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Australian acoustic specialist CSR Martini has launched its new dECO high performance decorative acoustic range offering innovative and sustainable solutions for noise control. These acoustic solutions allow architects and designers to create interior spaces where freedom of design and performance integrate to achieve superior levels of auditory enjoyment and style. Studies show that poor acoustics […] More
The 2021 federal budget missed an opportunity for large-scale reform, said the Australian Institute of Architects, with housing measures set to “benefit the few, not the many” and spending on the environment and the climate crisis “patently inadequate.”
In a largely critical statement, the Institute noted that while the budget was big on spending in a number of areas, it failed to adequately address key issues relating to the built environment.
“This global pandemic cast the strengths and weaknesses of our economic and social systems into stark relief, demanding a wholescale rethink of the structures we need to ensure a healthy future,” said CEO Julia Cambage.
“Against the backdrop of the global climate crisis, reforms that create a more sustainable, liveable built environment – in everything from our health facilities to how our schools and homes are designed and constructed – are urgently required.”
The Institute slammed the “relatively minor” new investment of $124.7m in boosting social and affordable supply and also criticized the new Family Home Guarantee policy, designed to allow single parents with dependent children to purchase a property with a deposit of just two percent.
“New measures such as the Family Guarantee and extension of the First Home Loan Deposit Scheme will benefit the few, not the many and fail to address need across the full continuum of the housing spectrum.”
In terms of the climate crisis, the government’s own assessment is that only 0.3 percent of spending is going towards addressing climate change and, the Institute notes, less than one percent is being spent on the environment more broadly.
“This is patently inadequate by any standard given the scale of the looming disaster, the early signs of which were so apparent in the Black Summer bushfires and more recent floods,” said Cambage.
“While we welcome the new National Disaster Recovery Agency as something we called for in line with many other important recommendations from the Bushfire Royal Commission’s final report, it is abundantly clear that industry will need to continue to do the heavy lifting in moving towards carbon neutrality.
“The budget focus on improving disaster resilience has little to excite or surprise. Full of re-announcements and missing vision, the Institute is at a loss to see how these initiatives, individually or combined, will prepare Australia to respond to the challenges of natural disasters and climate change and to deliver a carbon neutral future.”
The Institute welcomed the $1.7bn investment in childcare, compulsory super for casual workers, as well as funding for family and domestic violence prevention and support.
But said these efforts “did not deliver a structural shift towards treating these matters as essential services and drivers of productivity rather than some form of ‘social welfare’.
Labor leader Anthony Albanese will deliver the budget reply speech on 13 May, which is expected to focus on entrepreneurship and the “Start Up Year” program, renewable energy and childcare. More
The NSW government has revealed the location for two new metro stations for the Sydney Metro West line in the city centre and at Pyrmont. Requiring the compulsory acquisition of 11 commercial buildings in the CBD and two in Pyrmont, the stations will be positioned to cut travel times and offer greater choice of transport […] More
A new headquarters for Australia’s largest private centre for the vision- and hearing-impaired has been approved by the NSW government and will be built at Macquarie University. Designed by WMK Architecture with Oculus as landscape architect, the centre will offer diagnostics, therapy and rehabilitation, and will include research and education – including a preschool for […] More
Construction-ready detailed designs for the redevelopment of Melbourne’s iconic St Kilda Pier have been released, following further refinement on schematic designs from 2020. Jackson Clements Burrows Architects, working with Site Office Landscape Architects and specialist port and coastal engineers AW Maritime, have produced a design that aims to respectfully considers the heritage aspects of the […] More
The Australian Institute of Architects has announced Shannon Battisson has been elected the next national president, as incoming national president Tony Giannone begins his term. Battison is a Canberra-based architect and director of The Mill: Architecture and Design. She was awarded the ACT chapter’s Emerging Architect Prize in 2018. She was elected president of the […] More
Queensland architect Elizabeth Watson-Brown will run for the federal seat of Ryan in Brisbane as a Greens candidate at the next election.
Watson-Brown, who directed her own practice for 20 years before joining Architectus and becoming its national design strategy leader, was announced as the candidate at an event in Brisbane Tuesday with Greens leader Adam Bandt.
The electorate of Ryan encompasses the western suburbs of Brisbaneand is classified as a safe seat for the Liberal National Party with 48.61 percent of the primary vote. The Greens have been steadily increasing their vote, finishing with only a few thousand less votes than Labor in 2019. Party strategists see an opportunity to edge out Labor in the first-preference count and win the seat on preferences.
“There is a general sense [in Ryan] that the two major parties are not addressing some fundamentals concerns that people have,” Watson-Brown told ArchitectureAU.
“There are lots of underpinning concerns that people have in society, and I think that the Greens are answering those. For one, we’ve got governments across Australia, both blue and red, who are promoting energy sources that are problematic in terms of dealing with climate change.”
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Ngungun House, Elizabeth Watson-Brown’s first project, 1990. Image:
Michael Nicholson
Through her career as an architect, Watson-Brown has been a keen advocate for sustainable and socially responsible design. She has been involved as a volunteer with the Greens for a number of campaigns, and sees her tilt at political office as a way of prosecuting some of the agendas she has focused on throughout her career.
“It was really good to enact these sorts of things project by project, and that has its power,” she said. “But I’ve started really being aware that it is in the policy settings and the overarching context in which we design and build that important steps need to be made.”
One key initiative she would like to see at the federal level is a ministerial portfolio with a focus on the sustainability and resilience of cities in the face of climate change.
“85 percent of us live in cities, so it’s absolutely central to how we navigate the effects of climate change, right now and in the immediate future, not in the distant future,” she said.
“[It’s something that] architects and urban designers and planners can address, and to bring that all together, under an umbrella, to figure out how we deal with it across Australia, would be really, really powerful.
“There are lots of really good architects, lots of good designers, lots of good urbanists, but so often, they’re putting their creative energies and their intelligence into fighting not very good systems. If we can get the policy settings right, so that we’re all working together towards dealing with this incredible challenge [of climate change], that would be huge.”
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443 Queen Street is a high-rise apartment development designed by Architectus and Woha.
Another policy area where Watson-Brown sees her architecture background as a real strength is housing affordability and homelessness.
As of late 2020, there were around 430,000 people on waiting lists for public housing around Australia, and at the 2016 census 116,000 people were counted as experiencing homelessness.
“We’re a wealthy country, we should not have anyone homeless,” Watson-Brown said. “And that’s a design issue, as well as an ethical and political issue – not just in terms of architecture, but in the design of the policy settings and how we spend our resources in this country.”
Watson-Brown, who in addition to practice has taught architecture at the University of Queensland since 2019, recently retired from Architectus.
She is a life fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects and serves on independent design advisory panels for Brisbane and Sunshine Coast councils.
The seat of Ryan is held by first term MP Julian Simmonds, who won the seat in 2019 with a two-party-preferred vote of 56.03 percent compared to Labor’s 43.97 percent. The Greens received 20.35 percent of the primary vote, which is an increase of 1.59 percent from the previous election. More
A pink pond evocative of Australia’s inland salt lakes will be installed in the Grollo Equiset Garden at NGV International for the 2021 Architecture Commission.
Melbourne-based architecture practice Taylor Knights and artist James Carey were announced as the winners of the commission on Tuesday 11 May, for their installation Pond[er].
The design references Roy Grounds’s open-air courtyards in the original design of NGV International and comprises two key design elements: a body of Indigenous plants and a body of water.
The pink body of water makes a direct reference to the many inland salt lakes in Victoria and highlights “the scarcity, importance and political implications of water as a natural resource.”
Beds of Victorian wildflowers, designed in association with Ben Scott Garden Design, will bloom at different times throughout the installation, highlighting “the beauty, precariousness and temporality of our natural ecology.”
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Pond[er] by Taylor Knights and James Carey.
Pond[er] has been conceived as a part of the NGV garden rather than a separate architectural object. Visitors will be invited to move through a series of interconnected walkways and accessible platforms.
Visitors will also be encouraged to wade through the pink water, cooling off in the summer months and reflecting on their relationship with the environment.
“Through an elegant interplay of architectural and landscape elements, this work draws our attention to the challenges facing Australia’s many catchments and river systems, whilst also ensuring that the design itself has minimal environmental impact by considering the future lifecycle of the materials used,” said Tony Ellwood, NGV director.
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Pond[er] by Taylor Knights and James Carey.
The materials selected will be locally sourced and manufactured, and are intended to be distributed and used again by various Landcare, Indigenous and community groups upon deinstallation, including the Willam Warrain Aboriginal Association.
Pond[er] was selected from a shortlist of five contenders. The unsuccessful shortlisted entries were: Listening to the Earth by Aileen Sage Architects with Michaela Gleave (an installation that explores “interconnectedness between people at a time of restricted human interaction”); At the Table by Common and Enlocus (a sensorial, productive, and edible garden); by MDF (a playful oversized ring of swings); and Gas Stack by Simulaa with Finding Infinity (an installation that “evokes both a biotech lab and the vertical city”). More
