Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2023 i Architecture Australia

Architecture Australia|January 2023

A built legacy with equity at its heart

In recent years, we’ve become accustomed to looking at familiar spaces with fresh eyes. Our bedrooms became offices, our dining rooms classrooms, and our backyards our outlet for home farming, outdoor adventuring and moments of much-needed time apart. I am now loving the vigour with which we are learning to reimagine our public spaces, from big city density to small urban hub. These spaces have been re-embraced for the gift that they are: our public living rooms. “Civic architecture” could be loosely used to describe almost any public building, from libraries to galleries, memorials to the high court. But all display a common feature: they enable the community to come together for a shared purpose. While poorly considered public spaces can be cold and uninviting, good public architecture has the…

3 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Design Inc with Lacoste and Stevenson, and Manuelle Gautrand Architecture

Built on the land of the Dharug people It’s been a bit rough since 2016, don’t you think? In times as turbulent as these, it’s human nature to become nostalgic for simpler days. Reflecting as they do the desires and fears of society, architects are not averse to a little nostalgia. The new Parramatta civic centre, or Phive (the address is 5 Parramatta Square), is not nostalgic – but then, it was commissioned by design competition in 2016. Before all of this. Phive is designed by Australian firms Design Inc, and Lacoste and Stevenson, with French firm Manuelle Gautrand Architecture – whose manifesto to “re-enchant the city” is tantalisingly hopeful, almost optimistic. Parramatta is becoming a city of spires, not in the way of the medieval perpendicular, but in the…

7 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Public living rooms at the financial and urban interface

How public places are funded, designed and delivered continues to be a complex and often polarizing conversation. It’s a topic close to the hearts of urban practitioners, who wish to contribute to cities that are equitable, inspiring and inclusive. The narrative of “public versus private” has been perpetuated over time by a globalized property market, contributing to a perception that the public good is almost always exclusive to private interests. However, we are increasingly recognizing that the interconnectedness between policy, finance, markets, capability, ecologies, community and design requires a nuanced and integrated approach to funding and designing future places, whether public or private. As organizations and investors lean further into their environmental, social and governance (ESG) goals, there is growing impetus to take new learnings and holistic strategies into the…

10 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Hassell

Built on the land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples For more than 30 years, South Bank Parklands has held a special place in the hearts of Queenslanders. Emerging out of Expo 88, an event that redefined the way Brisbane saw itself as a city, the Parklands has evolved to become a place that brings the community together at the river’s edge. (“Suddenly Brisbane had a promenade and a place from which to view the spectacle of the city,” wrote Louise Noble in Architecture Australia in 2001.1) Today, it is one of Brisbane’s iconic destinations and is synonymous with the city. It provides a critical counterpoint to the dense urbanity of the CBD. An estimated 14 million people visit it each year for respite and relaxation, play and performance, and…

6 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Cultural safety: What is it and how do we design for it?

I have a theory: the COVID-19 pandemic has something to teach us about cultural safety. If you can bear it, think back to those moments in the early days of the pandemic. Remember how unsettling it was to have to cover your face to stay safe every time you left your home? Remember how, when in public spaces or even just walking down the street, you had to assume that anyone could make you unwell, and as a result, you tended to give them a wide berth? No doubt there were times when the lack of airflow in a particular interior space made you realize that the environment had not been constructed with your safety in mind. This is what cultural unsafety feels like. For First Nations peoples, anyone, at…

7 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Junk Tectonics, Feral Communities: The Metamorphosis of the Mildura Golf Club

Architect’s description Large-scale networks of capital have driven a global anthropogenic transformation in which extractive values govern regional landscapes. 1 This project investigates the hierarchies of a golf course and an adjacent landfill site on the arid lands of Mildura, a regional city beside the Murray River, one of Australia’s most vital water sources. The golf course is exposed as thriving on extraction and exclusion, which it imposes upon communities, ecologies and a diminished river. Through a lens of feminist ecological thought, this project extends the notion of human and non-human entanglement to include the discarded junk that has become part of our geological landscape. 2 By conducting a reversal of extractive hierarchies, it seeks to celebrate ecologies, communities and junk. This project proposes a metamorphosis of the…

2 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

At home in the public domain

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognize their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging. When we began thinking about this issue, we planned to focus on civic architecture – but soon realized that this title didn’t encapsulate all the buildings we wanted to include. Our emphasis is on public spaces that are designed to encourage people to gather, in turn fostering community and creating new connections. These typologies aren’t contained to publicly funded projects, as the word “civic” might imply – consider the various funding models explored by Dhiren Das (page 38). The idea of the “public living room” removes the focus on how a project was funded or delivered and shifts it to…

3 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Fieldwork

Built on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation The new Collingwood Yards arts precinct, designed by Fieldwork, repurposes the site and buildings of the old Collingwood Technical School in the inner Melbourne suburbs. Established in 1912, the Technical School closed in 2005, and the buildings sat derelict for more than a decade. The vision for Collingwood Yards was driven by Marcus Westbury, inaugural CEO of the charitable social enterprise that owns and manages the precinct, and Daniel Besen, the founding chair of its board. The site was deeded to Collingwood Yards by the state government on the understanding that “it remains a place of cultural production and creativity.”1 Collingwood Yards aims to embed the arts in community, to encourage and support arts participation and to provide…

8 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Maintaining the buzz: City universities as shared assets

The past 20 years have seen a seismic shift in universities. Changes in learning and teaching, research and engagement have reshaped the activities, buildings, spaces and public interface of campuses. More and more Australian universities are turning the campus model inside out, embracing the city and the wider society that they serve. The notion of an institutional compound exclusive to the academic community is being dismantled as universities focus on connecting with their neighbourhoods, attracting industry partners and welcoming in the public. This transformation of tertiary pedagogy was well underway even before the COVID-19 pandemic made online learning the new norm. Over the past decade, “chalk and talk” lectures have gradually been replaced in favour of more collaborative learning models. These new practices have fostered “communities of learning” and, in…

7 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

ARM Architecture

Built on Tubowgule, on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation Having attended two performances of Mahler’s second symphony on successive nights at the Sydney Opera House after its recent renewal, I found the acoustic transformation nothing short of miraculous. The sound was equally good from seats in different parts of the auditorium – a significant improvement. The transformation is a credit to the Opera House CEO Louise Herron and her team, alongside the architect, ARM Architecture, and a team of expert engineering, acoustic, heritage and other consultants. The works involved design tasks of great technical complexity and aesthetic demands, and were achieved within a constrained timeframe. In 2013, the Sydney Opera House announced a “decade of renewal” to upgrade the iconic building, which opened in 1973.…

6 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Robin Gibson and Partners (1988) Donovan Hill and Peddle Thorp Architects (2006)

On any given morning, before the State Library of Queensland opens, you’ll find visitors in the Knowledge Walk, waiting to go inside to start their creative journey. Many will have been there for some time, making themselves at home in the building’s covered, open-air atrium. SLQ is a container for stories of Queensland. People from all walks of life toil here to tell their stories and read the stories of others. Inside the walls, visitors imagine themselves as protagonists of a future story, yet to be told. I have always loved the energy of the building in the morning. It’s a juxtaposition of quiet and people bustling about; there’s a great sense of anticipation. What especially appeals to me is that the outside spaces are purposefully relaxed and properly Queensland.…

8 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Honourable mention

Frontier Rowhouse by Lee Yang Yang, Amanda Lau and Edmund Limadinata Architect’s description This idea was submitted for the Concept Home 2030 Competition, which reimagines the Malaysian terrace house typology. As the world is slowly recovering from the pandemic and heading toward catastrophic climate change, we ask: What is the role of the future house in the face of these challenges? The Malaysian terrace house or “rowhouse” – the most prevalent housing typology in Malaysia – is an attached townhouse divided by party walls and sharing access to the street. Originating from the colonial shophouse of the 1800s, with its (now cherished) central courtyard, the terrace house came into its own in the 1970s. As car ownership has grown, the front yards of these houses have increasingly become double car…

9 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

The “public living room” and its role in contemporary urban transformation

If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that human life is diminished without social connections and the experience of face-to-face interactions. Surveys of the impact of COVID-19 on health and wellbeing have found that one in two Australians report feeling “more lonely” since the pandemic,1 and social isolation has gained ground as a major public health issue in the last decade. Social thinkers have been documenting this trend for some time, with Robert D. Putnam’s book Bowling Alone (2000) reporting the decline of social capital in the United States as long ago as 1950.2 The problem is that social isolation and loneliness place a huge strain on society and the economy, especially against the backdrop of financial crises, and the downward spiral of civic participation has the potential…

9 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Vokes and Peters with Zuzana and Nicholas

Built on the land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples Historically, architects have been entrenched in the beauty of form, material and expression in their attempts to create signature buildings that attract the media’s attention and sustain the public’s focus. In these buildings, space and form are predetermined elements, downgrading the occupants to mere consumers, marginal to the process of architectural conception. However, today, an increasing urge to initiate more sustainable patterns of life and to consider occupants’ physical and mental wellbeing means that architectural design needs to focus on people and their daily habits. This approach can be called “everyday architecture.”1 The New Farm Neighbourhood Centre is a telling example of everyday architecture. Established in 1986 to support the local community, the centre was housed in a Queenslander with…

6 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Kerry Hill Architects (KHA)

Built on the land of the Whadjuk people of the Nyoongar nation Walyalup Civic Centre, designed by Kerry Hill Architects (KHA) and located within Walyalup Koort (formerly Kings Square) – a public square in the centre of Fremantle – is the latest iteration in a grand narrative of civic transformation across nearly 200 years. Replacing a modernist civic regeneration from the 1960s that damaged the urban fabric, the KHA design raises the question: Can modernism be used again, this time to heal the city and return urbanity? The State Heritage-listed City of Fremantle was laid out in 1833 by John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia. The plan engages two axes, one centred on High Street, which runs down the centre of a promontory terminating at Arthur Head, and…

6 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Not neutral: Diverse and inclusive public spaces

The view that urban planning, policy and design should be a neutral framework has not led to greater inclusion and safety in public spaces. Indeed, through the misuse and misinterpretation of neutral approaches, practitioners – even if unintentionally – can negatively impact the ability of communities to participate safely in public life. While neutrality may be useful for undoing harmful and limiting gender stereotypes (like, for example, the gender stereotypes that shape children and teens via play, fashion and media), the misdirected belief that the design process can “objectively” guide solutions and resist bias ignores the everyday experience of minoritized people. In fact, in the disciplinary context of urban design and architecture, “neutral design” is rarely – if ever – neutral and results in practitioners failing to engage ethically with…

6 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Experimentation, speculation, invention – celebrating the unbuilt

Jury chair overview In each year’s cohort of entries to the AA Prize for Unbuilt Work, an underlying theme tends to emerge that provides commentary on a particular social, environmental or economic issue. For me, this is the exciting opportunity of design thinking, where the creative and practical expertise of architects and designers leads to optimistic solutions to big-picture problems. The strong narrative within this year’s shortlisted projects is retrofit and regeneration on a multitude of scales – from large urban proposals to small-scale insertions into a single apartment. The environmental and economic case for retrofitting what already exists – not to mention the social and health benefits to citizens – is persuasive. A compelling critique of industrial extraction and recreation, the winning project, Junk Tectonics, Feral Communities: The Metamorphosis…

2 min

Architecture Australia|January 2023

Retain, Repair, Reinvest: Ascot Vale by Office

Architect’s description In March 2022, Melbourne was ranked the fifth-least-affordable city in the world, with median house prices sitting at 12 times the median household income. At the same time, demand for homelessness services and assistance in gaining access to stable housing continues to increase, with more than 66,000 Victorians in urgent need of housing. Despite this, the state government’s current approach to public housing estate renewal is a costly process of demolition, relocation and construction of new buildings that house fewer people in need. Retain, Repair, Reinvest is an alternative strategy that responds to Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) position that estate refurbishment is not a viable option – despite no feasibility study being available to the public. This site-specific approach, which provides opportunities for improved…

2 min