Evelyn Reynolds

Architeam Cooperative has announced the winners of its 2020 Architeam Awards, which recognize the work of small architecture practices.
“As is true for many businesses, 2020 has been a tough year for architects,” says ArchiTeam CEO, Phoebe La Gerche-Wijsman, “but our members are uniquely placed to respond and adapt to these times. With Victorian members being affected by state-wide lockdowns, even getting photography together for this year’s entries was a massive task. Despite this, the 2020 ArchiTeam awards received an outstanding 130 entries, and our members rose to the challenge to create a whole new concept in exhibition design.”

The 130 entries across five primary categories were judged by a jury comprising chair Kate Fitzgerald (Whispering), Norman Day (Norman Day + Associates), Kate Fitzpatrick (Auhaus), Tamsin O’Neil (Green Magazine), John Ellway (John Ellway Architect), Andy Fergus and Rachel Neeson (Neeson Murcutt and Neille).

The winners are:
ArchiTeam Medal
Davison Street – Archier
Residential New
Winners

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The Good Life House by MRTN Architects
Image: via Architeam
The Good Life House – MRTN Architects
Two Sheds – Dreamer
Commendations
Davison Street – Archier
Edgars Creek House – Breathe Architecture
Kensington House – Fowler and Ward
Alterations and Additions
Winner

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Brunswick Lean-to by Blair Smith Architecture.
Image: Tom Ross
Brunswick Lean-to – Blair Smith Architecture
Commendations
Hampden Road House – Archier
Warehouse Greenhouse – Breathe Architecture
Commercial
Winner

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Parks Victoria by Archier and Harrison and White.
Image: Peter Bennetts
Parks Victoria – Archier and Harrison and White
Commendations
Uro Workshop – Architecture Architecture
Where House? – EM Architects
Community
Winner

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Yarra Pools by Wowowa Architecture.
Image: Wowowa
Yarra Pools – Wowowa Architecture
Commendation
Arkadia – Breathe Architecture and DKO Architecture
Unbuilt
Winner

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St Andrews Square by Moloney Architects.
Image: Moloney Architects
St Andrews Square – Moloney Architects
Commendation
Dead End House – Kuzman Architecture
Yarra Pools – Wowowa Architecture
Contribution
Winner
Talina Edwards – Talina Edwards
Commendation
Architects Declare movement – Australian Architects Declare
Brickworks Materiality Award
Merri Creek – Wowowa Architecture
Passive House Award
Passive House Trophy – Qutaibah Al-Atafi in collaboration with local textile artist Inneka Moorhouse
Sustainability Medal
Architects Declare movement – Talina Edwards
Small Project Medal
Small Grand Apartment – Tsai Design
People’s Choice Award
Colour Shingle – Krisna Cheung Architects More

The design team behind Hobart’s Museum of Old and New Art will create a $200 million masterplan to transform an underutilized, ex-industrial site on the Derwent River into a sports and recreation centre.
Lead architecture practice Fender Katsalidis and its collaborators Oculus and Ireneinc hope to elevate Tasmania’s reputation for delivering sport and recreation activities by creating a dedicated and considered precinct.
“The goal is to cultivate a vibrant and engaging district that prioritizes pedestrian movement and activity through designed landscaped areas, integrated infrastructure, and connectivity within the site,” said Nicky Drobis, director of Fender Katsalidis.

“Being in a prime location, the site needs renewal and investment that effectively responds to a lot of different and complex requirements which we are realising in the new precinct masterplan.”

“The masterplan will deliver something new to the area, improving its functionality and connections for other sites such as Mona and the city, while alleviating congestion along the highway.”

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Masterplan for Wilkinsons Point precinct by Fender Katsalidis and Oculus.

The project will be located on a 15-hectare site at Wilkinsons Point in Glenorchy, currently home the Derwent Entertainment Centre, which will be refurbished to create a multipurpose venue that will serve as the home base for Hobart’s basketball team, the Jack Jumpers. The venue will also host shows, performances and other sporting events.
The precinct will include elite performance facilities, informal recreational opportunities, connections to a surrounding network of open spaces and trails, mixed-use capabilities such as waterfront dining, a hotel, sports-focused retail, as well as indoor recreation facilities such as basketball, soccer, gymnastics, rock climbing, indoor skydiving, indoor skiing and a kids play centre.

The masterplan will also link the proposed buildings with landscaping that will protect the facilities from the natural elements while also enhancing its river setting. It will retain as much of the existing vegetation as much as possible.
“Our masterplan seeks to consistently activate this site, far beyond its current use, and transform the peninsula into a state-of-the-art sports and entertainment precinct that has both social and economic benefit,” Drobis said.
Developer LK Property Group, who first brought the project to council in 2019, will begin demolishing the interior of the Derwent Entertainment Centre within a month. Renovation works are due to begin in 2021. More

Lahznimmo Architects will lead the design of a $30 million expansion of the Museums Discovery Centre site at Castle Hill in north-west Sydney, providing more space for the Powerhouse collection and creating more opportunities for public access.
The project will see the construction of a new public-facing building, Building J, which will facilitate increased public education programs, workshops, talks, exhibitions and events.
Owned and operated by the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), the Museums Discovery Centre currently comprises six buildings, five of which are primarily for storage and one, Building E, which is accessible to visitors. In the year 2017-2018, 17,481 people visited the site. The Australian Museum and Sydney Living Museums also maintain collection storage and conservation facilities on the site.

The architects say in planning documents that Building J will provide an important new public interface with Showground Road, with the curtilage designed to integrate with the immediate surroundings, complementing the adjacent TAFE site and to providing a permeable landscaped setting along Showground Road.

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Building J at Museums Discovery Centre, designed by Lahznimmo Architects.

“Whilst industrial in nature, it will recognize its public/civic role, and will announce the presence of the Powerhouse within the area,” the design statement read. “The overall form will be simple, minimizing expressive elements and articulation.”
The building’s façade will be formed of two key materials, corrugated aluminium, and corrugated precast concrete, with the façade “tilting, folding, peeling” to create openings. “The entries are marked by civic-scaled folds in the facade, tilting inward to lead visitors and staff into the building,” state the architects. “As the facade continues to the north, the facade peeling is limited to allow more controlled views into working areas such as the conservation laboratory.”

The ground plane will be designed to feel like a continuous public accessible plane, and have strong indoor/outdoor connections.
The landscape architect Aspect Studio envisions a diverse planting palette of understorey and ground cover species, which will improve the bare ground of the existing site, “creating and connecting to existing fragmented habitat areas.”
The expansion of the Museums Discovery Centre is part of the wider renewal of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, which includes the new Powerhouse Parramatta.
A state-significant development application for the project is on public exhibition until 1 December. More

Why can’t a street also be a park? Could we turn Sydney’s city carparks into communal green spaces? And what if we transformed the countless pockets of neglected residual land that dot Sydney into biodiverse micromeadows?
These are just some of the pointed questions posed by the winning entries in the inaugural Public Space Ideas Competition organized by the Committee for Sydney and NSW government with the support of AECOM and the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects.

Eight projects have received awards in the competition, chosen from a pool of 500 entries. NSW planning minister Rob Stokes says the innovative ideas on display show the transformative potential of public space projects. “Whether [it] is a patch of grass near home, or an empty laneway on the way to the train station – all public space can be reimagined,” he says.
Taking home the Minister’s prize is a proposal from a group of landscape architects, architects and designers from Arup to transform a 10-kilometre pipeline running from Pipehead to Potts Hill into an interconnected green spine for Sydney’s Western suburbs.

The largely fenced-off pipeline corridor currently contains three pipelines, only one of which is operating, carrying potable water. The Arup design team says that opening the reserve surrounding the pipeline and decommissioning the inoperable pipes will revitalize the linear landscape and turn it into “community-loved infrastructure.”
Winning the award for best open space idea is a team from Cred Consulting, whose idea is to transform underused open space into micromeadows to connect to nature, protect threatened fauna and flora, and “beautify our neighbourhoods.” The spaces they’re thinking of are empty green spaces that, due to their limited street frontage and location in the middle of residential blocks, serve little benefit to residents as they are. “Our idea is transformational because it is changing the way we think about public space as areas of unencumbered green space – into areas that are beautiful, naturally established, and require minimal intervention or maintenance from humans,” they write.

The winner of the best public facility idea is The Modern Carpark, a proposal from the City of Bankstown that envisions city carparks as community “hotspots” with facilities like bike and ride-sharing areas, parcel pickup lockers, community arts and culture spaces, and open space where people can socialize and relax.

Recognized for the best street idea is Georgina de Beaujeu, who proposes a new way to use private developments as a catalyst to transform public streetscapes.

“How?” de Beaujeu asks. “By looking at public and private land in our streets holistically – changing setbacks and offsets, closing roads, changing traffic movements and speeds, adopting shared permeable driveways, underground parking, median/blister, verge and private tree plantings, covered/underground powerlines and mixed tree planting to enable large trees to shade the road – the list goes on.”
Other winning ideas include a plan to introduce a 30kph speed limit for non-arterial roads, a scheme to change the way we use open space and water in South Sydney and a proposal to unlock the potential of Sydney’s historic urban utility infrastructure.

Committee for Sydney CEO Gabriel Metcalf says the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the importance of public spaces in Sydney.
“Many of the entries focus on ways to improve Sydney’s natural environment and green spaces, as well as encouraging safer roads and more access for walking and cycling,” she says. “As our city rebuilds from the pandemic, we have a great opportunity to reshape the city and make it even more enjoyable for the people who live and work here.”
To see all the winning ideas, head here. More

Detailed designs for the four major buildings of the Waterloo over-station development on Gadigal land in Sydney have been submitted for planning consideration.
Four architects are leading the design of the project, which is divided into three precincts. Hassell and Aileen Sage Architects are together designing a 22-storey residential tower in the central precinct, Woods Bagot is designing a 17-storey commercial building in the northern precinct and Bates Smart is designing two towers (a 25-storey student accommodation tower and a nine-storey social housing tower) for the southern precinct. Overall, the project will also include a 1,350-square-metre public plaza.

The mixed-use precinct is being delivered by developers Mirvac and John Holland in collaboration with the NSW government and will cost around $900 million in total. A concept approval for the development was approved in 2019, but the proponents have submitted a concept plan that will supersede the previous one, along with four detailed development applications – one for each of the precincts and another for a basement carpark.

“The Waterloo Metro Quarter will be an important hub with residents and office workers just a few minutes’ train ride to the CBD,” said Department of Planning executive director of key sites Anthea Sargeant.

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The Waterloo Metro office tower by Woods Bagot.

Hassell and Aileen Sage Architects’ residential tower will include 150 apartments, including 24 affordable housing units, a two-level childcare centre, ground-floor shops and a pedestrian link from Botany Road to Cope Street Plaza.
“Prominently located in the centre of the precinct, facing the new Cope Street Plaza to the east and the bus interchange to the west this building will play a significant role in how people engage and remember this place,” the architects state in planning documents. “The built form will respect and draw inspiration from Waterloo’s rich and diverse history and culture from Indigenous connections, migrant and working class communities.”

Woods Bagot’s office tower will contain 35,000 square metres of floor space, with an approximate capacity of 4,000 workers. The tower is conceived as a collection of volumes of different sizes to break down the overall bulk. “The tower form sitting above the podium and the station box consists of four main volumes marking each corner of the site held together by the central volume and the core on the western edge,” write the architects. “As the tower lands on top of Waterloo Station it provides a continuous built form on the vertical plane, with coordinated facade grids between the metro station and the tower.”

The student accommodation tower by Bates Smart will house 474 students, a gym and a community space, while the directly adjacent social housing building will contain 70 apartments and a communal roof terrace. The buildings will be designed to have their own separate identities and character to reinforce the architectural diversity of the precinct. “The form and materiality of the Social Building responds directly to its Metro Station podium. Its facade is defined by face brick piers separated by recessed balconies, fine metal screens and planters that respond to orientation and reinforce its residential character,” planning documents state. “The brickwork podium to the Student Building responds to the scale of the adjoining heritage listed church and provides a human scale to the street. Its vertical articulation responds to the fine grain character of existing adjacent buildings whilst reinforcing the identity of its separate uses that include retail, community, student and the social entry.”
The development applications are on public exhibition until 2 December, and the project is scheduled for completion in 2024, in time for the opening of the Sydney Metro City and Southwest line. More

Griffith University is seeking expressions of interest (EOIs) from architecture firms to design a $150M building at its Nathan campus, which will be the new home for the education, criminology and applied psychology disciplines.
The EOI process will run to 27 November through the Queensland government’s QTender website. The university will then invite a shortlist of practices to participate in a design competition.
To be known as the Professional Education Building, the 24,000-square-metre facility will play a major role in consolidating the arts, education and law academic group with that of health. It will include facilities for general academic functions as well as specialist teaching spaces, including wet teaching laboratories.

Director of major projects at the university, Steve Grimes, said the architectural competition would focus on large firms with established capacity in higher education projects, but that the university would also be carrying out a number of associated relocation and refurbishment projects, and these projects would generate opportunities for smaller firms. He encouraged local firms to submit EOIs.

“Queensland is home to outstanding architectural talent and we want to see it engaged in this project,” he said.

The Professional Education Building will be the latest in a number of major projects at the Nathan campus.
“Two substantial developments have started the process of transforming Nathan into a world-class campus for teaching, learning and research in the 21st century,” Grimes said. “The Engineering, Technology and Aviation Building and the Sir Samuel Griffith Centre have become the centrepieces of the Nathan campus and will be joined by the Professional Education Building in 2025.”
The Sir Samuel Griffith Centre was designed by Cox Architecture and the Engineering, Technology and Aviation Building was designed by Hassell.

Related topics More

The new Vivid Slimline SS range is an evolution of Phoenix’s popular and timeless Vivid Slimline range.
It is particularly suited to outdoor kitchens, laundries, and coastal residential areas, thanks to the superior corrosion resistance of 316 stainless steel, which provides extra years of life and usage where harsh elements are an issue.
The new range went through a year in development. The research and design team conducted rust testing on various grades of stainless steel before deciding to proceed with the higher grade 316 and providing a lifetime warranty on the finish.

Phoenix Tapware
phoenixtapware.com.au More

Leading architects from Australia and around the world will present in Design Speaks’ upcoming Architecture Symposium program, which returns in a new format in late November.
The symposium will comprise four distinct sessions each looking at the future of living through a different lens: alternative housing models, the integration of social agendas, emerging directions in market-based housing and compact housing. Participants can choose to take part in just one, or all or the sessions, which will be accessible online.

The curators of The Architecture Symposium: Housing Futures, Hannah Tribe and Andrew Burns, have selected contemporary architects whose projects respond creatively to the spectrum of housing challenges and opportunities.
“We have, as a profession, an opportunity to step confidently from turbulent times into a future where we take the lead on the transformation of the urban, suburban and regional residential environment,” said Tribe and Burns. “The Architecture Symposium will highlight projects that are already doing so, opening directions for the profession and stimulating new ways of living.”

The first session, on 25 November, will look at new directions in market housing. Speakers including Angelo Candalepas of Candalepas Associates, Philip Thalis of Hill Thalis Architecture and Urban Design and Alison Brooks of Alison Brooks Architects will present their respective projects and speculate on how today’s crises – climate, pandemic, recession – will affect the future of market housing.

In the second session on 27 November, presenting architects will discuss alternative housing models. Clare Cousins will discuss her eponymous firm’s role in the Nightingale Village, the ambitious housing project based on a modified version of Germany’s baugruppe model; Adam Haddow of SJB will discuss the Illawarra Road co-housing project; Huw Turner and Penny Collins, of Collins and Turner, will talk about Hablis, specialist long-term accommodation for the homeless mentally ill.

The third session (2 December) looks at housing with a social agenda, and includes international speakers Florian Idenburg and Jing Liu of SO-IL, who will present a social housing project in Mexico, along with Rachel Nolan of Kennedy Nolan and Melissa Bright of Studio Bright.

And the finally, on 4 December, the last session will look at compact housing, with architects discussing typical suburban subdivisions that have been revisited to provide additional housing density. Timothy Hill, of Partners Hill, will discuss his project Mermaid Multihouse, Emma Williamson of The Fulcrum Agency will present Boonooloo Road Housing and Melody Chen of A-CH will show Yandina Sunrise.
Each session will close with a panel discussion lead by Hannah Tribe and Andrew Burns.
To see the full program, head here.
Design Speaks’ The Architecture Symposium is organized by Architecture Media, the publisher of ArchitectureAU.com. It is supported by major partner Planned Cover. More