Evelyn Reynolds

A group of architects in Canberra have created a competition to showcase exemplary homes that demonstrate significant reductions in their carbon footprints.
The ACT is projected to build around 100,000 new homes in the next 25 years, and combined with the territory’s interim C02 emissions targets, it presents an opportunity to lower the emissions of each new house constructed.
Architect and former ACT and national president of the Australian Institute of Architects Melinda Dodson initiated the Canberra Low Carbon Housing Challenge “to showcase the many exemplars already happening in the ACT and surrounding region and affirm the liveability and attainability of low carbon homes.”
“Housing currently remains on a trajectory well outside of our committed decarbonization targets and reducing our housing carbon footprint is a key element of our overall low carbon transformation.”
The competition is open to registered Canberra architects undertaking low- to medium-density housing of up to three storeys.

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Little Loft House by Light House Architecture and Science has energy savings of up to 80% of that of the typical Canberra home. Image:

Ben Wrigley

Architects can enter as many projects as they wish – either in progress or constructed. The projects will be assessed using the RapidLCA tool against the standard Canberra base case house.
The categories will be divided into detached or new house, alterations and additions and attached multi-unit houses, with 33 percent improvement on the Canberra base case house being “good”, 50 percent improvement “excellent” and 100 percent improvement or net-zero carbon “outstanding.”
Competition registrar David Clarke said, “By exploring C02 emissions reductions by housing architects, through the competition we anticipate a diversity of approaches, such as solar passive and energy-efficient design, use of recycled materials and renewables, and compact space use.”

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Little Loft House by Light House Architecture and Science has a modest addition of a lofted multi-purpose room.

The aim of the competition is to generate public interest in low-carbon housing. An exhibition of the winners and qualifying entries will be a part of the next Design Canberra Festival, which attracts 80,000 visitors annually.
“This year’s Design Canberra theme is ‘transformation’ and is an apt description for the benefits derived from low-carbon housing,” said the competition’s curatorial advisor Rob Henry. “Beyond the public exhibition, we are planning ‘after work’ low-carbon house tours so that people can experience the houses for themselves.”
The competition will be launched by the Institute’s national president, Tony Giannone, on 27 July and entries will open on 28 July. It will be judged by an expert jury as well as the public through a People’s Choice vote.
Entries is free; however, a $60 fee applies for each entry for the RapidLCA app.
For more information head to the competition website. More

A new “science gallery” will open to the public in Melbourne on 20 July.
The 3,500 square metre space, designed by Smart Design Studio, is purpose-built to inspire young adults through art, science and innovation. It is housed at the University of Melbourne’s newly completed Melbourne Connect precinct, designed by Woods Bagot, Hayball and Aspect Studios.
The gallery is the first in Australia to join the global Science Gallery Network, which are a collection of museums embedded in universities intended to engage 15- to 25-year-olds in STEM subjects and pathways.
Smart Design Studio created a flexible exhibition space, designed to minimize down time between exhibitions, as well as minimize waste.

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Science Gallery Melbourne by Smart Design Studio. Image:

Peter Casamento

A system of large screens hanging from a gridded ceiling enable the exhibition space to be configured to accommodate a variety of spatial sequences and installation.
A magnetized steel floor allows for the floor coverings to be easily changed to create different appearances and experiences.
The design creates a flexible, agile modular system, that avoid the use of traditional plasterboard walls and stud framing which are both labour and material intensive to construct and cannot be easily recycled.
“Science Gallery Melbourne invites visitors to an experience that is at once playful and contemplative; to engage deeply or just hang out,” said Smart Design Studio in a statement. “The gallery is inspiring and delightful, a canvas on which to write a new story of science colliding with art and innovation. The architecture of Science Gallery Melbourne enables the curation of a program of events, exhibitions, lectures, and happenings where the gallery will be perceived as always being open and accessibly by the community.”
At the entrance of the gallery, a digital media exhibition is integrated with the architecture through a series of touch-enabled screens behind 226 Venetian glass bricks.

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The entrance to Science Gallery Melbourne includes a digital media exhibition integrated into the building. Image:

Toby Welch

The project, led by Dr Niels Wouter, creates an ever changing canvas for digital data and interactive media. The inaugural display, The Digital Birthing Tree created with Wergaia/Wemba Wemba digital producer Susie Anderson, aims to connect First Peoples’ knowledge and the local area’s colonial history.

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The entrance to Science Gallery Melbourne includes a digital media exhibition integrated into the building. Image:

Toby Welch

Rose Hiscock, director of Museums and Collections, said, “Science Gallery Melbourne provides a contemporary, playful and welcoming space for young people to explore issues, ideas and the great challenges of our time. As a new home for STEM engagement, we aim to show that anything is possible when science and art come together.”
The inaugural exhibition, Mental: Head Inside, features more than 20 projects that challenge stereotypes surrounding metal health. More

Australia’s first purpose-built centre for LGBTIQ+ people has opened in the inner-Melbourne suburb of St Kilda.
The centre houses arrange of community organizations as well as spaces for art, culture, events and collaboration.
“It’s a very important community building. It couldn’t be more important. This is the only place where a lot of people will feel comfortable, completely at home and safe,” said architect James Brearley, whose practice James Brearley Architects and Urbanists, along with Grant Amon Architects, won a design competition in 2018 for the project.
Brearley and Amon are both long time St Kilda locals and sought to embody the spirit of the suburb in their design.

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The Victorian Pride Centre by Brearley Architects and Urbanists and Grant Amon Architects. Image:

John Gollings

“A lot of the communities associated with the Pride Centre have been associated with St Kilda for 70 years,” Brearley said.
“We figured if we could create the spirit of St Kilda in the building, we’d be part of the way to making it a welcoming building.
“St Kilda is very much about exotic architecture, Moorish architecture, the architecture of otherness, the architecture of escape, the architecture of suspended belief. We looked at some way to capture that and express that in a contemporary way.”
The architects initially experimented with spheres as a way of defining the architecture of the building. That, however, proved to be impractical and the design was eventually resolved to become a series of circular and elliptical tubes, which are extruded along the length of the site.
Dimity Reed, chair of the competition jury, said the winning design was “the most exciting, the most challenging submission. The design promises to provide a building with a memorable and exuberant identity – a building which claims the street.”
“The internal planning and layout is well considered and promises to deliver both an efficient disposition of elements and a strong sense of civic and community pride.”

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The Victorian Pride Centre by Brearley Architects and Urbanists and Grant Amon Architects. Image:

John Gollings

At the centre of the building is a dramatic elliptical atrium which is open to a majority of the internal tenanted spaces.
The building houses a range of organizations including Minus18, the Australian GLBTIQ Multicultural Council, Transgender Victoria, Switchboard Victoria, Melbourne Queer Film Festival, Thorne Harbour Health and bookshop Hares and Hyenas, The Australian Queer Archives, Star Observer, Joy FM, Monash Gender Clinic and Star Health.
It also includes social and events spaces, and co-working spaces, a reflection room and a theatrette.

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The Victorian Pride Centre by Brearley Architects and Urbanists and Grant Amon Architects. Image:

John Gollings

The Victorian Pride Centre was built on land donated by the City of Port Phillip and the state government contributed $25 million to the delivery of the building.
“As Australia’s first purpose-built pride centre, this is where everyone can come together, honour the past, celebrate the present, and work towards a more inclusive future,” said Victorian Pride Centre chair Vo Hang.
“We are open, welcoming to everyone, with a culture founded on diversity, inclusiveness and belonging. We are so thrilled to be the new home to a broad community of organisations, groups, vital services and social spaces.”
Victorian premier Daniel Andrews said, “Everyone deserves to be supported and celebrated, and the Victorian Pride Centre is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure this is the case for LGBTIQ+ communities – because in Victoria, equality is not negotiable.” More

Registration for the 2021 Australian Urban Design Awards remain open, with submission due to close on 20 July. Created in 1996 by then-prime minister Paul Keating’s Urban Design Taskforce, the national program recognizes excellence and innovation in Australia’s urban spaces. Entries are open to both built projects and design concepts and plans that embrace both […] More

City of Melbourne councillors have given the all clear for an 11-storey addition to the Epworth Freemasons Albert Street hospital in East Melbourne.
Designed by Silver Thomas Hanley and John Wardle Architects, the addition is the second stage in the redevelopment of the hospital, following the completion of a nine-storey cancer centre on Grey Street designed by the same architects in 2019.
The new tower will be built in the north-eastern corner of the Epworth Freemasons hospital precinct with a frontage to Albert Street to the north and Gotch Lane to the south-east. Connecting to the cancer centre and the eastern wing of the hospital, it will house 92 inpatient, intensive care and operating recovery beds, 12 operating and birthing rooms, and 30 consulting suites.
John Wardle Architects principal Kah-Fai Lee told the Future Melbourne Committee the tower had been designed to complement the earlier development and the surrounding streetscape.
“Albert Street has a mixed variety of building forms, scale and functions,” he said. “Within this variable context the proposed design completes the northern elevation by way of complementing scale, geometry, materiality and alignment.

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Epworth Freemasons Albert Street hospital redevelopment stage two, designed by Silver Thomas Hanley and John Wardle Architects.

“Expanding the brickwork podium and tower language established at Grey Street to Albert Street enables the design to maintain quality and consistency.”
A four-storey podium constructed of brickwork will accommodate inpatient units, birth suites and interventional suites. The brickwork, dark at ground level and lighter up to level three, will “reflect the solidity and materials of the adjoining properties and heritage streetscape.”
A recess to the eastern elevation at levels one and two will incorporate a landscaped terrace and planting trellis, connecting up to the landscaped podium roof.
Above the podium, the set-back glazed curtain wall is broken up with vertical and horizontal aluminium box sunshades. “The increased setbacks in conjunction with the change in materials contrasts with and emphasises the podium,” notes the planning report.
Some 23 objections were received to the proposal during public consultation, with building height and setbacks among the issues raised. But council planners said the proposal met design objectives and that the tower form was appropriate for the context – it “would not result in any additional overshadowing to the Fitzroy Gardens to the west from where it will form part of the existing backdrop of East Melbourne.”
Councillors were unanimous in approving the development at the Future Melbourne Committee meeting on 6 July. More

The School of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Newcastle will create five new full-time Indigenous-only teaching positions.
The positions range from senior lecturer to lecturer and will cover the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, construction management, disaster management and environmental management.
The announcement of the new positions coincides with the 2021 NAIDOC week and follows the introduction of new national competency standards for architects, which prioritize engagement with Indigenous peoples, and sustainability
The University of Newcastle has the largest cohort of Indigenous students of any Australian university, at 4.6 percent of the student body, as well as the highest number of Indigenous academics. However, head of architecture Sam Spurr said participation in the field of architecture had lagged behind other disciplines.
“This demonstrates the commitment of the school to embed and develop Indigenous knowledge into the teaching of architecture and construction,” she said. “It recognizes the prevailing settler colonial assumptions of space and place in our curriculum and the extraordinary and unique opportunities that Indigenous thinking and practice brings to the making our of future built environment.

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Sam Spurr, head of architecture at the School of Architecture and Built Environment. Image:

Daniel Boud.

“We hope with these positions to create a respectful, meaningful and purposeful engagement with Indigenous knowledge – [an engagement] that is Indigenous-led and Indigenous-designed in collaboration with the passion and support of our current staff body.”
The positions are expected to be advertised on 9 July.
In March 2021, on Close the Gap day, the university launched an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education and Research Framework, bringing together a range of plans and policies aimed at making the university a “culturally responsive place of excellence” for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and research.
Pro Vice-Chancellor, Indigenous Strategy and Leadership Nathan Towney said at the time that the framework placed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, staff and communities at its heart.
“We are determined to be a place where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and knowledge is woven into each aspect of the university – our relationships with communities, the way we teach, learn and research and how we foster reconciliation in our regions,” he said.
The announcement of the new positions has also comes at a time when cut-backs and redundancies are rife at universities around Australia. The University of Newcastle has itself made several rounds of cuts and revealed in July it would cut a further 150 full-time equivalent academic positions from the colleges of Engineering, Science and Environment (which includes the school of architecture); Health, Medicine and Wellbeing; and Human and Social Futures.
However, Spurr said the School of Architecture and Built Environment had suffered from understaffing in recent years and that university management was supportive of bolstering staff levels and encouraging greater Indigenous engagement. The positions are entirely new, with no current roles to be replaced. More

Themed “Reconnect,” this year’s Open House Melbourne program invites us to get back in touch with the city through its more than 150 buildings, tours and events. “The theme of ‘reconnect’ really speaks to our collective desire to re-engage with our city, our suburbs, and a future […] after experiences of pandemic, lockdown and isolation,” […] More

The University of Queensland is taking its second CBD campus to the bank, unveiling plans to adaptively re-use the state heritage-listed National Australia Bank at 308 Queen Street. In a planning proposal before the City of Brisbane, the university is proposing to refurbish both the bank building, and an existing contemporary office building at the […] More