream of architectural discourse – a place where Bill Heslop’s laconic mantra “You Can’t Stop Progress” was riding roughshod over architecture and planning considerations. With this 2018 Gold Coast special issue, almost sixty years on from the cautionary volume guest edited by Peter Kollar and Milo Dunphy, Australia’s sixth largest city enters the mainstream. The contributors to this volume eschew mid-century snobbery to describe a city…

The Gold Coast issue of Architecture in Australia that launched 1959 marks a special moment in postwar architectural criticism in this country. It wasn’t just that it bridged Robin Boyd’s excoriation of the Gold Coast as “a fibro-cement paradise under a rainbow of plastic paint” in The Age (28 December 1957) and as “a poor man’s Miami” in The Australian Ugliness (1960) or that it dared to address issues of popular culture in the profession’s leading journal. Rather, it represented an editorial position that sought to present balanced discussion and critique of an emerging urban phenomenon – in this case, “the official playground of the whole Australian continent.” The same editorial team would go on to produce another landmark issue in December 1959, this one on Canberra, in which landscape,…

Rem Koolhaas, in conversation with Michael Keniger in 1980, stood on top of Mount Tamborine and, looking down at the canal estates and highrises teetering on the edge of the ocean, declared that the Gold Coast enjoyed an “architecture of flimsiness.” Almost forty years later those words still ring true, with super-tall towers being added to the mix while sand on our beaches is constantly being replenished artificially, battling erosion with a complex network of sand-pumping infrastructure. The erosion is itself a consequence of development restricting the natural replenishment of sand by the offshore winter westerlies, compounded by the ever-present threat of rising sea levels. The fragility of the relationship between the built and natural environments is unnerving, but this disjunction and tension between what is natural and what is…

Embodying a Euclidean clarity of form, this prestigious beachside apartment building by Virginia Kerridge Architect stands out from its neighbours by virtue of its articulate materiality and sensitive human scale. Review by Adrian Carter Photography by John Gollings Directly facing onto Main Beach on the Gold Coast, the recently completed M3565 Main Beach Apartments by Virginia Kerridge Architect stands out from the diverse neighbouring buildings, not in terms of height or outline, as so many Gold Coast buildings do, but by virtue of a human urban scale and a disciplined, deceptively simple Euclidean clarity of architectural form. This purity of form is enlivened by a beautifully layered, abstract composition of timber slatted screens, zinc panels, articulated concrete floor decks and elegant metal railings, all well proportioned, carefully detailed and crafted…

Most Australians have an opinion or story about the Gold Coast, which, if prompted, they are only too willing to share. But as a general rule they don’t think much about its qualities as an urban phenomenon, not deeply anyway. As the Gold Coast gears up to host the Commonwealth Games for a fortnight in April 2018, everyone is hoping that the city will shine brightly under the spotlight of global attention. There is already a subtext in news and marketing media coverage that this will mark a point where the Gold Coast has “come of age” by assuming its role as host of a sophisticated, major international event. The city’s tourism, marketing, media, arts and cultural bodies are operating in various ways to project what they interpret as the…

Matthew Eagle started ME in his home town on the Gold Coast because he believes there is design potential in a city that has been developed by a strong short-term investment market. As discussed in his reflection on the Gold Coast (see page 55), Eagle set out to challenge the status quo of “big and flashy is better” and his steady stream of clients proves that his instinct was correct. Eagle is a quietly spoken, humble architect who doesn’t shout loudly about making change. Rather, he takes a more strategic and subtle approach to challenging norms – to date, through a series of residential projects. Eagle’s work demonstrates that the fabric of the residential suburbs is an important aspect of city making, one that is often overlooked. Although Eagle often…

The Gold Coast is one of Australia’s most rapidly growing cities, in which the imperatives of continual development and change have been driven by its attraction as a tourist destination and by the image of its carefree, laidback lifestyle. And yet as the city continues to expand it has had to behave more like a conventional city, its driving forces shifting to meet the needs of residents rather than visitors and to strands of its economy other than tourism. Despite the recent drive to promote its urban diversity and civic amenity, many will be surprised to learn that the Gold Coast is described as a “knowledge city” in the masterplan for the Gold Coast Health and Knowledge Precinct. A few kilometres inland from Surfers Paradise is the Parklands precinct in…