Architecture

Conrad Gargett has completed the $100 million refurbishment and extension of the historic home of Queensland Ballet.
Housed in a 110-year-old former boot factory designed by architect Richard Gailey and built in 1908, the redevelopment of the Thomas Dixon Centre has retained its original brick facade with nods to Georgian revival-style architecture throughout.
Works included the refurbishment of the existing centre with the addition of a new three-storey extension to make way for six dance studios, a performance and wellness centre, expanded wardrobe and production facilities, a roof terrace, cafe and function spaces. Five historic air raid shelters have also been converted into a “bunker bar” that will be ready to host exclusive hospitality experiences from next year.

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Conrad Gargett has completed the refurbishment of the historic Thomas Dixon Centre, home of Queensland Ballet. Image:

Chris Wardle

Prior to the refurbishment, as Queensland Ballet began to outgrow the site, various options were explored, including the possibility of the organisation’s relocation after 30 years at the site. The redevelopment, which began in 2019, has been ten years in the pipeline, with Queensland Ballet raising funds to enable it to stay in its West End location.
“It was decided that the Thomas Dixon Centre was their true home, presenting a fantastic opportunity to revitalize the site,” said Conrad Gargett project architect Tamarind Taylor.
“As a heritage building on an inner-city site, it wasn’t the easiest option to rejuvenate and restore the Thomas Dixon Centre, but Queensland Ballet wanted to remain in West End as we felt a sense of neighbourhood pride,” said artistic director Li Cunxin.

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Conrad Gargett has completed the refurbishment of the historic Thomas Dixon Centre, home of Queensland Ballet. Image:

Chris Wardle

The new additions are set back from the heritage building, creating a central promenade and focal point for the building. The design is sympathetic to the building’s historic details while considering the “complexities of the workflows and operations” of the Queensland Ballet, according to head of building precincts and projects Lucas Gilroy.
Another design objective was to provide the public with a rare glimpse of ballet beyond the stage, retaining a sense of mystique and intrigue while offering viewing opportunities into the costume workshop and dance studios.
“The architectural design seeks to invite the community into the home of the Queensland Ballet by offering glimpses ‘behind the curtain’,” said Taylor. More

Responding to change is fundamental to successful workplace design, and to ensure the longevity of office furniture and fittings, malleability is key.
Schiavello has released a new product range reflecting the values of fluidity, flexibility and change, to support the needs of contemporary workplaces into the future. Schiavello’s strategy outlines three key considerations for the hybrid workplace and highlights what solutions best enable them.
Diverse work environments inside the office
Contemporary workspaces need to support a range of activities, from focused concentration, to private meetings, to collaborative activities. Beyond workstations, Schiavello offers Focus Booths and a range of Focus Quiet Rooms designed to offer quiet concentration opportunities in open-plan work spaces, each offering different levels of audio and visual privacy.
The Toku Collection – named after the Japanese word for “talk” – invites conversation and collaboration through a range of benches, ottomans, and tables. In between, the new Valli collection of powered lounges and sofas provides privacy and comfort for workers away from the desk.
Supporting connection outside of the office
The merging of the physical and digital worlds is paramount to the longevity of a workplace. Purposively designed spaces that keep connectivity in mind are leading the way in workplace design, enabling high-tech integration and fluidity of digital connection.
Schiavello’s fully-powered and ventilated Focus Quiet Room collection offers specialised lighting and acoustics for video conferencing. Portable power is also essential for convenience and mobility, and moveable furniture, like laptop tables and charge towers, enable digital connection from anywhere.
Schiavello’s unified work platform Nora Space offers workers a solution to managing the integration of the digital and physical worlds. The platform also features an IoT software system that allows users the flexibility to remotely book desks and teamwork zones.
Easily transform furniture configuration to entire floor plans
Team zones should be designed to be reconfigured for independent or collaborative activities with minimal effort. Similarly, floor plans should be adapted to accomodate activities from training, to workshops and presentations.
Schiavello’s furniture is lightweight, portable, and reconfigurable, enabling workplaces to quickly and easily adapt spaces to meet a variety of different needs. Portable items, like the Henge Whiteboard, Aire Fold Table or Aire Media Stand, glide around on wheels for easy reconfiguration. The climate desking system’s clever articulator, now incorporated into the Krossi sit-stand, means desks can be expanded or compacted on a whim.
To see this thinking come to life in 3D animation, view Schiavello’s Purposeful Workplace. More

Victoria’s health minister Mary-Anne Thomas has revealed designs for the $48.7 million redevelopment of Swan Hill District Health emergency department in the northwest of the state. Designed by Silver Thomas Hanley, the proposed emergency department and associated clinical spaces were developed through consultation and workshops with the staff and community stakeholders who use the hospital […] More

Melbourne’s heritage-listed Comedy Theatre is set to be redeveloped with designs for a 23-storey tower by Architectus lodged with the Victorian government. The Melbourne Comedy Theatre was built in 1928, but the site, on the corner of Lonsdale and Exhibition streets, has been home to entertainment venues since 1842. The venue was built as the […] More

The NSW government has released a revised masterplan for a significant redevelopment precinct in on Sydney’s foreshore.
The Blackwattle Bay precinct, masterplanned by FJMT, is an urban renewal area on the current site of the Sydney Fish Market, which will be relocated to a new $750 million facility designed by Danish architecture firm 3XN in association with BVN and Aspect Studios.
The redevelopment of the existing fish market site will complete the missing link of the otherwise continuous 15-kilometre waterfront promenade from Woolloomooloo to Rozelle Bay.
More than 2,400 submissions were made in response to the the original plans for Blackwattle Bay during the public exhibition period held from 2 July to 20 August 2021, including from the City of Sydney, which claimed the plan was a “gross overdevelopment”.
Lord mayor Clover Moore’s expressed concerns about the lack of affordable housing in the masterplan, which only made up five percent of the proposed residences, as well as resulting densification and overshadowing from the proposed towers, and the likelihood of increased noise and pollution.
The original masterplan called for 1,500 apartments across 12 towers of up to 45 storeys. The revised masterplan proposes a reduction in building heights to 35 storeys, a reduction in density which would result 29 percent reduction in population, with 840 fewer than in the former plan, and a 37 percent reduction in carparking.
The proposed foreshore and promenade boardwalk has also been widened under the new proposal from 10 to 20 metres. While double its previous proposed width, it is still 10 metres shy of what was recommended by the City of Sydney.
Open space will also be increased from to 30,000 square metres under the new designs, and affordable housing now targeting 15 percent of all residential space – triple the state-wide target.
Infrastructure Minister Rob Stokes said the government responded to community feedback on the earlier proposal by reducing building height and density, as well as increasing the availability of public space.
“This vision, alongside the construction of the new Sydney Fish Market will completely transform Blackwattle Bay from a patchwork of industrial uses to a stunning stretch of Sydney Harbour open to the public for the first time in 150 years,” Minister Stokes said.
“We want this precinct to stand the test of time, which is why we’ve listened to feedback from the community and doubled the width of the boardwalk, created more open space and reduced building heights to create a more sustainable place.”
However, Moore is still not satisfied with the government’s response, stating that while council supports a harbour foreshore renewal, it should not be at the expense of community benefit.
“This is public land,” Moore said on Facebook on 29 July. “Minor tweaks to the initial plan won’t adequately address the community’s concerns about a wall of residential development located hard up against the noisy, polluted motorway, overshadowing existing apartments and public spaces.”
The revised masterplan will be on public exhibition with feedback welcome until Friday 26 August. More

Designs for City of Melbourne’s newest library in the historic Queen Victoria Market precinct have been revealed as part of the city’s $500 million Munro development. Six Degrees Architects has revealed schematic designs for the Munro Library and Community Hub ahead of the Future Melbourne Committee meeting on Tuesday 2 August. Councillors will consider the […] More

The custodians of the legacy of Robin Boyd, the Robin Boyd Foundation, have launched the Walsh Street Archives: a culturally significant collection of artefacts and treasures belonging to the Australian architect, educator and cultural commentator. Since 2014, a group of dedicated volunteers have collated, catalogued, researched, digitised and conserved relics of Boyd’s life and career […] More

Architect and new parliamentarian Elizabeth Watson-Brown has used her maiden speech to call for an end to privately delivered public infrastructure.
The member for the inner-Brisbane seat of Ryan was elected as a Greens candidate and is only the second representative of that seat not from the Liberal-National Party.
In her maiden speech, Watson-Brown reflected on her more than 40-year career in architecture marked by historic Queensland flood events.
“We arrived at UQ in the month of the 1974 floods. Much of the campus had been under water. Our first project as fledgling architects was to go and document the flood damage to houses. Of course, what we really saw was huge damage to people, to lives. That was heartbreaking, that was salutary. And since then, I have experienced two more ‘unprecedented’ major Brisbane river floods in Ryan.”
Watson-Brown established her own architectural practice in 1981 as one of only a handful of women to do so at that time in Australia.
“Throughout this whole time, whether in my own projects or on government advisory panels and juries, my design and lived values have always been to prioritize the needs of individual people and their community, and the specifics and the environment and the place.
“I have always said to my students and staff, what we’re doing is really important. We’re building the infrastructure of the lives we share. We’d better do it well. We’d better do it responsively and responsibly,” Watson-Brown continued.
The parliamentarian designed the first purpose-built refuge in Queensland for women and children escaping domestic violence.
“It’s these values – prioritizing the needs of the community and the sustainability and amenity of life, of our climate and environment – that I bring to represent my Ryan community in this chamber.”
Watson-Brown was appointed the Australian Greens spokesperson for infrastructure, transport and sustainable cities on 17 June. She told the House of Representatives, “In my career I’ve seen first-hand the problems caused by the belief that public infrastructure should be developed and owned by private corporations.
“This has a profoundly negative effect on our ability to deliver for everyday people and communities.
“My experience of public-private partnerships is that the private is what undermines the benefit to the public, as do planning regulation that favour private developers and profits.
“So I’m here to say that public infrastructure should be in public hands, and that we need a public-led approach to the way we develop our cities.
“This is particularly urgent in the context of the climate crisis – and the inequality crisis [that are] – so closely integrated.
“Australia’s cities actually house about 85 percent of our population and generate the majority of our carbon pollution. Without exception, Australian cities were established at places of great natural resources and beauty. Our reliance on private cars is rapidly obliterating these natural assets with unsustainable outward sprawl and inward traffic congestion and concrete chaos.”
She continued, “The climate crisis, caused by the greed of coal, oil and gas industries, now continually tosses up unheard-of temperatures, floods, fires, droughts and heatwaves.
“Our buildings and cities should protect us from these attacks, but they only make them worse. Urban hardening multiplies flash-flooding effects, while de-vegetation accelerates urban heat island effects that amplify deadly heat waves.
“We must design our settlements to accommodate and nurture everyone to resist natural hazards, but also to allow us to flee safely when the catastrophe inevitably strikes.
“In our last unprecedented devastating flood, whole suburbs in Ryan were trapped – people with nowhere to go, and no help when they needed it most. We need to do better and we need to do it fast.”
Watch Elizabeth Watson-Brown’s full maiden speech here or read it here. More