Evelyn Reynolds

An at-grade carpark in Penrith is being transformed into a multi-level car park and office tower covered in plants, with Durbach Block Jaggers leading the design.
The Penrith City Council project at Soper Place will deliver an additional 600 carparks over five levels, along with 6,204 square metres of office space over four levels. The building will also feature a multi-use “public room” complete with a basketball court and playground, which is to be used for community-based activities such as markets, functions and concerts.

Durbach Block Jaggers, together with landscape architect Sue Barnsley Design, won a design competition for the project in late 2019. The competition jury said they appreciated the potential of the multi-use space and found the scheme was “at once pragmatic and poetic.”
A development application has now been submitted to council.
The design has been developed significantly from the competition stage, with large brick arches giving way to a green veil on a criss-cross framework, trimmed with terracotta-tinted concrete.

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Soper Place by Durbach Block Jaggers with Sue Barnsley Design.

“Brick is a mass material, suited to weight bearing arches,” the architects explain in planning documents. “The green veil system is angular, fine and woven into triangulated geometry. The new scheme takes its cues from this, becoming sharper, angular with mass concrete trims at key moments in the facade.”
The terracotta trims, which work to emphasise space and form, reflects the colours found naturally in the Blue Mountains Escarpment and the Nepean River.
Sue Barnsley’s landscape design similarly responds the landscape of the area. “The supporting design principle is to connect people to the landscape of the Nepean River and the bounding overbank ecotones, where the Cumberland Plains and the foot slopes of the Blue Mountains meet the riparian edge,” a design statement reads. “[The design is about] abstracting the local ecology of the Penrith landscape to ensure resilient planting, local character and urban habitat.”

The building will include a rooftop garden with extensive planting, in addition to the green facades. An external connecting stair will link all levels of the car park to the roof garden. Open and visible from the public realm, the stair will encourage use of the garden.
A guiding principle for the design is to help cool combat the urban heat island effect. Research shows that urban development directly contributes to the urban heat island effect in western sydney.
“The DA submitted will help reduce urban heat by delivering a living green facade featuring plants from ecologies along the Nepean River, extensive plantings within the public domain and a green rooftop, all of which will contribute to Cooling our City,” said Penrith mayor Karen McKeown.
“The delivery of this sustainable development will not only provide 600 additional car parking spaces for Penrith, but importantly, it will further strengthen Penrith’s position as Western Sydney’s most liveable city.”
The development will be on public exhibition for community feedback until 16 February. More

The Architects Accreditation Council of Australia (AACA)’s board of directors has announced the appointment of Kathlyn Loseby as incoming CEO, effective 8 March.
Loseby was president of the NSW chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects from 2019 and has been an assessor of the architectural practice exam for AACA since 2013. She was COO of architecture firm Crone until January of this year.
AACA said in a statement that Loseby brings to the role significant leadership and relationship management expertise developed over her career in architectural practice and business.

“We are delighted that Kathlyn will be joining the AACA as CEO,” said AACA president Catherine Townsend. “Kathlyn is an accomplished leader and brings an excellent skillset to the AACA team ready to lead us in to the future. This year will focus on the implementation of the revised National Standard of Competency and the changing regulatory frameworks in the construction industry”.

Loseby said it was an exciting time to be taking on the role, with broad changes afoot across the profession.
“I feel it has clear synergies with my recent roles in practice, as an assessor, in advocacy and in regulatory development,” she said. “In these roles, I have become ever more aware that the AACA underpins all aspects of the profession and is a fundamental, critical player in the future development of the industry and our profession’s ability to shape this future in a positive way.”
The current CEO, Kate Doyle, is stepping down from the role of CEO on 5 March.

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Distinguished architect David Jackson AO passed away in January.
Jackson was former Australian Institute of Architects NSW chapter resident from 1978 to 1980 and national president from 1985 to 1986.
Jackson studied at the Architectural Association in London, and at the Yale School of Architecture. He worked in the USA and Jamaica before moving to Australia and became a design partner of McConnel Smith and Johnson (MSJ) from 1960 to 1971. “It was there that he met his wife Barbara, who is also an architect,” said Jackson’s daughter Rachel Jackson. “His career was unfailingly supported by Barbara. Their interests and talents were symbiotic – they worked, lived, designed, created, and raised a beautiful family together.”

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David Jackson (left) was former NSW chapter president (1978) and former national president of the Australian Institute of Architects (1986).
Image: courtesy Rachel Jackson
He was a founding partner of Jackson Teece Chesterman Willis (JTCW), now Jackson Teece, and was the managing partner from 1971 to 1998. He practice will celebrate its its 50th year of practice in 2021.

Jackson was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to architecture in Australia and Oceania in 1991 and was President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects from 1991 to 1994. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1990 and Honorary Fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects in 1992.
“The life and work of David Jackson is fondly remembered by his friends and family; wife Barbara, four children and nine grandchildren,” said Rachel Jackson. More

The Aboriginal community of Murrin Bridge, 320 kilometres south-west of Dubbo in central west New South Wales, will soon have a new preschool and community as its “civic heart” after a proposal developed by a group of University of Technology Sydney architecture academics gained development approval.
Informed by a series of design consultation workshops with the community, the proposal calls for the retention of the existing Murrin Bridge Preschool (established in in 1991) and the addition of two new pavilion buildings, which will be arranged around a triangular courtyard. The intervention will expand the existing school to accommodate up to 40 children aged 3 to 5 years and 12 staff. It will also recover public services recently relocated to the larger town of Lake Cargelligo (including health services and land council offices), and relocate the Regional Enterprise Development Institute and Centrelink offices currently based in a derelict building nearby.

Murrin Bridge has a population of around 86, according to the 2016 census, with most the community tracing their roots back to the Ngiyampaa and Barkindji tribes. It’s thought of as a “Koorie place,” not as the Country of a particular tribal group.
According to the architects, “the design process included the enthusiastic participation of the Murrin Bridge Local Aboriginal Land Council, the staff and students of the preschool, and the different service providers to imagine what lies ahead for the preschool and community hub collectively.”

The existing preschool only requires minor improvements, including better connecting the kitchen with the dining room. A gallery space and an outdoor kitchen will also be added to this pavilion.

A second pavilion, measuring 33 metres long with a 12-metre-wide pitched roof barn, will house further space for the school along with the various community hub facilities. It will be flanked by two three-metre-deep verandahs. The third pavilion contains a kids’ outdoor playground and three storage rooms. The new additions will be built using “off-the-shelf construction solutions typical to local agricultural sheds.”
Inside the triangular courtyard, a circle encloses a fire pit, three mounds and several trees. Around the circle is a “sensory garden,” “cool garden” and “civic garden.” The first garden is the school’s main playground and the entrance for students to arrive by bus; the second connects the existing school with its new extension; and the third opens to Murrin Bridge and the community hub.

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Murrin Bridge Preschool and Community Hub by Guillermo Fernández-Abascal (GFA2, UTS), Urtzi Grau (Fake Industries, UTS) and Campbell Drake (CD Studio, UTS) with Eduard Fernàndez and Jack Cooper et al.
Image: Choirender
The outdoor courtyard will be easily accessible from all internal areas. The design team note that the building will appear at first as a conventional rural or industrial shed.
“Working with familiar materials and building types of the area is a purposeful decision. The more recognizable the building becomes to its future users, the more it reveals its specific character as both a school and a community centre,” a design statement reads. “Playfully subversive, the building has the ability to adjust its identity, adopting a serious and formal civic role whilst at other times being comfortable, relaxed and childish. We believe that this controlled ambiguity is the best response to the complex project brief.”
Overseeing the architectural design are Guillermo Fernández-Abascal (GFA2, UTS), Urtzi Grau (Fake Industries, UTS) and Campbell Drake (CD Studio, UTS) with Eduard Fernàndez and Jack Cooper.
In charge of landscape design are Saskia Schut and Louisa King, along with and others from UTS.
The project is expected to be realized in 2021. More

A group of Quandamooka people on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) in Queensland have established a permanent protest camp and “Quandamooka Truth Embassy” in a last-ditch effort to stop the construction of an open-air structure housing the skeleton of a 15-metre eastern humpback whale.
The $3 million Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill) project at Mulumba (Point Lookout) is a project of the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation (QYAC), supported by the state government, with Cox Architecture leading the design. First mooted in 2018, the structure would be both a research hub and exhibit supporting the skeleton of a whale that beached itself at the point in 2011. This would be the only intact humpback whale skeleton on display in the southern hemisphere.

The design aims at making the facility as unobtrusive as possible, with the structure to be built into the landscape and formed of “complementary materials.” Its highest point, 7.3 metres tall, will sit below the existing tree line and sections of the environment around the building will be restored to the natural topography and vegetation.

The plan is for the facility to be a place for ongoing research in partnership with the University of Queensland.
Visitors would be able talk with researchers and listen to whale songs beamed into the facility via a hydrophone, an underwater microphone system.
If construction does begin, the facility is expected to be completed in seven months.
Cox Architecture is also leading the design for the planned Quandamooka Art, Museum and Performance Institute, another major project being developed by the QYAC and state government.

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Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill) by Cox Architecture.

While the QYAC says that community response to Cox Architecture’s designs had been “overwhelmingly positive,” there has been persistent resistance to the Yalingbila Bibula proposal from both Quandamooka and non-Indigenous locals since its launch.
“For three years we’ve protested and petitioned in masses to protect our sacred headland, to oppose the whale interpretive centre due to be built on this site commencing tomorrow,” the founders of the Quandamooka Truth Embassy said in a statement. “However, we’ve been constantly ignored and disregarded by the state government and Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation native title prescribed body.”

Opponents of the proposal say the hanging of the skeleton would be disrespectful and that the location of the exhibit is inappropriate.
“The heritage importance as well as the environmental importance of this place is really significant,” Traditional Owner Dale Ruska told the ABC.
“This is without a doubt culturally inappropriate, and we’ve had contact with other Aboriginal groups in the state. The whale for them is a very sacred being, and it’s actually their totem.”
At the time of publication, nearly 35,000 people have signed a petition opposing the development.

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Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill) by Cox Architecture.

Despite the opposition, the state government says all appropriate environmental assessments and consultation processes have been followed, and the planning minister Steven Miles said he supports the project going ahead. “In general, I think [this is] a great project and will be great for the island,” he said.
But Dale Ruska said protesters were prepared to stand in front of bulldozers to stop construction.
“We’re willing to remain here with the aim to ensure that the… proposed extravagant, architecturally designed coffin to house the remains of a whale that died a very traumatic death does not occur,” he told the ABC. More

At the beginning of 2019, we started discussing the idea of “leverage” as a theme for the 2020 National Architecture Conference. This was a way of thinking about how to generate greater positive influence as a profession; of how to deploy our skills, training, experience and expertise to address contemporary world challenges.
Unfortunately, the conference, like so many other events around the world this year, could not proceed due to COVID-19. But Leverage was, and remains, fundamentally optimistic. We believe that architectural wit and intelligence, agility and diligence, cheekiness and humour, restraint and flamboyance, ethics and goodwill can all be deployed to maximize advantage – in social, environmental and economic terms. We wanted to explore the untapped opportunities for impact and to examine how practices are already finding ways to create progressive change well beyond the convention of our discipline.

Since these early musings, the world has shifted into uncharted waters. And there is an even greater need to find inventive ways to apply our collective intelligence to the problems that face our communities and countries, to test professional models and assumptions.
We believe that architectural wit and intelligence, agility and diligence, cheekiness and humour, restraint and flamboyance, ethics and goodwill can all be deployed to maximize advantage – in social, environmental and economic terms.In February, we established a stream of the conference around the devastating impacts of the bushfires across Australia and worked to find partnerships with organizations such as Gondwana Link in an attempt to take direct action. One of the key drivers of this approach was the recognition by many conference speakers and attendees of the impact of flights on their own carbon emissions. Our expanded awareness of our personal and corporate responsibility highlighted the need to offer a direct and targeted response to attendees. We did this through the funding of native planting and Indigenous land management practices in Western Australia’s southwest, championed for decades by community groups under the distributed network model of Gondwana Link.

As the fires registered the colossal scale of the environmental crisis, COVID-19 has illuminated the challenges that already exist (equitable access to housing, health care, public space, and even reliable information and data). For us, now, Leverage – this hopeful ambition for an amplified impact – feels more relevant and ever more urgent.
Rory Hyde discusses these opportunities brilliantly in his recent article, “A new world.”1 Rory was one of the speakers we had lined up for the conference. Although it is disappointing that we will not have the opportunity to stage live discussions with Rory and the other extraordinary speakers, in the spirit of the Leverage theme, we have “pivoted” to find new avenues to maintain connection. These important conversations will now occur via a series of edited interviews and thought pieces in Architecture Australia and online at ArchitectureAU.com.

In this first instalment on Leverage, Kieran Wong interviews Alan Ricks about the work of Mass Design Group, a practice with an extraordinary record in the world of social impact architecture. What makes Mass different from others in this field is its unique practice structure, which evolved from the founders’ commitment to global effect and working at scale, and the acknowledgement that many models of impact architecture limit participants’ own career trajectories and community agency. We were drawn to Mass’s desire to challenge accepted models of practice and create a business that is sustainable, agile and impactful.

Our theme of Leverage is focussed through four streams – Policy and Politics, Practice and Projects, People and Partnerships, and Polemics and Publishing. Mass has it all! In little more than a decade, Mass has positioned itself to respond quickly to humanitarian need, demonstrating the relevance of design thinking in creating long-term solutions to the global challenges of policy, community, health and infrastructure.
— Emma Williamson, Kieran Wong, Maryam Gusheh and Justine Clark were appointed as creative directors of the 2020 National Architecture Conference. Due to the impacts of COVID-19, the conference did not proceed. More

Sydney’s Taronga Zoo will soon have a new exhibit showing native flora and fauna, with the NSW government approving a $16 million revamp project.
Designed by Lahznimmo Architects with landscape architecture practice Spackman, Mossop and Michaels, the Upper Australia exhibit will feature minimal built forms and will not be visible from the nearby harbour.
The exhibition, which is built on the Country of the Cammeraigal people of the Gai-mariagal, will be home to a wide variety of landscape types and native animals.

“The main exhibit path will snake through various native landscapes, ranging from lush rainforest through to arid woodland and then up into the tree canopy via an elevated boardwalk to view koalas at their natural sitting height in the tree canopy,” the architects wrote.

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The treehouse of the Upper Australia exhibit at Taronga Zoo by Lahznimmo Architects and Spackman, Mossop and Michaels.

“The Australia journey then winds its way down through the Blue Mountains rock escarpment and then underground into the Nocturnal House; where a complete refurbishment of the existing building will provide state-of-the-art keeper facilities and unique night-time viewing of Australia’s nocturnal creatures.”

NSW environment minister Matt Kean said the approval signalled a new chapter for the zoo, which has been an important part of Sydney Harbour’s landscape since 1916.
“The Australia Precinct at Taronga is home to some of our Aussie icons including the koala, platypus and bilby,” he said.
“The project will see new life breathed into parts of the precinct that are more than 30 years old, improving the visitor experience and encouraging more people to get out and learn about the conservation of our iconic Aussie animals.”
Works on the exhibit are scheduled to begin in the coming months and the project will be completed by 2023.

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Blacktown City Council is planning to sell off its administration centre to pave the way for an $800 million private brain and spinal medical centre headed by prominent neurosurgeon Charlie Teo.
The Blacktown Brain and Spine Institute would be located at the site of council’s Administration Centre on Flushcombe Road, which includes the former Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils building and surrounding car park, as well as the building currently housing the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre.

The council says the sale would provide funding for the temporary relocation of some council administrative staff while eventually enabling the planned move to new purpose-built administration offices in the CBD as well as the redevelopment of the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre.
The BBSI is being pitched as a world leader in medical research, practice, treatment and recovery, which will attract “medical tourists” from South-East Asia, China and further afield.

It is planned to include a medical research institute (with a university partner), a private hospital, a medi-hotel, retail space, and residential apartments. Announcing the plan for the institute in December 2019, Teo said “I want a centre of health that doesn’t feel like a hospital at all. I want a place that feels pleasant almost like a vacation.”

Details about business partners and funding models for the institute have not been revealed, but the Blacktown mayor says he is confident it could be a city-shaping project.
“This will be a major leap forward in the redevelopment of the Blacktown city centre,” said Blacktown mayor Tony Bleasdale.
“The Blacktown Brain and Spinal Institute will bring hundreds of millions of dollars investment into our city and at the same time, council will be able to develop a landmark administration and cultural centre.
“BBSI would be one of the most significant investments ever in Blacktown City, with an estimated total construction value of $800 million.
“It will also provide facilities to support international medi-tourism which in turn has the potential to generate income from overseas, assisting the NSW economy.” More