The South Australian government has unveiled concept designs for a new Adelaide Aquatic Centre, which will replace the existing centre in the northern park lands at Pardipardinyilla / Denise Norton Park. In September 2022, JPE Design Studio and Warren and Mahoney were appointed to design the new centre. Concept design for Adelaide Aquatic Centre by […] More
The King’s Birthday 2023 Honours have been announced and it includes four architects among the 1,192 Australians recognized for “meritorious, distinguished and conspicuous services.”
Peter Phillips has been appointed an Officer (AO) of the Order of Australia for his distinguished service to heritage conservation to architecture and to professional organizations.
Peter Phillips. Image: ICOMOS
He’s currently a board member of International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and has been an expert member of International Scientific Committee on Analysis and Restoration of Structures of Architectural Heritage since 2008.
Previously, he was the president of ICOMOS Australia and has worked as a heritage and architecture consultant since 1997.
The following architects were appointed Members (AM) of the Order of Australia:
Lindsay Johnston, NSW
Lindsay Johnston. Image: Ozetecture
For significant service to architectural building and design education. He was the Dean, Faculty of Architecture Building and Design at the University of Newcastle from 2000 to 2002, Chair of National Environment Committee from at Roya Australian Institute of Architects from 2000 to 2002, and Chair of National Education Committee from 1996 to 1999.
He was awarded New South Wales Premier’s Award, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, in 2000, as well as Royal Australian Institute of Architects, National Education Prize, in 2002.
Mary Patricia Marsland PSM, SA
For her significant service to architecture in a range of roles, including Chair, Board of Management of South Australian Housing Trust from 2006 to 2011, President of South Australian Chapter of Royal Australian Institute of Architects from 1992 to 1994, Chair of South Australian Heritage Council from 2005 to 2008.
Previously she worked as an architect from 1973 to 2006.
Simon Chan, NSW
For significant service to multiculturalism to the Indigenous community and to the arts. Chan is the president of Chinese Australian Forum New South Wales since 2022, president of Haymarket Chamber of Commerce from 2014 to 2022, chair of Aboriginal Benefits Foundation from 2015 to 2018. He has been a registered architect in New South Wales since 1976. More
Milligan Group, the developer of a proposed skyscraper over Sydney’s Hunter Street Station, has applied to demolish the site’s current buildings as part of the project’s next phase.
Located on the corner of Pitt and Hunter Streets in central Sydney, the planned 52-storey commercial office tower is set to become the world’s tallest hybrid timber building. It will cover approximately 51,000 square metres and include retail tenancies within its podium. If approved, the project will surpass the under-construction Atlassian headquarters, designed by Shop Architects and BVN.
Initially outlined in 2022, proposals for the site received final endorsement from the Central Sydney Planning Committee in February 2023.
The design of the tower will be selected from a design competition, which started in May 2023, before being presented to the state government for approval.
The proposed tower will rise over the top of the new Hunter Street Station, part of the New South Wales government’s $6.5 billion Sydney Metro West rail line. Currently under construction and due to open in 2030, Hunter Street Station joins eight new stations on the Sydney Metro West line, which will form a 24-kilometre rail link between Westmead and the CBD.
Three of the site’s four existing buildings will be demolished if the City of Sydney approves Milligan Group’s application. A four-storey Victorian Italianate building at 15–17 Hunter Street, formerly known as Pangas House, will be retained due to its heritage status.
Milligan Group described the project as “a legacy building for Central Sydney in the form of a world-class commercial office tower in the commercial core of the CBD.”
A second commercial tower is scheduled to be built over Hunter Street Station, Sydney Metro reported in 2022.
Sydney Metro said the proposal is “consistent with the Central Sydney planning strategy, which allows increased building density and heights in suitable locations while protecting public spaces.”
According to the report, the two towers will differ in height in order to comply with sun access and plane regulations. More
Woods Bagot’s Perth studio has been appointed to design the Western Australian government’s new agriculture headquarters. The New Metropolitan Facility for the Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development will be built on Murdoch University’s Perth campus and will feature modern laboratories and technical workspaces for around 350 staff. The $320 million project is intended […] More
The 2023 Serpentine Pavilion by French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh will open to the public on Friday 9 June in London’s Kensington Gardens.
Named À Table, the 300-square-metre pavilion is a circular timber structure with a birch plywood roof, inspired by the form of a palm leaf. Pleated wooden plates radiate out from a central lightwell with scalloped edges, allowing natural light and ventilation into the pavilion.
According to Ghotmeh, the title À Table is a French call to sit down together at a table to engage and participate in dialogue while sharing a meal. She further explained that the design is inspired by the nearby tree canopies and aims to create a gathering space to generate conversation.
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The 2023 Serpentine Pavilion is designed by French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh Image:
Harry Richards
“À Table is an invitation to dwell together in the same space and around the same table,” said Ghotmeh.
“It is an encouragement to enter into a dialogue, to convene and to think about how we could reinstate and re-establish our relationship to nature and to Earth.”
A series of glued laminated timber columns draws the perimeter of the pavilion, supporting the cantilevered wooden beams that connect to the centre of the structure. Between the beams are wooden screens with plant-like cut out patterns.
The low roof, which measures 4.4 metres high at the centre and drops to 3.1 metres high at the eaves, references the “toguna,” a structure found in Mali, West Africa, which is traditionally used for community gatherings to discuss current issues.
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A lightwell at the centre of the roof allows natural light and ventilation into the pavilion Image:
Iwan Baan
Inside the pavilion, a circular table skirts the perimeter, inviting visitors to sit and convene. Crafted from oak, with a dark-red finish, the table features scalloped edges that mirror the roof.
The pavilion will be dissembled and reassembled at a different location after it closes at Kensington Gardens on 29 October 2023, thanks to a modular system that has been adopted in the making.
Ghotmeh is the 22nd person to be commissioned for the Serpentine Pavilion since the first structure was designed by architect Zaha Hadid in 2000. Last year, Chicago artist Theaster Gates created Black Chapel. More
The Australian Institute of Architects has announced its support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and constitutional recognition of First Nations peoples in the referendum scheduled for later this year. “We recognise that Constitutional Recognition of First Nations peoples is the right and just thing to do and is a critical step in righting many […] More
The final leg of the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2023 Dulux Study Tour was like an architectural amazing race from Zürich to the Alpine Rhine Valley, back to Zürich, ending at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
The tour bus, carrying five of Australia’s best emerging architects, wound its way past glistening lakes and rivers with the limestone peaks over the horizon. By this point of the tour, their architectural cups were full, and a day of Alpine air, fields of wildflowers and refreshing Valser water was a welcome interlude.
The final destination of the day was Peter Zumthor’s Therme in Vals, about two hours’ drive from Zurich, with several pitstops along the way to tiny villages where revered Swiss architects Peter Zumthor and Valerio Olgiati have made their mark among the untouched mountain chalets.
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Therme Vals by Peter Zumthor. Image:
Ellen Buttrose
“I just kept thinking at every project, I wonder what the locals think of this?” Sarah Lebner said. “Because most of the projects that we saw that day, even though they were an interpretation of traditional form, they were quite confrontingly different.”
Valerio Ogliati’s Atelier Bardill project, while volumetrically the same as an old barn it replaced (thanks to local controls), stands wedged between two almost identical timber barns with green shutters, under the watchful eye of Piz Hünzu. Even in its vast courtyard, its context is inescapable.
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Atelier Bardill by Valerio Olgiati. Image:
Linda Cheng
“There was so much regional tectonics,” Lebner continued, “and such a maintained tradition in the materials they used and how they built.”
“I really like the animal structures in the landscape,” said Bradley Kerr. “They were like little boulders sitting down the hill, and they aged like a boulder as well.”
Tiffany Liew observed, “There was more texture in the regions, like the landscape, the shape of the hills and the mountains, and the textured materials. It was a complete contrast and how rigid the city felt.”
In Zürich, the study tour winners found themselves in a very formal city with an orthogonal, gridded and rule-based architectural language. At the Kunsthaus Zürich Museum Extension by 2023 Pritzker Prize laureate David Chipperfield, the gridded language of the city was also extended vertically onto the facade.
“I liked how the Chipperfield Kunsthaus sat within the context,” said Edwina Brisbane. “He really understood the expectations of the city and its inhabitants. It was a good mix of ‘I am Chipperfield’ and ‘I am Zürich.’”
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Kunsthaus Zurich Extension by David Chipperfield Architects. Image:
Linda Cheng
“The only building that we saw that didn’t have a grid on the facade was the social housing project that we went into, and it had a bit of a disrupted grid,” she continued.
Haus G, designed by Pool Architekten, is one of 13 apartment blocks in the Hunziker Areal precinct – a flagship project for the “Mehr als Wohen” (More than Living) housing cooperative, founded in 2007. The masterplan by Duplex Architekten and Futurafrosch set out a number of “rules” for the architects of the 13 buildings, principally that each architect was assigned three buildings to design – a “couple” neighbouring each other, and a “satellite” – and the articulation of the buildings subtracted the extruded volume of the buildings’ footprints.
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Haus G at Hunziker Areal by Pool Architekten. Image:
Linda Cheng
While the group of on site, a resident spontaneously – and proudly – invited the group into her home, which, even to the architects’ surprise, had remained remarkably unchanged over the past decade.
“I really like what Pool Architekten said about creating possibilities for the inhabitants and how their designs do that both in the urban space around the buildings and the dwellings themselves,” Brisbane said.
Finally, the study tour arrived at the Venice Architecture Biennale in the middle of National Reconciliation Week in Australia – the timing made more poignant with tours of the Australian and Canadian exhibitions, which each examined their respective countries’ relationships with First Peoples in their own ways.
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Unsettling Queenstown, the Australian exhibition at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image:
Linda Cheng
Australia’s Unsettling Queenstown explored the legacy of colonialism via a process of “demapping” to reveal erased Indigenous inhabitations and histories, while Canada’s Not for Sale addressed issues of housing alienation for its Indigenous peoples.
“It was interesting to see them next to each other – the way they were both talking about working with community,” said Ellen Buttrose. “But I found the Australian exhibition to be a little bit hierarchical, in comparison to what was happening in the Canadian exhibition. Literally what they were talking about was completely reflected in their occupation of [their pavilion]. The reconfiguration and the ad hoc nature of it and the fact that it didn’t have to be an object.”
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Canada’s exhibition Not for Sale at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image:
Linda Cheng
Bradley Kerr (Quandamooka) found the Australian exhibition lacked context, particularly for international and non-architect audiences.
“It’s really hard to have these conversations without a general understanding of Australia,” he said. “We can’t present this type of information without understanding first very complex ideas like Country. If you ask any First Nations person what Country is, there’s a familiar response like we might all have some kind of understanding that Country is family, Country is kin, there’s a responsibility to care for Country, look after Country, there’s all these things. But it’s a very personal relationship.
“There’s also the context of understanding that there are hundreds of Countries within Australia so the conversation isn’t about one homogenous group with one culture and one language, and one relationship to Country. It’s far more of a complex relationship, and before you can get into some of the complexities of the exhibition is talking about, you need to have an understanding of that kind of context.”
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Unsetting Queenstown, the Australian exhibition at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image:
Pete Wood
Kerr also observed that the exhibitions reflected the sociopolitical undercurrents in their respective countries. “We’re in the throes of a political debate over whether or not the First Nations Peoples in Australia have a constitutional right to have a say over matters that impact them directly. Politically we’re going hear a lot of horribly unjust and factually inaccurate things, just to establish a position where we can then move to discuss the other parts of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a treaty.
“And while I’m not super familiar with Canada’s history and their situation is not perfect, they’ve had a treaty since 1982.
“We’re just trying to define what architecture of Country is – what does that look like, feel like, smell like, and how does that change for each Country in Australia. We’re still trying to discover that and combining Indigenous ways of being, knowing, seeing and relating to things with colonial ways.”
Linda Cheng travelled with the 2023 Dulux Study Tour. Follow #2023DuluxStudyTour on social media and the blog. More
SJB has lodged plans for a five-storey apartment building in Gurrajin (Elizabeth Bay), Sydney that would echo the “evocative” forms of its Art Deco neighbours.
The proposed building at 4 Barncleuth Square would include nine large apartments with two, three and four bedrooms. Located on the corner of Ward Avenue and Barncleuth Square, behind Darlinghurst Road, the property is surrounded by brick apartment blocks built in the 1930s whose facades display an array of unique patterns and textures.
“Playful brick detailing references the facade treatment of its Art Deco neighbours,” SJB says of the new buidling, in a design statement.
“The horizontal datums that run throughout Ward Avenue, and especially along the facade of No. 2 Barncleuth and Marlborough Hall, continue in the rounded facades of the proposal.”
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4 Barncleuth Square by SJB. Image: SJB
“Curved solid banding wraps the facade in reference to the Art Deco horizontal datum lines of Ward Avenue. This banding is accentuated by patterned brick coursing and recessive window detailing.”
The building meets Ward Avenue with a tripartite of soft, rounded forms, with the middle section featuring open balconies.
“The transparency of its southern edge, allowed through large curved windows, softens its visual intersection with its southern neighbours,” SJB states.
“The material palette references the Art Deco tones that underpin the built environment of Elizabeth Bay, in [a] softened, contemporary manner. Pale brick is chosen, in combination with fine steel detailing and lush planting.”
Black Beetle is responsible for the landscape design, which includes planting at ground and roof level, with the garden “spill[ing] from the parapet of the roof terrace.”
The $17 million development application has been lodged with the City of Sydney and is currently on public exhibition. More
