Architecture

Two architects more defined by what they don’t do than what they do have won the 2021 Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal of Lacaton and Vassal, the winners of architecture’s most prestigious prize, have built a reputation for doing as little as possible. They live by the maxim “never demolish” and through projects in their native France and abroad have demonstrated that, by understanding and respecting what already exists, it is possible to enrich space and human life with only subtle architectural intervention.

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The most extreme example of this approach could be seen when they told a prospective client that nothing but some new gravel was needed to improve a public square in Bordeaux, but the ethos is present in everything they do – from social housing to cultural and academic institutions.
“Good architecture is open – open to life, open to enhance the freedom of anyone, where anyone can do what they need to do,” said Anne Lacaton, on winning the prize. “It should not be demonstrative or imposing, but it must be something familiar, useful and beautiful, with the ability to quietly support the life that will take place within it.”
A typical move of theirs, in working to improve housing, is to add greenhouse-like balconies to existing apartment buildings to improve thermal performance and increase living space.
At La Tour Bois le Prêtre in Paris in 2011, for instance, their firm transformed the experience of living in the 17-story, 96-unit city housing project originally built in the early 1960s via a few simple moves. They increased the interior square footage of every unit through the removal of the original concrete façade, and extended the footprint of the building to form bioclimatic balconies. Once-constrained living rooms now extended into new terraces, with large windows offering new views of the city.
The judges were impressed by the Lacaton and Vassal’s novel approach to sustainability and their commitment to improving lives through architecture.

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Latapie House

“Not only have they defined an architectural approach that renews the legacy of modernism, but they have also proposed an adjusted definition of the very profession of architecture,” the jury said in their citation. “The modernist hopes and dreams to improve the lives of many are reinvigorated through their work that responds to the climatic and ecological emergencies of our time, as well as social urgencies, particularly in the realm of urban housing. They accomplish this through a powerful sense of space and materials that creates architecture as strong in its forms as in its convictions, as transparent in its aesthetic as in its ethics.”
Lacaton and Vassal met in the 1970s studying at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture et de Paysage de Bordeaux and competed their first project together (a straw hut) in Niger, where Vassal was practising urban planning. They established Lacaton and Vassal in Paris in 1987 and have since completed more than 30 projects throughout Europe and West Africa.
“Our work is about solving constraints and problems, and finding spaces that can create uses, emotions and feelings,” said Vassal.
At the end of this process and all of this effort, there must be lightness and simplicity, when all that has been before was so complex.”
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are the 49th and 50th Laureates of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
In March 2020, Lacaton and Vassal were appointed the inaugural Garry and Susan Rothwell Chair in Architectural Design Leadership at the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning. More

International travel might still not be on the horizon, but the Australian Institute of Architects’ Dulux Study Tour is returning in 2021, giving emerging architects the opportunity to explore the best of Australian architecture. Hopeful emerging architects can now apply to be a part of the tour, with entries closing on 6 April. Entries are […] More

Plans have been submitted for the proposed 50-storey apartment and hotel tower to be built above Sydney’s City Tattersalls Club, the famous social club started by a group of disgruntled bookmakers in 1895.
The development at 194–204 Pitt Street, which will also see the existing building refurbished, is designed by BVN, which won a design competition for the project in 2020.
Once complete, the building will house a 101-room hotel and 241 “high-end” residential apartments. The redeveloped club will also include an upgraded lower bar and grill, new restaurants, a commercial fitness centre, and event spaces.
BVN’s design seeks to make clear the distinction between old and new, as well as indicating the different uses of the building.
“The three parts of the project – club, hotel and apartments – are purposefully articulated in the overall mass of the project, with fenestration informed by the existing exuberant heritage facades,” said BVN principal architect Matthew Blair. “They weave together a story of a rich history and an optimistic future for this significant place in the middle of the CBD.”

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The development at City Tattersalls Club by BVN with FJMT.

BVN’s scheme was selected from a pool of six during the design competition, with the other designs prepared by Hassell, Bates Smart, SJB, Candalepas Associates, and DP Architects working in collaboration with Scott Carver Architects.
BVN has worked in collaboration with FJMT, the firm in charge of the heritage components and interiors.
“The home of the City Tattersalls Club will be transformed into a beautiful interconnection of exceptional heritage buildings and landmark heritage interiors with a new and exciting layer of contemporary design,” said FJMT design director Richard Francis-Jones.
“This new architectural layer will be like an organic ribbon of movement and light connecting all the great interior rooms of the club while also creating new modern spaces and facilities. The new architecture also makes an appearance on Pitt Street infilling between some of the finest heritage facades in our city. This seamless blend of new and heritage represents both the unmatched heritage of the club and its open, progressive, and innovative vision for the future.”

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The development at City Tattersalls Club by BVN with FJMT.

The club itself is spread across two heritage-listed buildings, one at 202–204 Pitt Street designed by Sheerin and Hennessyand built in 1891 and the other at 198–200 Pitt Street, designed by Ernest Lindsey Thompson and built between 1932 and 1924.
The statement of sigifigance for the older building notes that The Tattersalls Club is one of the few surviving city clubs in its late 19th century premises. “The quality of the building reflects the importance of this type of social institution, and particularly the prestige of the racing industry in Sydney.” The Tattersalls Club was founded by 25 bookmakers who took issue with a judge’s decision to disqualify a horse at a race at Kensington and refused to pay out – hence losing their right to run books at that racecourse. It celebrates its 125th anniversary this year.
Construction is scheduled to begin in 2022 with completion in 2026, pending approvals. More

The Australian Tapestry Workshop has launched the 2021 Tapestry Design Prize for Architects.
The $10,000 prize challenges architects to design a site-specific tapestry for a hypothetical site, which in 2021 will be a choice of three galleries inside Phoenix Central Park by John Wardle Architects and Durbach Block Jaggers: the basement gallery, the double height gallery and the top floor gallery.
The prize is open to architects, architecture students and multi-discipline design teams worldwide. Entrants are asked to consider how tapestries can articulate, transform and enrich public and private space.
John Wardle Architects, who won the 2015 prize with his design Perspective on a Flat Surface, will be be on the judging panel, along with Cameron Bruhn (dean and head of the architecture school at the University of Queensland), Diane Jones (executive director of PTW Architects), Valerie Kirk (artist and tapestry weaver), Dimmity Walker (director of Spaceagency Architects) and interdisciplinary artist Brook Andrew.
Entries close on 7 June at 5 pm and the winner will announced at the Australian Tapestry Workshop on 26 August. A people’s choice winner will also receive $1,000.
An initiative of architect and former ATW board chair Peter Williams, the Tapestry Design Prize for Architects celebrates the long standing connection between architectural space and tapestry design.
The hypothetical sites for previous competitions have been the Australian Pavilion in Venice (2015), the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (2016) and an unbuilt monumental cenotaph for physicist Isaac Newton drawn by the French neoclassical architect Étienne-Louis Boullée in the 18th century (2018).
Two of the winning tapestry designs have been made by the Australian Tapestry Workshop, including John Wardle Architects’ Perspective on a Flat Surface which was named joint winner in 2015 and Justin Hill’s 22 Temenggong Road, Twilight. The winner of the 2018 prize, Chaos and Fertility by Pop Architecture and Hotham Street Ladies is currently in production.
Entries to the 2021 prize close on 7 June at 5 pm and the winner will announced at the Australian Tapestry Workshop on 26 August. A people’s choice winner will also receive $1,000.
The 2021 Tapestry Design Prize for Architects is presented by the Australian Tapestry Workshop and supported by Architecture Media (publisher of ArchitectureAU.com), Metal Manufactures Limited, , Creative Victoria and the City of Port Phillip. The launch of the prize is part of the Asia Pacific Architecture Festival. More

Candalepas Associates has designed the redevelopment of a the largest mid-century church building central Sydney, which will include a mixed-use tower addition above the existing building.
Located on George Street in Haymarket, St Peter Julian’s Catholic Church was originally designed by architect Terrence Daly who undertook a large body of work for the Catholic Church in NSW. A City of Sydney heritage review found that the George Street church “may be his finest work.”

The church’s George Street facade is divided into five equal bays. Candalepas Associates’ design for the mixed-use addition extends “celebrates original Terrence Daly design” and “provide cohesive presentation to George Street,” according to a heritage impact statement prepared by Urbis.

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The redevelopment of St Peter Julian’s Catholic Church by Candalepas Associates.

The redevelopment will also include upgrade to the sacristy, interview parlours, meeting rooms, six domiciles with a refectory, a recreation room, a private chapel and a roof garden.

The commercial addition will rise nine storeys above the existing building.
St Peter Julian’s Catholic Church was constructed in 1964 and is one of four – and the largest – church buildings constructed in central Sydney in the post World War II period. In 2008, it was refurbished by PMDL Architecture and Design.
A development application for the project is currently exhibited on the City of Sydney website.
Candalepas Associates are also leading the redevelopment of a significant Edmund Blacket designed church in Redfern. More

An exhibition at the University of Sydney Tin Shed Gallery explores how women, girls and the LGBTIQ+ communities experience public space.
Presented through data, research and narratives, the exhibition highlights the spatial inequity and injustice experienced by women and marginalized communities with a particular focus on public safety and sexual harassment.
The exhibition is created by the XYX Lab at Monash University, which was established in 2017 to research the intersection between gender and the built environment. The work was originally planned to be presented as part of the Space-Time-Existence exhibition at the 2020 Venice Architecture Biennale.

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Hypersext City exhibition at Tin Shed Gallery.

Accompanying the exhibition is an online repository of documents, data, research and lived experiences. These include the fact that in Canada, “one in three women and one in eight men feel uncomfortable or unsafe in public because of another’s behaviour;” and that in the United State, “around 50 percent of harassed women and men [had] experienced street harassment by age 17.”

In a video work created for the exhibition, XYX Lab director Nichole Kalms says, “So many women and so many girls tell of not wanting to be out at night who will not return to a space or a place where something wasn’t quite right.”
The exhibition also invites visitors to contribute their ideas and suggestions for mitigating spatial inequity in urban settings.
The exhibition program also includes a series of workshops which will use the data and stories collected for the exhibition to prompt consideration for public spaces could be made safer for women, girls and LGBTQI+ communities.
The exhibition is on at Tin Shed Gallery until 9 April. More

Bates Smart has won a City of Sydney Design Excellence competition with its design for an office building in Green Square that offers a contemporary interpretation of the industrial sawtooth roof form.
The practice’s director Philip Vivian said the 28,570-sqaure-metre commercial development would respond to Green Square’s physical, social and historic contexts.
“The design creates the civic landmark entry that Green Square needs,” he said. “The city fringe location, alongside the connection to Green Square’s train station, provides a unique opportunity to create a fringe precinct that invigorates its context and sets the precedent for the workplace of the future.”

The design competition jury said the design had an “interesting built form, particularly due to the splayed rooftop and height.”
The jury unanimously selected Bates Smart’s scheme, which they said provided the best response and was capable of achieving design excellence.

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Bates Smart’s competition winning scheme for Green Square.

The building has been conceived as two volumes, with a through-site link connecting to an adjoining pocket park, creating a smooth public domain transition from the Green Square train station.
This space will be home to cafes and retail tenancies and will be defined by arched forms, chosen to celebrate the area’s industrial history.
Inside, the volumes house two workplace neighbourhoods with individual identities, connected via a naturally ventilated timber “social heart” that encourages connectivity and collaboration.

Vivian noted that commercial city-fringe developments are increasingly important to the future of work in Sydney, as they allow for a greater focus on workplace wellbeing and can integrate with the surrounding urban context.
“This development in Green Square will weave together public space, retail, workplace and transport to create an exciting, holistic, shared place. It will meet growing expectations on commercial space and more importantly, serve the needs of the people as Green Square continues to grow,” he said. More

The NSW government has approved Foster and Partners’ design for a tower above the proposed Pitt Street Sydney Metro station.
The 39-storey Pitt Street tower is the latest in a string of over-station developments to be approved by the government.
Foster and Partners notes in a design statement that the building has been conceived to respond to key trends in major office tower projects across the world and will create a new gateway to the Sydney CBD.
“The flexible, large-span floorplate aids visual connectivity across office floors, with a design that includes a truly unique and dynamic entrance experience that takes visitors through a series of spaces that includes a sky lobby and potential commercial retail offering – this ‘Third Space’ environment seeks to ease the transition between the public and private worlds,” the architects state.

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Pitt Street Sydney Metro over-station tower by Foster and Partners.

The atrium and lobbies have been designed to be physically distinct from the office floors, creating a clarity as workers transition between realms.

“At ground level, the private world of the tower meets the public realm of the city in a four-storey covered plaza – the ‘assembly’. This soaring, light-filled space functions as a busy public square.”
Planning Rob Stokes said, “The Pitt Street North development will provide nearly 55,000 square metres of commercial and retail space, creating new places for office workers, commuters, visitors and CBD residents.
“As life starts to return to normal, we want to create new and exciting places to draw people back into the CBD whilst boosting the economy at the same time.”

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