Evelyn Reynolds

The State Library of Victoria (SLV), fronting Melbourne’s Swanston Street, covers an entire city block. Founded in 1854 and opened in 1856, it has a fascinating and complex history, sharing its site, at times, with the institutions now called Museum Victoria and the National Gallery of Victoria. The precinct felt like another world prior to the most recent renovation, which began in 1985. Inside the Domed Reading Room (opened in 19131 ), sparrows and starlings flew around the ceiling. The room’s breathtaking internal streetscape included ghost facades sculpted inside its octagonal drum. A remarkable suite of Edwardian Baroque furniture was lit by rows of feeble bulbs, with students and homeless people alike hunched over desks in constant twilight. To borrow an item, you lined up in the old first-floor catalogue room, full of wooden chests of handwritten cards. Dust-coated men hastened up and down a spiral stair into Piranesian caverns in the stacks, fetching items from cabinets, tables and tallboys.

Since finances had been frozen in the 1920s and ’30s, the library had spent decades simply trying to survive. Working there gave you a splitting eyestrain headache, except in the one more modern interior that was the La Trobe Library (now the Conference Centre) – a deeply optimistic, rubber-floored, bronze-windowed tribute to Swedish architect Gunnar Asplund. Begun in 1951, it took 14 years and three recessions to complete. In the 1960s and early ’70s, trainee librarians were routinely shown through Australia’s “heartbreak library” – still a tangle of museum, gallery and library, largely spread along hallways. The gallery shifted in 1968 but the museum remained. In 1985, a competition was held in an attempt to rejuvenate the building.2

A masterplan by Ancher Mortlock Woolley won the competition, and the practice designed most alterations up to 2010. It filled in the block’s unfinished exteriors (two La Trobe street frontages), refitted the museum’s old McCoy Hall (1892) as the Redmond Barry Reading Room, uncloaked and rebuilt the Dome’s skylights (which had been damaged and closed over in 1959) and reshaped the present Cowen Gallery (built in various stages between 1892 and 1941) – now a lively and well-visited space showing off Melbourne and Victoria through the library’s own notable collection. They refitted the catalogue basement (constructed between 1907 and 1913), giving it a touch of Otto Wagner with Dalek air vents, marble panelling and gold studs. The weak point was the corridor and vestibule treatments: mostly dim, dark and indifferent.

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The Swanston Street foyer, refurbished during the Vision 2020 works, was part of the Library’s original 1856 building.
Image: Brett Boardman
The Vision 2020 plan (2017–20), funded by the Victorian government and philanthropic donations, supplanted the Ancher Mortlock Woolley masterplan in 2017. In a limited competition, Architectus, with the Danish firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen, was selected to design the redevelopment. With Andronas Conservation Architecture as heritage consultants – building on Lovell Chen’s earlier heritage studies and strategic plan (1985–2012) – the team has completed a comprehensive second-stage refurbishment, revitalizing 15 of the 28 major spaces on the Library’s current map. Its signature is the restored Ian Potter Queen’s Hall, the earliest reading room behind the 1869–70 portico.3 The work also includes the great polished stone stair (1906–13) leading up to the octagonal Reading Room Dome; Hansen Hall (1863–64), between Mr Tulk cafe (1961) and the main entrance; the interstices between the Dome and the squared wings around it; and the Isabella Fraser Room, a function area on the La Trobe Street frontage. The former Trescowthick Information Centre has been reconfigured as the Quad, and the library’s four triangular courtyards (three of which were roofed in the 1990s) have been repurposed.

The new surfaces gleam as if built yesterday. Several spaces look bare on initial impression: in their new uniformity of colour, Queen’s Hall, Hansen Hall and the genealogy and arts collections appear almost as if waiting for occupancy, waiting for something to happen. But isn’t that what a library should suggest? And its new occupancy is only just unfolding, after all. These interiors leave room for the library to grow into them, visually and in memory. The architects’ work for Vision 2020 is not externally focused, as Ken Woolley’s work had been. Ancher Mortlock Woolley’s internal spaces were clean-ups, with the fitouts strictly framed by the basic structure. Architectus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has sustained a lighter hand; its refurbishment is more playful and kinetically relaxed, improvising on circumstance, working changes through and around the basic structure.

The new work gives each new space a distinct narrative character and offers many surprises. One signature motif is timber plank fabric, which never meets the basic wall or roof structures but is set hovering between them – often, as in the Pauline Gandel Children’s Quarter, with varied transparency across its envelope. In sheer presence, the Children’s Quarter, which replaced the 1963 Melbourne Planetarium, recalls Gunnar Asplund’s children’s space at Stockholm Library (1928), though that is a small, apsidal womb and this is a converted courtyard. At SLV, the Children’s Quarter is both a singular, protective realm – despite a high roof – and a terrain of adventure, with curl-up alcoves in a layer literally under the stairs at ground level (four bays) and eyrie-like stages at first-floor level (again, four bays, each with monumental timber canopies). One bay surrounds and celebrates a space-frame column; at the other end, a similar column is left out on its own. In the Quad reading and computer area, the tables, chairs and seat groupings all change form casually around the octagonal space, breaking from the expected segment divisions, taking on their own pattern. The lighting strips above them cut across the ceiling’s original net of reinforced concrete Kahn bars but are kept light enough in grain and interval to show, in contrast, the older structure. The air registers, similarly, are now wrapped in Aalto-like timber blades.

Architectus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects’ brief shifts several other spaces around: lecture and seminar spaces are all moved to the Quad’s north side. The new Victoria Gallery is shaped from the service area on the north-east side, and the classicist Russell Street entry (surprisingly austere for 1906) is completely reworked inside, with the bookshop to one side and a new cafe on the other.4 By surrounding the bookshop with a mesh curtain of three-millimetre steel rods, Architectus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects has been able to keep the original, cuboid space while simultaneously generating movement and a rather festive sense.
The Newspapers and Family History Reading Rooms (combined in a shared gallery) have shifted south of the Redmond Barry Reading Room, and the Arts Reading Room has been positioned alongside; both are long, pure white spaces. The former first-floor catalogue room is now a quiet reading lounge and, in another surprise, its spiral stack stair has been partitioned off to create a separate space at the Quad and Dome entrances. These new spaces – the lounge, furnished appropriately with armchairs and low tables; and the stair as a surprise in the entry vestibule corner, lifted from its old role yet reminiscent of it – reflect Architectus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects’ approach to the library and its many chapters.
Between the Quad and the west foyer sits the long-closed grand stair to the Dome and Queen’s Hall, a ceremony in polished stone. Its west wall carries Harold Septimus Power’s War mural (1924), its east Napier Waller’s Grecian Peace after victory (1929); both embody the “memorial city” mood of that period. The challenge for the architects was to add stairs and balustrades that meet current safety standards. The new tissue, copper-bronze metal, stone treads and balustrading are bold but also look surprisingly right, creating a gleaming river of energy that cascades down through the original stair and its panelling.
The Queen’s Hall has a long, newly revealed skylight ceiling in coved, diamond-pane clear glass, shielded from hail and rain by an outer canopy in polycarbonate that is unseen from either the street or the inside. (The glass in the skylights in the original hall was shattered during a thunderstorm in 1901, although the skylights remained in place until the early 1970s.) Ionic three-quarter columns, newly accentuated, give the hall a spine and, as originally, frame book bays (which include a considerable chess and bridge collection) based on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century shelved alcove model. The shelves are now half-height and less obvious, allowing a greater sense of lateral space. The centre-aisle tables, movable for functions, are new and plain; the Victorian tables, massive and intricate in their hinged lecterns and leather detailing, now sit unobtrusively in four- and six-seat bays along the west wall. The late 1980s alterations revived Victorian pastel layering à la English architect and designer Owen Jones. The plain new colouration is Architectus and Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects’ boldest move here; it dramatizes the former inset panels and gallery friezes, with their carefully uncovered nineteenth-century patterning and colours.
What marks this refurbishment is the architects’ willingness to go with the building’s idiosyncrasies and episodes. The work recognizes that large institutional buildings such as this carry inside them their own history and culture, and that refurbishment is as much a weaving, a negotiation, as an outright renewal.
— Conrad Hamann is associate professor in architectural history and history of urban form at RMIT University. He worked in the State Library of Victoria almost every week between 1972 and 1999, and he has often worked there since. He is the author of five books and about 130 other publications, and he has assisted on approximately 150 heritage reports for Lovell Chen. More

A number of current and former architects are running for office in the Victorian council elections in October.
In the City of Melbourne, Tania Davidge is running as an independent candidate on the ticket of current Lord Mayor and former property developer lobbyist Sally Capp.
Davidge is cofounder of OoPLA and president of Citizens for Melbourne, a campaign group formed in the wake of the Victorian government’s decision to demolish a part of Federation Square to make way for an Apple store.

Together with a group of architects, urbanists, planners and “lovers of public space,” Davidge launched the advocacy group Citizens for Melbourne in 2018. She has been an outspoken critic of the privatization of public space, and said of the Federation Square proposal that the state government was offering Melbourne’s “heart and soul” to Apple. The group’s campaign successfully stopped the demolition plans, quashed the Apple store proposal and led to the state heritage listing of the Federation Square, through a nomination of the National Trust.

It was during the campaign to stop that development that Davidge met the mayoral candidate Sally Capp, who had offered her support for the Apple store proposal during her tilt for the mayorship. Capp took a $1,500 campaign donation from Federation Square Corporation chair Deborah Beale.

Davidge says that while she and Capp didn’t agree on the Apple store proposal, she believes the incumbent lord mayor is committed to the city and its public spaces and is willing to listen to the community.

Davidge is standing down from her Citizens for Melbourne position for the campaign. She says she wants to use her expertise and experience as an architect and public space advocate to “help reactivate the city she loves.” If elected, she would act as an independent voice on council for better built outcomes and public spaces.
“So many of the decisions that are made at local council level shape our built environment,” she said.
“It was during [the Federation Square] campaign that I really saw the ability that local councils have to make a difference and advocate up to the state government level. And I think that at this point in time, especially with COVID, you can see that our built environment and our public spaces have never been more important.”

Capp’s most favoured opponent in the Lord Mayor race is current Deputy Lord Mayor Arron Woods. His team includes Peter Clarke, a former executive director of the Victorian chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects, who is also a former City of Melbourne councillor, and a former vice-president of the Liberal Party in Victoria. Clarke is currently deputy lord mayor of the City of Nillumbik. “[Clarke] deepens that depth and breadth of experience as number two on the ticket,” said Wood of his candidacy.

Clarke was also chairman of Places Victoria but stepped down after 14 months amid an investigation from the Australian Securities and Investment Commission.
Other architects running in the Victorian council elections include Jose Rodriguez, who is a candidate for the City of Greater Geelong. “Over the past decade, I have been vocal about my support for a design-led city,” he said. “I proposed plans to overhaul the CBD’s ailing mall, advocated for a Geelong City Library design competition, and petitioned to save a manufacturing icon, the Geelong Cement Silos. Because I believe these efforts would make best use of our resources, and strengthen our cultural, social and economic capital.” More

Victoria’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) has unveiled plans to build a new hub in Dandenong, which is home to the state’s highest population of people seeking asylum.
Bates Smart and Garner Davis Architects have been brought on as pro bono partners to design the centre.
ASRC’s original centre in Footscray supports more than 6,000 people seeking asylum each year, but there is no equivalent service in the south-east region.
The organization had been running a small makeshift centre in Dandenong for a number of years providing education and employment services, but earlier this year it was forced to close the Dandenong Centre due to water damage caused by a flood.

But the centre had been inadequate long before that. “In reality, the ASRC staff were also feeling so overwhelmed because they desperately needed to expand the local services to meet the needs of the community,” the centre said in a statement. “People [were] coming to the staff hungry, asking to sleep in the carpark, needing a lawyer or a doctor urgently.”

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Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) Dandenong hub, designed by Bates Smart and Garner Davis Architects.

The new hub, which is already being built, will help support these people, bringing together multiple service organisations under the one roof, including legal advice, English classes and education programs, a food bank as well as daily community meals, employment support, casework, housing support and access to a health clinic.
“Our dream is to create a place that feels like home – a safe and welcoming place where people come to learn, grow, socialise and connect with their local community”, said Kon Karapanagiotidis, CEO and founder of the ASRC.

The design team envision the centre as acting “much like a local neighbourhood village.”

“We’re lucky to be involved in this project as a way of helping on a basic human level and that makes it a project that you feel something for,” said Terry Mason, associate director at Bates Smart.
“When we get this space working, the support that the ASRC is able to provide to the community is immense, that’s why we are involved.”
The ASRC does not receive federal government funding, and is relying on the support of the community to help complete the building. The hope is to have the centre operating by early 2021, which will be the 20-year anniversary of the organization.
For asylum seeker and Dandenong resident Nasreen [not her real name], the centre will be essential.
“For me it’s like a home,” she said. “It’s a place of safety, security, somewhere we can find help, speak to a person. I’m hoping it will be re-open as soon as possible. This is the only resource in Dandenong for the many asylum seekers in this area.” More

Kerry Hill Architects has created a concept design for an $85 million tourism facility in Western Australia.
The Ningaloo Lighthouse Project, developed by Tattarang, would transform the existing Exmouth caravan park into a resort for up to 550 overnight guests, with access to the nearby Ningaloo Marine Park and Cape Range National Park.
The resort will include eco-tents, villas, hotel rooms and caravan bays, as well as restaurants and bars, swimming pools, a spa, tennis courts, a recreation and leisure centre, children’s playground and boating facilities.

The resort will operate using a range of renewal energy sources, including solar and wind power. It will also have on-site waste water recycling and a bio-digester for food waste which is expected to divert 60 tonnes of food waste from landfill, which will be turned into tonnes of fertiliser.

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The Ningaloo Lighthouse Project by Kerry Hill Architects.

“The Ningaloo Lighthouse Project promises to be a Western Australian icon; a sustainable, considered development with the ability to create jobs and generate income for existing tourism providers,” said John Hartman,chief investment officer of Tattarang.

The resort will be located at the foothills of Vlamingh Head, which contains a heritage-listed lighthouse. Vlamingh Head is one of few locations in Australia where both sunrise and sunset can be observed. A new coastal lookout will be constructed at the top of Vlamingh Head as part of the redevelopment project.
“Watching the sunset at the Exmouth Lighthouse is one of Western Australia’s iconic tourism experiences that we hope to improve for locals and visitors, while safeguarding the site,” Hartman said.
The final design will be subject to community consultation.
Tattarang is a private investment group owned by WA mining magnate Andrew Forrest. More

A new $695 million university campus will be built in the heart of Perth as part of a $1.5 billion city deal.
Edith Cowan University will relocate its schools of law and business as well as the Western Australia Academy of Performing Arts to a site at Perth City Link, adjacent to Yagan Square. The site also adjoins Perth Railway Station and a major bus interchange.
The campus will open by 2025, accommodating 9,200 students and staff. That number is projected to grow to 11,000 by 2034.

A spokesperson for Edith Cowan University told ArchitectureAU an architect had yet to been appointed for the project.

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Indicative render of Edith Cowan University’s proposed city campus.

The campus is jointly funded by the federal and state governments and the university. The WA government to provide $150 million and the land, the federal government will contribute $245 million and ECU will contribute $300 million. The existing ECU site will revert back to the state government and a masterplan for the site will be undertaken to determine its future.

“This campus will be a major catalyst for an exciting rejuvenation of Perth’s CBD, attracting locals and visitors to live, work and play in the city while creating great opportunities for local businesses,” said WA premier Mark McGowan.

“The WA Academy of Performing Arts is a world class, world renowned institution, which has produced some of this country’s best known performers, including none other than Hugh Jackman.
“With more than 300 public performances a year, it will attract more than 100,000 unique visitors into the city creating great excitement across Perth for generations to come.”
ECU vice chancellor Steve Chapman said, “This is the future of university education — urban, connected, integrated with business and community — part of a thriving city.
“This campus will deliver the innovative thinkers, adaptive learners and global citizens who will be the leaders of tomorrow.”

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Indicative render of Edith Cowan University’s proposed city campus.

The state and federal government had been in talks with universities about relocating their campuses to the CBD as part a city deal since 2018. The city deal was paused earlier in 2020 due to economic uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Announced on 20 September, the deal also includes $360 million for two other universities to expand or establish facilities in the CBD. Murdoch University will create a new vertical campus, which will include a Digital Futures Academy and an e-sports hub, while Curtin will build a knowledge and innovation precinct.
The deal also allocates $42 million for the Perth Concert Hall redevelopment, and $20 million for East Perth Power Station upgrades, which is a $218 million development backed by Kerry Stokes and Andrew Forrest. In April 2020, concept designs by Kerry Hill Architects were unveiled. More

Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Panov Scott have together designed the redevelopment of a five-building apartment and entertainment precinct on Darlinghurst Road, where Kings Cross meets Potts Point.
The project will see the existing Radnor and Empire buildings demolished and replaced, while the Lowestoft, Bourbon, and Commodore buildings will be partially demolished and restored. The site is located on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
Once complete, the block will accommodate two pubs, a hotel, medical centre, retail tenancies and 54 apartments. A new four-level basement will be built for services, storage, car parking and a commercial tenancy.

“This project is about harnessing the rich urban diversity and density of Sydney’s first 24 hour economy, whilst simultaneously providing vibrant and pleasant residential and commercial accommodation that meets contemporary controls and standards,” state the architects in planning documents.

“Our approach is rooted in the notation of the architectural continuum with historic and contemporary buildings sitting side by side. They simultaneously echo the Glittering Mile’s rich and colourful history and make a proclamation about the Cross’s optimistic and urban future.”

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18-32A Darlinghurst Road Potts Point by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Panov Scott.

Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Panov Scott were selected as architects for the project through a competitive design process, which allowed developer Piccadilly Hotel Operations to add a bonus 10 percent ground floor area for the $65 million project. Tonkin Zulaikha Greer is leading the design for the Lowestoft, Commodore and Empire buildings, while Panov Scott is designing the Bourbon and Radnor buildings.
The new buildings will feature highly detailed masonry, complementing the surrounding heritage 19th and 20th century buildings. Each building will be designed to be read as a distinct form, with different brick colours emphasizing the distinction, including contemporary whites, heritage brown blends, vibrant rusty reds and a deep blue/black brick.

On one building, a large custom glass mosaic will celebrate the history of the internationally renowned Les Girls nightclub, where legendary cabaret performer Carlotta performed from the early 1960s.
The architects state in planning documents that the proposal seeks to maintain the scale and eclecticism of the area, which “for almost a century has been populated by diverse people from all corners of the world and walks of life searching for a future or an enthralling experience.”
The scheme includes new public spaces, including a new through-site link between Darlignhurst Road and Barncleuth Lane; a small plaza at the intersection of the through site link and Barncleuth Lane and the extension of the footpath adjacent to the restored heritage facade of the Bourbon.
The landscape design has been developed with James Mather Delaney Design.
The development application for the project is on public exhibition until 20 October. More

An Australian architecture firm is among three finalists in an international ideas competition to create an architectural landmark for Silicon Valley in San Jose, selected from a pool of 963 entries from 72 countries.
The Urban Confluence Silicon Valley competition seeks for a design that could be built at the “confluence” of the Guadalupe River and Los Gatos Creek in downtown San Jose.
The competition is a project of not-for-profit San Jose Light Tower Corporation, which formed in 2017 with the goal of delivering “an artistic and iconic” structure inspired by the San Jose electric light tower, a pioneering experiment in electricity-powered municipal lighting built in 1881.

The brief for the competition was not to recreate the light tower – or even to create a light tower at all – but to develop designs that “respect the natural environment and embrace the extraordinary spirit of Silicon Valley innovation.”

Smar Architecture Studio, which has an office in Perth, Australia as well as in Spain and Lithuania, was announced as one of the three finalists on 18 September.

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Breeze of Innovation by Smar Architecture Studio.

Developed by directors Fernando Jerez and Belen Perez de Juan, the firm’s design incorporates 500 flexible rods that reach 200-feet-tall (61 metres), designed to swing with the wind while supporting a series of platform levels. Jerez explains that they wanted to create a dynamic object, not something staticm – “an object that is never the same, because it moves, and when it moves the light changes, and it creates an object that is ever-changing and magical,” he says in a promotional video.

The design references the 1881 San Jose electric light tower, with the rods forming a conical void within the structure with the exact dimensions of the original tower.

Jerez states that the void would be used for exhibitions, with the platform levels offering unique vantage points.
“The moment you go up, you start to find yourself among the treetops of the park. And suddenly you are on top of the valley.”
The design is dubbed Breeze of Innovation, and the idea is that the movement of the rods in the wind would be used to generate power to meet all the demands of the structure.

Belen Perez de Juan says, “This design covers the two things that I think are important for us: engaging with the community and taking care of the planet.”
The second finalist is LA designer Rish Ryusuke Saito whose scheme “Welcome to Wonderland” consists of a fantastical structure inspired by Lewis Carroll’s famous work which combines gigantic flora forms with digital projections.
And the third finalist is design duo Qinrong Lui and Ruize Li. Their proposal “The Nebula Tower” takes the form of a 180-foot lattice grid cube, with a hollowed out form referencing the electric light tower in the centre, much in the same way as Smar’s design.
The winning idea will be selected by jury in early 2021. More

Two development applications have been submitted to the City of Launceston for the University of Tasmania’s proposed River’s Edge and Willis Street buildings designed by John Wardle Architects.
The buildings represent the second and third stage of the wider $344 million redevelopment of the campus, which sits of the lands the palawa people, the traditional owners of lutruwita (Tasmania).
The development applications are on public exhibition until 28 September.
River’s Edge, designed in collaboration with Tasmanian practice 1 Plus 2 Architecture and with landscape architecture by Aspect Studios, is described in planning documents as a “vibrant learning and teaching building” nestled amongst the historic Launceston Railway Workshops by the North Esk River.

“The building is at the centre of some of the most intriguing intersections of this remarkable precinct – between a river and a new university square; between existing historic buildings and the northern end of Traverser Lane; between old and new,” states John Wardle Architects’ design statement.

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The proposed River’s Edge building at the University of Tasmania by John Wardle Architects and 1+2 Architecture.
Image: University of Tasmania
The design response seeks to illuminate the distinctive qualities of the site, reinterpreting the sawtooth geometry, metal cladding and natural atrium lighting of the historic buildings in a contemporary way.
But whereas the buildings of this precinct were traditionally not orientated towards the river, this building offers an “optical departure” with large-format windows embracing views to the North Esk and farmland beyond.
River’s Edge Building will house teaching and research space for the College of Arts, Law and Education, as well as a consultation hub for disability and accessibility support, counselling and student wellbeing services and the Riawunna Centre, which supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Its estimated cost is $38.4 million.

Willis Street, meanwhile, will have a focus on health, medicine and sciences. John Wardle Architects describes the building as “an expansive shed with an all-encompassing roof.”
“Accessible and democratic, the single main point of entry leads to a light filled atrium with the shed that provides space for multiple modes of operation over time for the university, ranging from small to large gatherings,” reads the design statement.
The $68.9 million building will include nursing simulation labs that will be co-located with TasTAFE, food science facilities including a sensory lab, health clinics to support dietetics, speech pathology, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. More