Architecture

Minjerribah, also known as North Stradbroke Island, lies between Moreton Bay and the Coral Sea, 30 kilometres east of Brisbane, Queensland. The lack of a bridge connecting the island to the mainland presents multiple challenges to the construction process, but for those who overcome them the rewards are generous: ancient landscapes, pristine beaches and a wildlife population encompassing beach-going kangaroos and migrating humpback whales. “Straddie” resonates deeply with those who live and holiday here, as it has done for the Quandamooka people for tens of thousands of years.

Corymbia tells the story of a site passed down through family lines and acquired by Nick and Margaret to enjoy as a weekender with their two teenage sons. With time, it will transition into a place for their retirement. The original shack was once the centre of extended family gatherings on the island and the memories of this tradition continue to be honoured in and around the new house, which occupies the same footprint as the old. In the design of the new house, Brisbane-based architect Paul Butterworth, whose own childhood was shaped by sand fishing and surfing on Straddie, has layered architectural imagination with personal experience to further explore and celebrate the ceremonies of camping and the traditions of island life.

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A central “living deck” for dining, lounging and gathering is used like an annexe to a tent.
Image: Christopher Frederick Jones
The house is conceived as a series of sheltered platforms designed to formalize occupation in the vegetated dunes that rise up from Cylinder Beach. To best capture a northern aspect, the house is pushed to the southern boundary, forming a defensive edge to close-by neighbours. A deep verge to the north provides a heavily vegetated foreground to the horizon. Between the verge and the house, a “great room” is formed in a clearing. This sun-drenched patch of lawn enables the site to adopt the flexibility of a campsite, encouraging an ease of movement around the house and garden. Local kangaroos are reportedly familiar with the sanctity of this resting place and are regularly spotted here, “lolling on the grass,” says Paul.

The rituals of island life have influenced the architecture as much as the site’s position and aspect. This is evidenced on arrival, where a formal address has been traded for a landscaped arbour that acts as both passageway and privacy screen to the house and lawn. Stone walls, a paved path and an outdoor shower cleverly structure this passageway as an antechamber to the beach house while also servicing the washing of bodies, surfboards and fishing paraphernalia. With raw and robust materials, this arrival sequence reveals a respect for the ceremony of beach going and espouses a barefoot informality. Over time, maturing landscape will obscure the house from the street and the stone walls will become the only visible fragment of this humble shelter in the bush.

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With skylights and gill-like windows, the bathing spaces give the illusion of being outside.
Image: Christopher Frederick Jones
In deference to the hot, humid climate and vernacular traditions of Straddie, the beach house is cloaked in a lightweight envelope of fibre cement sheet and rough-sawn weatherboards. Large openings that hinge out and stack away help to dissolve the sense of enclosure. At the centre of the plan a double-height room or “living deck” is imagined in the tradition of an annexe to a tent or caravan: open to the outdoors and used flexibly for dining, lounging and gathering. Flanking rooms benefit from the climatic regulation of this tall central volume, which draws cool breezes through the plan and expels warm air at high level to maintain passive thermal comfort.

Materials and finishes are curated to amplify the client’s brief for a “refined camping-like experience.” On the ground floor, the transition from the duckboard edge of the living deck to the kitchen on the opposite side of the plan is cleverly expressed in the spacing of deck boards. As the gaps between the boards close, a sense of enclosure is introduced to the otherwise fluid, open-plan spaces. Only the bedrooms are considered truly internal, an idea reaffirmed by plywood-lined walls, ceilings and floors. The cocoon-like atmosphere of these most private spaces is a counterpoint to the bright openness of the living deck, sitting room and kitchen, which are designed to bleed out into the landscape.

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Corymbia by Paul Butterworth Architect.
Image: Christopher Frederick Jones
While Corymbia is deliberate in celebrating the modesty of camping, it simultaneously embraces the luxury of experience that comes with enhanced connections to nature. This notion is manifested most intensely in spaces reserved for bathing. Here, richness abounds in the sensory experience of sunlight pouring down from skylights above and of views of the bush and sea, framed by windows that open out like gills. Considerable effort has been invested in capturing the essence of Straddie life in these places of reflection and pause, and the pay-off is reaped in the memories shaped by days spent here.

Pitching a tent will surely offer shelter but the pleasure of camping comes with having a deeper appreciation for the ways in which people gather together, find refuge, manage thermal comfort and connect with nature. The key to re-creating a camp-like atmosphere is not to remove luxury but rather to reveal the richness in a natural experience over and above that of the constructed experience. Corymbia does this, with a humble intelligence and genuine deference to the land, the sky and the sea. More

“Our design creates a new common ground for the University, the Hospital and the Charles Perkins Centre, while respecting the site’s historic significance as a gathering place,” said Benjamin Gilmartin, a partner of DS+R. “The landscape rises to encompass shared facilities for research and learning, branching out into a three dimensional network of open spaces connected at every level from inside to outside.
“At the heart of this network is the Upper Wakil Garden — a multivalent and dynamic reinvention of the campus quad. A ‘cleave’ within the upper volume of the Susan Wakil Building draws light down into the Garden throughout the year, while its interlacing circulation acts as a connective tissue between academic workplaces and clinical spaces within.”
The building accommodates seminar rooms, clinics, workspaces, a rehabilitation gym, a 350-seat theatre and a library. The architects have also designed a series of informal study and collaborative spaces.
The building is bisected by a central atrium. “The key to success and longevity of this building is its principles of designing with nature – drawing light, views, and ventilation, allowing visual transparency across the facilities, designed for active circulation and socialisation with an emphasis on stairs over lifts – creating a healthy workplace and a place of learning of the future,” said BLP principal Raj Senanayake.
The building’s two parts – teach and learning facilities and research workspaces – are delineated through two distinct facade treatments. The upper levels housing workspaces are clad in a facade shading system which the architects say resemble a textile, while the lower levels are clad in horizontal ceramic panels and aluminium screens.
The building is one of the first project to be completed after the university introduced its Wingara Mura Indigenous design principles. The landscape design, by Arcadia Landscape Architecture incorporates the cycles of healing and reflects the Gadigal people’s approach to healing.
“In many ways this environment contributed the unique response to place and building type that became the winning scheme,” Senanayake said. “At the same time, we had to negotiate the challenges of early online collaboration platforms that have now become part of the everyday practice of architecture.”
The building was made possible by a $35 million donation from the Susan and Isaac Wakil Foundation, which was the largest ever gift the university had received.
University of Sydney Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson said, “The opening of the Susan Wakil Health Building during this once-in-a-century global pandemic could not be more timely as it highlights the importance of an agile, innovative and resilient health workforce and the need to think differently to meet the health challenges of our time.” More

A new health education and research building has opened at the University of Sydney. Designed by Billard Leece Partnership and Diller Scofidio and Renfro, the building is the first completed project in Australia for the New York practice.
The Susan Wakil Health Building brings together students from medicine, nursing and allied health and is also co-located with the Royal Alfred Hospital and Charles Perkins Centre as part of a new health sciences precinct at the Camperdown-Darlington campus.

The design team created a conceptual masterplan for the precinct that includes a number of potential future buildings, with the Susan Wakil Health Building at the northern part.
“We imagined four paths converging at a quad space in the middle, creating a raised central space that would be shared among them,” said Benjamin Gilmartin, a partner of DS+R.

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Susan Wakil Health Building by Billard Leece Partnership and Diller Scofidio and Renfro.
Image: Brett Boardman

The raised landscape, with the Upper Wakil Garden at its heart, acts as a shared public space for students, staff and the members of the public accessing the clinics within the building.

The landscape also separates the building programmatically. Below this lifted ground plane are the learning and teaching spaces, while workplaces and research facilities are located above.
“An important part of the brief is creating spaces for bringing people together, largely because the building combined departments and faculties that were previously on separate campuses,” said BLP principal Raj Senanayake.
The public, common areas of the building – collectively dubbed “the cleave” – are used as “connective tissue” throughout the building, allowing access between indoors and outdoors and joining all levels to each other.
“The commons that form this vein through the building is glassy and transparent and offers much exposure visually between indoors and outdoors as well as spaces to literally step out onto balconies and terraces,” Gilmartin said.

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Susan Wakil Health Building by Billard Leece Partnership and Diller Scofidio and Renfro.
Image: Brett Boardman
The building accommodates seminar rooms, clinics, workspaces, a rehabilitation gym, a 350-seat theatre and a library.
“The traditional tiered lecture theatre was seen to be a very important event space,” Senanayake continued. “We made this space more inviting by balancing the technology demands of a space like this with views and natural light, which is quite unusual for a modern lecture theatre. The library that you see as you enter the building is multi-level and is really the heart of the student commons in the building. It has lots of social spaces.”
The building’s upper and lower parts are delineated through two distinct facade treatments. The upper workspace levels are clad in a facade shading system which the architects say resembles a textile, while the lower levels are clad in horizontal ceramic panels and aluminium screens.

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Susan Wakil Health Building by Billard Leece Partnership and Diller Scofidio and Renfro.
Image: Brett Boardman
The building is one of the first projects to be completed after the university introduced its Wingara Mura Indigenous design principles.
A key feature of the landscape design by Arcadia Landscape Architecture is the paving pattern that represents an interpretation of historic waterways that were central to the life of the Gadigal people of the area. The design also incorporates “cycles of healing” and reflects Gadigal approaches to healing.
The re-introduction of lost vegetation, such as native turpentine tree – will eventually create a canopy that will establish a datum line from the public areas at the Upper Wakil Garden. The canopy will further delineate the upper and lower parts of the building.

“The planting that is integrated into the surrounds are either plants that were traditionally used for weaving techniques and/or collected for food and by the local Gadigal people,” said Alex Longley, director of Arcadia Landscape Architecture.
The practice’s Indigenous landscape strategist, Kaylie Salvatori, consulted with the Indigenous artist Judy Watson on the design direction of a sculpture in the garden, juguma, which takes the form of a traditional woven vessel. It represents a typical net bag used by the Gadigal people for gathering plants

The building was made possible by a $35 million donation from the Susan and Isaac Wakil Foundation, the largest ever gift the university had received.
University of Sydney Chancellor Belinda Hutchinson said, “The opening of the Susan Wakil Health Building during this once-in-a-century global pandemic could not be more timely as it highlights the importance of an agile, innovative and resilient health workforce and the need to think differently to meet the health challenges of our time.” More

A Sydney architecture student’s plan to build a new landscape above Melbourne’s railways where residents could build their own houses has won the Melbourne Affordable Housing Challenge.
The international ideas competition called for a pilot-phase concept for affordable housing within Melbourne, which could be easily rolled out to increase capacity of housing stock while using minimal land and materials.
Evan Langendorfer, who is now a graduate of the University of Sydney, received the first prize for his Housing De-Railed proposal as well as the student prize, ahead of entries from the Netherlands and the United States.

Housing De-Railed begins with the idea of claiming the air rights to the VicTrack railway. The trenched tracks would be capped and a new “green belt” landscape built above them.

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Housing De-Railed by Evan Langendorfer.

“Atop the new landscape, the housing scheme is implemented in a hybrid-mat typology,” Langendorfer writes in his entry. “This configuration allows for a repeatable grid that can be continued across the new land. Within this grid, each unit is constructed out of repeatable structural modules, which are designed for manufacturing and assembly. This allows the units to be constructed by non-skilled workers, its residents or the community.”

The competition winner was selected by a jury comprising Winy Maas (MRVD), Ben Van Berkel (Unstudio), Karen Alcock (MA Architects), Tristan Wong (SJB Architects), Alan Pert (Melbourne School of Design) and ArchitectureAU.com editor, Linda Cheng. They found Housing De-Railed to be a “well-conceived and articulate” solution for a transit-oriented green belt. “The scheme puts affordable housing in the heart of the city and the proposed prefabricated module structural system, which allows owners to adapt and change over time, has the potential to create vibrant neighbourhoods,” they said.

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Bleacher Housing by Sandra Maria Estrada Rosas and Maria Gabriela Vaca Sanchez.

Winning the second prize Sandra Maria Estrada Rosas and Maria Gabriela Vaca Sanchez from the Netherlands, for their proposal Bleacher Housing. They have imagined a prefabricated timber modular system of housing units that would amass and link to existing transit infrastructure. The modules would be stacked and organized in a stepped pattern, providing space for rooftop terrace gardens and green roofs.

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Highline Topia by Tingting Peng and Sijia Liu.

Coming in third were Tingting Peng and Sijia Liu of the United States, whose Highline Topia proposal envisions a mix of landscape and housing above Melbourne’s famous tramlines. And Australian entrant Matthieu Bégoghina won the Green Award for his Neighbourhood Characters proposal.
To see honourable mentions and the full shortlist, head here. More

A demountable, lightweight pavilion has popped up in Adelaide’s theatre precinct, acting as the newest club for the city’s annual arts festival.
Designed by Tina Engelen and Will Fung of Co-ap Architects, who won a design competition for the project, The Summerhouse replaces the Riverbank Palais, the floating pontoon club of the previous three Adelaide Festivals.
The Summerhouse sits between the Adelaide Festival Theatre and Dunstan Playhouse in Elder Park, overlooking the river. Co-ap’s design is based around intersecting circles, which enclose an auditorium and bar. It will be open from dawn until midnight throughout the festival, which runs from 26 February until 14 March, playing host to fifteen headlining contemporary music acts, opera on the big screen and a range of other free and ticketed events.

Co-artistic directors of Adelaide Festival Rachel Healy and Neil Armfield said the club would be the “beating heart” of the festival.

“We wanted to create something very special, a festival centre that will surprise us again and again over the next three years,” said Healy.
Armfield added, “Set amidst the beauty of the Torrens and Parklands, it will breathe with light and life and offer a place for pleasure, reflection, and stimulation: there’s truly something for everyone.”

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The City of Sydney has unveiled an alternative scheme for the redevelopment of the southern part of the Waterloo public housing precinct, which includes more social housing and fewer tall towers than the state government’s proposal.
Councillors voted unanimously in support of the suggested changes to the NSW Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC)’s scheme on 22 February. The council scheme calls for a 23 percent increase in social housing on the estate, from 749 to 920 dwellings, as well as a mandated floor of 20 percent affordable housing for new developments in perpetuity, including more housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The LAHC scheme has been prepared by a design team comprising Turner, Turf Design Studio, Roberts Day, Tribe Studio, and Breathe Architecture.
LAHC has already advised the council that they do not support the recommendations, citing impacts on assumed revenue as their predominant concern, according to a council report. This is just the latest disagreement between the council and state government, who have been trading blows over the redevelopment of the housing estate since the government unveiled its proposal in 2018. In 2019 the council endorsed another alternative proposal for the precinct that Matavai and Turanga public housing towers at the centre of the We Live Here campaign. Since then, the precinct has been divided into three areas, and the proposal now being considered is for the “Waterloo South” precinct.

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The Land and Housing Corporation proposal, designed by Turner, Turf Design Studio, Roberts Day, Tribe Studio, and Breathe Architecture.

Sydney mayor Clover Moore said the council’s proposed scheme would now be presented to the community for an extended public consultation. Her statement came after comments from housing minister Melinda Pavey blamed the council for delaying the delivery of social housing projects.
“Throughout this long and complex process, the City has listened to and advocated for good outcomes for the Waterloo community,” Moore said.
“Our emphasis has always been on increasing the amount of social and affordable housing as part of the redevelopment, ensuring high quality streets and public spaces, maximizing access to sunlight, and delivering sustainable and accessible buildings.

“The City has attempted to forge a path that achieves the housing yield stipulated by the state government, while improving amenity and social and environmental outcomes for existing and future residents.
“Our amended proposal, a collection of mostly medium-rise buildings, provides a safer, more accessible and greener design. It increases the number of social housing dwellings without reducing the overall number of homes created.”
The council’s urban design program manager, Peter John Cantrill, said the state government’s plans to build nine towers of 20 to 30 storeys would lead to poor outcomes for residents.

“We believe the changes we have made will lead to a better living environment for residents, without reducing the number of homes built,” he said.

“The city has proposed just three high rise towers, with mostly medium rise buildings and the creation of two parks to better meet the needs of residents.
“Our plan provides more sunlight and less windy streets in the area, with reduced overshadowing, by placing the three proposed high-rise towers more widely spaced at the south end of the estate.”

The council’s move has angered NSW housing minister Melinda Pavey, who noted that the LAHC plan was the product of an extensive redesign and more than 12 months of negotiations with the council.
“The behaviour by the council is both disingenuous to the local community and delays work to deliver new homes for those most vulnerable,” she said.
“The political agenda of council should not be preventing the state from creating jobs and delivering new and better social housing for the Waterloo community.” More

A multi-tower mixed-use development designed by Elenberg Fraser has been approved by an assessment panel in Perth, overturning an earlier decision to reject the proposal.
The $320 million project at 97-105 Stirling Highway in Nedlands was initially refused by the Metro Inner North Joint Development Assessment Panel in July 2020 because it failed “to meet the vision for a new activated and vibrant Nedlands Town Centre.”
But after an appeal to the State Administrative Tribunal and a significant redesign informed by four separate mediation sessions, the same panel gave it the green light on 8 February.

The originally proposed four towers will become three, with the 11-storey inner-east tower removed from the scheme and the remaining towers all reduced in height.
The changes reduce the number of dwellings from 301 to 231, and the number of office spaces and restaurants on the ground floor has also been reduced.

“The modified proposal is representational of the existing character of the area through the fine grain finishes and landscaping which are incorporated into the overall design,” a report prepared by Urbanista Town Planning states. “The proposed modified design has carefully considered, and fully addresses the reasons for refusal, resulting in a more sympathetic and improved design.”
The City of Nedlands opposed the proposal, with mayor Cilla De Lacy telling the assessment panel, “A development with two tower elements around twenty storeys does not positively respond to the desired future scale and character of the street as defined by the Strategy. In fact, a development of this height would sit totally out of context with the only adopted desired future scale of 3-9 storeys.”
The assessment panel voted 3-2 in support of the amended proposal.

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Tamworth Regional Council is beginning the search for a lead architect to design a $128 million performing arts centre and cultural precinct.
The performing art centre was first proposed in 2017 for the town, which is known as Australian capital of country music. A business case and concept design by William Ross Architects were approved in 2019. The Council will vote on a functional and technical design brief on 23 February 2021, and it is also preparing to launch an expressions of interest process for the lead architect.

The concept plan includes provisions for a 600-seat proscenium theatre with a full fly system, a 200-seat variable-format studio theatre and a 100-seat salon recital room.
The centre will include a rehearsal/dance studio to match the main stage, a recording studio and a functions space and café. It would also become the new home to the Tamworth Conservatorium of Music and the local ABC Studios and the adjacent library and art gallery would be expanded as part of the project.

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Tamworth Performing Arts Centre and Cultural Precinct concept design by William Ross Architects.

“It will create a suite of venues which will meet the social inclusion, performing arts, creative industries, conference and events needs of the Tamworth community well into the future,” integrated planning officer Sonya Vickery wrote in a report to council. “Its integration with the existing Tamworth Regional Gallery and Tamworth City Library, and with the inclusion of other creative commercial tenants, will create a vibrant and exciting Cultural Precinct which is of national significance.”

The centre will be co-located with the existing Tamworth Library and Tamworth Regional Gallery to create an arts and culture precinct that will meet the needs of the community and region.

The council has been leasing the Capitol Theatre for use as the town’s performing arts venue. The council notes that the Capitol Theatre has proven the demand for performing arts activity in the Tamworth community and that demand now exceeds capacity. “The theatre is fundamentally constrained and inadequate due to its origin as a cinema, with major functional limitations and lack of necessary spaces,” states the report.

Facility planning has identified that the new building will need to be around 10,900 square metres to 13,500 square metres. The concept design prepared by William Ross Architects was conceived as a multi-storey “shopfront” of activities expressed through their form and displayed to people in the street.
Council will now prepare a detailed expression of interest document using the functional and technical design briefas a guide. It expects the expression of interest phase for the lead architect to take two to three months to complete. More