Architecture

A Melbourne architecture practice has created a series of temporary pavilions for the National Gallery of Victoria for use during its Triennial exhibition.
The A-frame-shaped structures, designed by Board Grove Architects, act as picnic and dining pavilions and host the Tonka restaurant pop-up at the NGV.
The pavilions are located in the Grollo Equiset Garden, adjacent to an installation by the French artist known only as JR. The architects drew inspiration from the installation, named Called Homily to Country 2020, which takes the form of an open-air chapel with stained glass windows depicting portraits and the ecological degradation of the Darling river system.

“This got us thinking about simple structures associated with camping along riverbeds in the Australian bush,” said Board Grove Architects in a statement. “The casual informality of swags and tents, hung over branches or propped up with poles is a quintessential image of Australian summer ‘escapism’: a desire for escapism particularly craved by many Melbournians post months of intense pandemic lockdown.”

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Temporary picnic and dining pavilions designed by Board Grove Architects at the National Gallery of Victoria.
Image: Rory Gardiner
The pavilions are modular and are prefabricated offsite. They consist of raised decks made from custom timber pallets and A-frames made from pine. “The simple A-frame structure has a visual relationship to the triangulated facade of the existing NGV,” the architects said.
The raised decks act as benches for visitors to sit on in a picnic setting. When used as a dining space, the frames are also sheathed in canvas slung between the frames.
“Like being under a tent awning you feel like you are in an interior space but still in close proximity to the trees, long grass and artworks in the garden,” the practice said.
Due to the temporary nature of the installation, all the elements of the pavilions are designed to be recycled and reused, including the tables which are designed to be flat-packed and stored way for future large-scale dining events.
The 2020 NGV Triennial is on exhibition until 18 April 2021.

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Work is underway on the Breathe Architecture designed expansion of the Four Pillars gin distillery in Victoria’s Yarra Valley.
The $6 million project will see a new warehouse built on the adjoining site to the existing industrial space and hospitality venue. Once complete, the addition will double the visitor capacity to more than 200,000 visitors a year.
“The primary concept ideas revolved around function and presence,” the practice said in a statement. “It was about paying close attention to public spaces, without sacrificing the amenity of the building and its industrial purpose.

“We embraced the idea of authenticity through natural materials and ‘portals’ into the industrial areas, whilst celebrating the Yarra Ranges location through a strategic landscape strategy.”
The proposal contains its primary building functions within an efficient warehouse addition, mirroring the architectural type of the current facility, while the addition of the folding copper veil adds intrigue and identity to the distillery, “wrapping the ‘ordinary’ with something ‘extraordinary.’”

The project includes a semi-basement car park, a large loading area and a new bottling area. The primary hospitality functions will be spread out at ground level across the new and existing buildings.
Four Pillars co-founder Cameron Mackenzie said that since re-opening over summer the distillery had been busier than ever.
“When we began making Four Pillars, the Yarra Valley was always intended to be our home and when we found our original site, we couldn’t believe our luck,” he said. “When the opportunity came to buy the land next door, we simply had no choice but to roll the dice and back our Yarra Valley dream to the hilt.”
The expansion is expected to be completed in 2021.

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The Victorian government has released designs for a new vertical primary school in North Melbourne.
North Melbourne Hill Primary School, designed by ARM Architecture, will also include a kindergarten as part of its vertical campus.
To be located on Molesworth Street in North Melbourne, the school will have multi-purpose classrooms, breakout spaces, a kitchen garden, a library and a gymnasium, which will also be accessible to community outside school hours.

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The proposed North Melbourne Hill Primary School by ARM Architecture.
Image: Victorian School Building Authority
ARM Architecture has worked with Bush Projects in masterplanning the site.

“We have imagined the campus as a big cloud — something dynamic, filled of knowledge, dreams, aspirations and data. Our imaginary cloud hovers over and through the site, and is a bubbling network of interconnected thoughts, themes, and hotspots mapped three dimensionally,” said Andrew Lilleyman, a director of ARM Architecture.
“It is realized in the building’s architecture as bubble-like entrances at street level; cantilevered forms for the kindergarten space on the top floor; and when sliced through, radiating patterns to the sun shading to the main Molesworth facade. The outdoor spaces are included in this network of patterning, there are swirls and rounded shapes form play areas, topography, soft and hard landscaping.”

The large, flexible, landscaped playground space will be universally accessible with play equipment, seating and tiered amphitheatre for events and performances. It will also be accessible to the community outside school hours.
The kindergarten will be located on level five of the building and will include two children’s rooms and an outdoor learning area with a sandpit and a cubby house.
A tree-lined laneway to the south of the site will provide separate access to the school, kindergarten and sports courts.
Construction is expected to start in mid 2021 and the school will open in 2023.
North Melbourne Hill Primary School is the eighth vertical school to be announced by the Victorian government and other states have also introduced similar high rise schools in inner city environments. More

Is there any such thing as a new idea? A new type of crisis? A new solution?
These are some of the questions that some of the Asia Pacific region’s most interesting architects and thinkers will be grappling with at The Architecture Symposium, during this year’s Asia Pacific Architecture Festival.
“We’re in the middle of a global pandemic, an economic crisis and a climate emergency, and we keep hearing the word ‘unprecedented’,” said Katelin Butler, editorial director at Architecture Media, organizer of the symposium. “But history tells us that the world has faced many other crises before.”

Themed “How new is now,” The Architecture Symposium will be delivered over four virtual sessions, and participants will hear from architects from Singapore Japan, China, India, New Zealand, Indonesia and Australia. The speakers will represent a wide range of design approaches and areas of practice – from designing formally beautiful and sustainable buildings to investigating human rights abuses using architectural techniques.

Speaking in the first session, “New Opportunites,” will be Christopher Lee, founder and director of Serie Architects (Singapore, India, UK), the architect behind the agenda-setting design for the National University of Singapore’s School of Design and Environment, the first net-zero energy building of its kind in the tropics.

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School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, by Serie Architects.

Karamia Muller from the University of Auckland, the first Sāmoan woman to receive a PhD in architecture, who will be discussing how architects can contribute to a future resistant to inequality.
Samaneh Moafi will discuss her investigative work with Forensic Architecture, the multidisciplinary firm that employs “pioneering techniques in spatial and architectural analysis, open-source investigation, digital modelling, and immersive technologies” to investigate human rights violations. She has overseen several research projects in the Asia Pacific, including investigations into ecocide in Indonesia and intentional fires in Papua.

In the second session, “New Needs,” participants will hear from Stephanie Larassati of Indonesian firm At-Lars; Yuri Uno and Toshiharu Naka of Japanese firm Naka Architect’s Studio; and Gong Dong, director of up-and-coming Chinese firm Vector Architects. Each of these speakers has a unique perspective on the changing needs and shifting dynamics of how we live our lives. Larassati’s projects explore notions of temporality, Uno and Naka blur the line between living and working spaces; and Gong Dong is a master of balancing the old and the new.

The third session includes experienced architect and academic Rahul Mehrotra, Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization at Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is the founder of Mumbai and Boston based firm, RMA Architects, and has written and lectured extensively on issues to do with architecture, conservation, and urban planning and design in Mumbai and India. Speaking on transport projects will be Mark Middelton, group managing partner at global firm Grimshaw, who is an expert on rail, aviation and metro design projects. Finally, Joshua Bolchover and John Lin of Hong Kong research and design firm Rural Urban Framework (RUF) will discuss their work engaging in the “rural-urban transformation” of China and Mongolia through built projects, research, exhibitions and writing.

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House in an Orchard by RMA Architects.
Image: Supplied
For the fourth session, Asia Pacific Architecture Festival co-curators Georgia Birks and Cameron Bruhn, will lead a discussion with the speakers from the previous sessions dissecting some of the key issues facing architecture in the Asia Pacific, and asking once again “how new is now?”
Tickets for The Architecture Symposium are now on sale. ArchitectureAU is published by Architecture Media, the organizer of the symposium in partnership with the Asia Pacific Architecture Festival. More

A 1960s office building on Brisbane’s Adelaide Street is set for a major facelift, after it was deemed unsafe due to faux sandstone cladding added in the 1990s.
Following a fire notice on the cladding, the building’s owner decided to not only replace the cladding but to take the opportunity to update the design in line with Brisbane council’s Buildings that Breathe strategy.
Sydney firm Fitzpatrick and Partners has designed the proposed refurbishment and addition, which will see a series of stepped terraces added to the corner of the building, providing external working environments and landscaped areas to every second level of the building.

Known as the Wintergarden Corner, this new nine-storey addition will make use of the available space left at the corner by the original L-shaped tower. “The terraces step away from the corner and in doing so allow for good quality solar access to the corner and reduced shadow impact along Adelaide Street,” the architects state in planning documents. “The new cascading gardens visually activates and animates this strategic and prominent location.” The project’s landscape architect is local firm Laud Ink.

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The original 1960s building.

A new glazed box at the lobby will appear as a “glowing lantern” at street level and new street awnings and podium cladding will be added along Adelaide and Wharf streets.
The existing “Futuretec” cladding will be removed along all facades of the building and replaced with a variety of materials.
“The new facade retains the existing double glazed windows and the existing cladding is replaced by an acoustically and thermally insulated system comprised by tapering vertical and horizontal solid aluminium spandrels,” the architects state. “From the footpath levels the terracotta panels respond to the original brick walls behind as they extend up the building and embrace the tower.”
A development application for the project is now on public exhibit.

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If any practice has good reason to celebrate, it’s Pinch. The London-based design studio, founded by husband and wife Russell Pinch and Oona Bannon, has officially been in business for 15 years. And what better way to commemorate the anniversary than with the launch of six products at the 2019 London Design Festival? This new furniture collection represents a coming of age for the studio and also throws the spotlight on its recently opened Ebury Street showroom. It’s somewhat of a watershed moment for Russell and Oona, who have made a name for themselves through a singular commitment to refined detailing, exquisite craftsmanship and high-end materiality, as well as an unmatched respect for the interiors their pieces will eventually occupy.

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Russell Pinch and Oona Bannon are celebrating 15 years since the foundation of their London-based design studio.

“Even though we design things for different spaces, we believe space is the real luxury,” explains Oona, who is the studio’s creative director, alongside Russell, the designer. “And in thinking about how a product will inhabit a space, we’re all about lightness of touch, because space is important and you don’t want to suck it up for no reason.”

The couple’s design process begins with a discussion springing from their collective imagination and quickly moves to Russell sketching with pencil on paper, and model making. His 1:5-scale models typify the studio’s commitment to crafting by hand; they convey a stylistic minimalism that’s rendered with architectural rigour. This sensibility is especially evident in the new collection: the Christo four-poster bed is all the more resplendent for its pared-back theatricality, and the true beauty of the Rodan dining table is found in the way the solid base champions the inherent qualities of either European oak or American walnut. These two pieces embody the studio’s penchant for elegant forms and colours, for finding a balance between simplicity and complexity.

Progressing their design language so that they may more clearly articulate their ideas is what motivates Russell and Oona, along with consideration for the end user. “We can all be guilty of over-designing things, especially in a crowded market that outwardly values conceptual layering, but I don’t think that’s what people want,” says Oona. “They want gentleness and poise in a piece of furniture that’s definable, without it being something that’ll visually knock them over the head.”

Certainly, the Roubel sofa follows this approach. With its understated but glamorous interpretation of the Chesterfield style and coupling of traditional and modern aesthetics, it’s the studio’s strongest statement to date. Russell and Oona collaborate with 14 makers and crafts-people across the UK and Europe to produce their furniture; this commitment to craft shows, and the new collection is exemplary in its level of artisanal skill. Each product is unfalteringly well resolved, not to mention highly covetable.
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The Victorian government is looking for public input on a 10-year strategy for social and affordable housing, releasing a discussion paper for consultation.
The strategy, which outlines principles for public housing, community housing and private affordable housing is a part of the $5.3 billion Big Housing Build package announced in the 2020/21 budget. A hallmark of that big-spending announcement was a concerted move away from public housing, that is housing owned and managed by the government, to community housing managed by independent community housing providers and other forms of affordable housing, which can be owned by private businesses.

The discussion paper notes that while social housing (public and community housing) is the core response within the strategy, a range of complementary affordable housing options are needed to respond to the different circumstances of people who need some form of lower cost housing.

“There is a chronic shortage of affordable private rental properties across the state, and there are very few dedicated affordable rental homes available that can provide an alternative to, or pathway out of, social housing for those that need it,” the paper states.

A number of core principles are set out in the discussion paper. Social and affordable housing should put “people at the centre,” so that it is designed and delivered in a way that is responsive to the needs of different people, including those who face challenges in addition to affordability, such as disability, family violence or mental illness. There should also be “shared action and accountability” across government, within the community housing sector, and with other housing stakeholders. Initiatives should have a focus on “maximizing value,” relying on data and evidence to deliver the best outcomes and value. And housing should be built for sustainability, including being climate adapted, water and energy efficient and incorporating best practice design to ensure they are built for the future.

Housing minister Richard Wynne said the strategy would outline a blueprint for the future of the social housing system – “encompassing the diverse views of stakeholders and the community.”
“There will be a focus on bringing together stakeholders from across the community housing, private and community services sectors, as well as all levels of government,” the government said in a statement. “Combining their skills, expertise and capacity will help build a more effective social and affordable housing system that can meet the current and future needs of Victorians.”
The Big Housing Build package will deliver more than 12,000 new homes, including 9,300 new social housing homes, replace 1,100 old public housing units and a further 2,900 new affordable and low-cost homes for low-to-moderate income earners. In total that will mean an additional 8,200 social housing units in the system.
Community and stakeholder consultation is open until 9 April. More