Innehållsförteckning för July 2020 från Architecture Australia

At the time of writing, Hobart is on the precipice of becoming a campus city as the University of Tasmania plans its $600 million relocation to the CBD from the suburban Sandy Bay campus. The increase in the number of large-scale buildings this will bring to Hobart will have a significant impact on the character and life of the city, particularly for the small, delicate and often climatically challenged CBD. As the city prepares for this transition, it may well look to other Australian campus cities to discover the unique contribution that universities can make to the sense of identity, cohesion, amenity and quality of the public realm. As large-scale urban developers, universities have a responsibility to ensure and protect the integrity of their developments in the interest of the…

In Australia, the pursuit of “fine grain” in the built environment emerged alongside the rise of the urban design profession during the 1980s and can now be found enshrined in planning codes across all our cities. The benefits of preserving and fostering smallness in our cities are intuitive: small tenancies provide opportunities for small businesses, result in more stimulating and vibrant streetscapes and dramatically enhance the attractiveness of walking. If we accept Laura Harding’s assertion that “design regulation tries to compensate for the absence of a culture,”1 then we should unpack why these intuitive qualities are not being delivered by business-as-usual development. Why is development in our central city areas consistently trending toward bigness? To understand our current condition, we need to reflect on the colonial settlement pattern of our…

For most of us, building a home is linked to a search for contentment. We talk of “dream homes” and “forever houses” because we know that architecture has the capacity to transform the way we live and how we feel about ourselves. But how do we want to live and what do we want to feel? These are difficult questions. In fact, finding contentment is a discipline that feels like it should be taught in schools as part of a “modern survival” course – one that also helps us navigate social media, find the best mobile data plan, and effectively secure our browsing data. Sort of like Scouts, but with less woggle. Knowing who we are and what actually makes us happy is crucial to building a sustainable housing future…

I first visited Marsden Park on a Saturday morning during the early weeks of COVID-19 and social distancing. The newly established suburb in Sydney’s north-west felt still, the front yards unoccupied, curtains drawn, no one meandering about, not even cars. A generously scaled green playing field, soon visible on arrival, offered space, light and air amidst the relatively dense subdivision – but it was utterly bare, without weekend sport, games or playing kids. It was as if the necessary retreat from public life had heightened the sense of newness, the just-finished quality of this young neighbourhood unaltered by use, age or patina. And yet, despite this eerie sense of quiet vacancy, the dynamic, glowing figure of the Marsden Park Amenities, at the entryway to the oval, appeared unreservedly buoyant, waiting…

In regional towns and cities across Australia, the car reigns supreme. The time-honoured tradition of “chucking a blockie” or “hacking a mainy” (driving around the inner city or up and down the main street) remains a favourite pastime. It is a well-worn adage that “if you can’t park out front, don’t bother going.” But while the car is central to regional life, it is not often a catalyst for good design. Usually, the pragmatics of parking and car servicing dominate new development, as big-box stores in large sheds stamped with universalized corporate branding become the hallmark of growing settlements. Townsville’s Northshore Car Wash offers a delightful alternative, overlaying the essential components of a small utilitarian service building with an expressive armature that endeavours to create a sense of place and…

In 1966, at the age of five, I first declared my intention to pursue a career in architecture. I remember my prep teacher, Miss Naughton, complimenting me on how well I formed the letters in the word “Architect.” My lettering has been pretty good ever since. I started my own small practice in 1968, when my sister Fiona commissioned me to design a tree house at our home in Beaumaris. The tree of choice – a huge old cypress – was actually growing on an adjoining property and hanging over our side fence. Nowadays, you would need a planning permit and most likely end up at VCAT. But these were simpler times and I proceeded to prepare working drawings. Numerous notes on the drawings referring to Fiona’s particular needs indicate…

Looking out of my window in locked-down London, the world looks much as it did a few months ago, and yet everything has changed. Even leaving the house has become a trial. Everyday interactions – a handle, a button, a handshake, a conversation – have taken on a sense of dread, tainted by the threat of infection. Confined to the house and the family, the things that once defined our routines – buying takeaway coffee, squeezing onto the train, making small talk with coworkers – are distant memories. Instead, we are cycling, Zoom-ing, home-schooling, hand-sanitizing and, most of all, dreaming. Dreaming of what’s next. The pandemic has allowed us to step off the hamster wheel for a moment, to glimpse another future. When all of this is over, what kind…

The way we design our urban realm, public spaces and amenities is likely to be significantly affected by the current global pandemic. A series of important historical developments in urban planning and management – such as sanitation systems in the mid-nineteenth century – have been responses to infectious diseases. As I’m writing this article, isolated in my apartment during the COVID-19 outbreak, the thought of using any public amenity, let alone a public toilet, screams viral infection (and authorities have temporarily closed down many such facilities for this reason). But, regardless of global pandemics, public restrooms present challenging and layered design problems. As well as carrying an immense cultural and social responsibility, these structures are subject to the toughest of conditions, including vandalism, maintenance issues and high usage. Commissioned by…

“Architecture and architectural freedom are above all a social issue that must be seen from inside a political structure, not from outside it.” – Lina Bo Bardi In my mind, the terms “small” and “state government” don’t immediately sit together. In 2019, the state of New South Wales employed more than 400,000 people, making it the largest employer in the country. In the 2019–20 financial year, it will oversee a budget of more than $90 billion and implement more than 200 public infrastructure projects. The Department of Planning, Industry and Environment, within which the Government Architect (GANSW) is located, employs 14,000 of those 400,000, with the GANSW accounting for around 20. We are not the only employees with a design background in state government, but we are the only team…

Typically, we are not aware of the influence that buildings can have on us; we have a tendency to underestimate architecture by exaggerating its utility. We often think of buildings not as spaces in which human life takes shape but rather as sites for certain functions and activities. This is part of the reason why Stuart Vokes, director of Vokes and Peters, is reluctant to label rooms by their function, preferring instead to think of them as vessels marked by what we do in them. The new Milani Gallery by Vokes and Peters constructs a sequence of spaces that provides a careful interplay between the cosmopolitan attitude that is common in venues for the display of contemporary art and the local character of the place in which it has been…

Just as soft infrastructures need to be considered as necessary adjuncts to hard infrastructures, and equally vital to the success of both cities and organizations, small infrastructures are different in nature and complementary to larger ones. Of course, dividing and classifying by size is only one way of sorting things, and small infrastructures can be of both the hard and soft variety. I will discuss aspects of both in terms of their impact and usefulness in enabling the urban environment to function. Infrastructures can also be categorized by the way they perform. When thinking about stormwater, for example, there are “trunk” systems such as main drains, which are tree-like hierarchical systems of pipes that increase in diameter as more and more branches join into the flow. Such a system has…