Indholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i Architecture Australia

How can we as architects collectively elevate our role? What are the best examples of architects successfully creating positive change? And how can this success be replicated? These were some of the key questions that we workshopped at the international presidents’ forum at the American Institute of Architects Conference on Architecture and Design 2024. It was fantastic to hear about the success and failure of various tactics in delivering outcomes for the profession and our communities. While there are always ways to improve (I am an architect, after all), I was heartened by the Australian Institute’s comparatively advanced advocacy success, with: – Government Architects and City Architects in many of our large population centres – networked advocacy through engagement with the building and planning ministers’ meeting, the federal infrastructure minister…

The Cottage School in Bellerive, nipaluna/Hobart, located on the eastern shore of the Derwent estuary and occupying the unceded lands of the Mumirimina people, is a community-led primary school. The school began in 1975 with a group of parents seeking to extend the experience of a home-based kindergarten to primary school children, and first occupied a small timber cottage – now known to the school community as Green Cottage. Through the purchase of three adjoining lots and adapting the cottages thereon to create inclusive, home-based educational spaces, the school has expanded to accommodate about 90 students from kinder through to grade six. The latest addition – an extension of the original Green Cottage by Taylor and Hinds Architects – cleverly negotiates its suburban context in tandem with the school’s philosophy…

DANIEL BARBER One of the things I’m thinking about is the role of architecture and design at the interface between, on the one hand, weather and climate, and, on the other hand, extreme versus normative, or extreme versus familiar. You can’t really experience climate without media, right? You can experience weather – we experience weather in our bodies as we go through the world. But climate has a level of abstraction, so media – images and graphs and charts, modes of interpretation and representation – becomes essential. And in a related way, the non-professional public generally needs media to understand architecture. We can experience buildings, but media helps us get a sense of what’s going on. So, I think media can be an important tool for engaging with this concept…

Australia demands a special kind of land management plan.1 For millennia, Aboriginal people have lived as one with their environment, in harmony with all things alive – Country (the land, waters and sky), animals and birds. They have existed without hierarchy or domination to become the world’s oldest continuous living culture. However, since colonisation, traditional land management strategies have largely ceased, and practices such as large-scale farming have destabilised Country and caused widespread erosion. Waterways have been altered by damming, depriving creeks and tributaries of water and leaving large tracts of native bush parched. The stripping of land and the grazing of non-native species have led to the introduction of foreign weeds and the loss of native grasses. Our climate has always been in a state of flux. Having lived…

New South Wales Public Sulman Medal (1) Parramatta Aquatic Centre by Grimshaw and Andrew Burges Architects with McGregor Coxall Award (2) 119 Redfern St by Aileen Sage, Djinjama, Jean Rice Architect, Dr Noni Boyd and the City of Sydney (3) Long Reef Surf Life Saving Club by Adriano Pupilli Architects (4) Powerhouse Castle Hill by Lahznimmo Architects (5) South East Centre for Contemporary Art (SECCA) by Sibling Architecture Commendation The Pavilion Performing Arts Centre Sutherland by CHROFI and NBRS Redfern Station by Design Inc Sydney Football Stadium (Allianz Stadium) by Cox Architecture Commercial Sir Arthur G Stephenson Award (6) Campbell House Private Office by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer Award (7) The Porter House Hotel by Candalepas Associates (8) The Sydney Swans HQ at the Royal Hall of Industries by Populous Commendation…

The first architect in history was the human who looked around and realised they were not at the mercy of the elements, but that through observation, and with a bit of ingenuity and physical effort, they could protect themselves, their family, their tribe. Our profession has been at this game for a long, long time. So, as the climate changes and we are battered by an overabundance of extreme weather events – bushfires, floods, storms and heatwaves – what does this legacy offer us? Looking back through time, it’s clear that extreme weather events are not new. Numerous locations around the globe have contended with regular visitations by typhoons, monsoons or heatwaves, often compounded by humidity and other harsh weather events. This thesis was the basis for my Churchill Fellowship,…

JUSTINE CLARK What does the increase in extreme/atypical weather events mean for disaster recovery in our urban and regional built environments and the communities who live in them? ROBERT STENT Our urban environments are complex and diverse places; maintaining a viable future will be challenging. The convergence of urbanisation and climate-driven disasters will expose more communities to risk. We need to abandon development norms with a sense of urgency. Solutions cannot be predetermined or pro forma. Instead, we need transdisciplinary research, community input and creative thinking alongside scientific and technological capability to validate deliverable solutions that address sea-level rise, extreme heat and other disruptions. People will want to return to what they had, but this is not always possible. Urban environments will have to adapt. Regional communities are already more…

David Chatfield David Chatfield is a photographer living in Brisbane. Focusing primarily on architecture and interior photography, he is interested in exploring the subjective spatial experience. (PHOTOGRAPHER, PAGE 16) Carol Marra Carol Marra is a Churchill Fellow, registered architect and Alastair Swayn grant recipient working across practice, education, research and government. (WRITER, PAGE 50) John de Manincor John de Manincor is an architect and writer based in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, and a founding partner of Possible Studio. (WRITER, PAGE 16) Paola Leardini Paola Leardini is an associate professor and director of research in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Queensland. (WRITER, PAGE 52) Stuart King Stuart King is a senior lecturer in architectural history and design at the University of Melbourne.…

Penguins and petrol-heads seem an unlikely pairing to define the identity of a place, but it’s probably not the strangest combination for a regional Australian town. (Think dogs and tuckerboxes, for example, in Gundagai.) Occasionally, cultural buildings have drawn figuratively on such symbols to encapsulate parochial character. (Think cockatoos at Burgess’s 1990 Brambuk Cultural Centre, or topically, the recently destroyed dragon spire of Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange.) The new Berninneit Cultural Centre by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects (JCB) at Cowes on Phillip Island, just off Victoria’s south coast, shows no such zoomorphic (or motomorphic?) leanings, referencing instead an established language of municipal architecture and refining that legacy with sensitivity to Australian ecologies of place. Known by its Traditional Owners as Millowl, Phillip Island has long been associated with its tourist…

The link between extreme meteorological events as a climate change manifestation and the Anthropocene remains controversial, despite the plethora of scientific evidence. Undeniable, though, is the destructive consequence on natural and social ecosystems of the accelerating transformation and precariousness of cities in the face of climatic events of unexpected magnitude. The recent and unprecedented deluge in the desert city of Dubai is testimony to this condition. And Australia is no exception, as evidenced by recent major environmental and social upheavals across our capital cities as a result of climate-related disasters. Addressing the global causes of climate change is a sensitive political and economic matter. But as designers, we can take action locally by rethinking the way we conceive, build and inhabit our cities. Design for city resilience enables individuals, communities,…

Last year I was working comfortably, with small domestic practice in a home office, spending more and more time at the club … when a tsunami hit. The first wave came at the Institute’s Victorian Chapter Awards night, when the Enduring Architecture Award was named in my honour. The Chapel of St Joseph in Surrey Hills, designed by our office, was the first recipient of the award in 2003. I admit that on hearing from president David Wagner of the Chapter’s intentions, I thought it was a new award – the Enduring Architect Award. I would have been happy with that. Nothing prepared me, however, for the next wave, a few weeks later. In Gerald’s Bar in Carlton North for a chat with the Institute’s CEO Cameron Bruhn, we were…