Architecture

Distinguished architect David Jackson AO passed away in January.
Jackson was former Australian Institute of Architects NSW chapter resident from 1978 to 1980 and national president from 1985 to 1986.
Jackson studied at the Architectural Association in London, and at the Yale School of Architecture. He worked in the USA and Jamaica before moving to Australia and became a design partner of McConnel Smith and Johnson (MSJ) from 1960 to 1971. “It was there that he met his wife Barbara, who is also an architect,” said Jackson’s daughter Rachel Jackson. “His career was unfailingly supported by Barbara. Their interests and talents were symbiotic – they worked, lived, designed, created, and raised a beautiful family together.”

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David Jackson (left) was former NSW chapter president (1978) and former national president of the Australian Institute of Architects (1986).
Image: courtesy Rachel Jackson
He was a founding partner of Jackson Teece Chesterman Willis (JTCW), now Jackson Teece, and was the managing partner from 1971 to 1998. He practice will celebrate its its 50th year of practice in 2021.

Jackson was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for services to architecture in Australia and Oceania in 1991 and was President of the Commonwealth Association of Architects from 1991 to 1994. He was made an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects in 1990 and Honorary Fellow of the Indian Institute of Architects in 1992.
“The life and work of David Jackson is fondly remembered by his friends and family; wife Barbara, four children and nine grandchildren,” said Rachel Jackson. More

The Aboriginal community of Murrin Bridge, 320 kilometres south-west of Dubbo in central west New South Wales, will soon have a new preschool and community as its “civic heart” after a proposal developed by a group of University of Technology Sydney architecture academics gained development approval.
Informed by a series of design consultation workshops with the community, the proposal calls for the retention of the existing Murrin Bridge Preschool (established in in 1991) and the addition of two new pavilion buildings, which will be arranged around a triangular courtyard. The intervention will expand the existing school to accommodate up to 40 children aged 3 to 5 years and 12 staff. It will also recover public services recently relocated to the larger town of Lake Cargelligo (including health services and land council offices), and relocate the Regional Enterprise Development Institute and Centrelink offices currently based in a derelict building nearby.

Murrin Bridge has a population of around 86, according to the 2016 census, with most the community tracing their roots back to the Ngiyampaa and Barkindji tribes. It’s thought of as a “Koorie place,” not as the Country of a particular tribal group.
According to the architects, “the design process included the enthusiastic participation of the Murrin Bridge Local Aboriginal Land Council, the staff and students of the preschool, and the different service providers to imagine what lies ahead for the preschool and community hub collectively.”

The existing preschool only requires minor improvements, including better connecting the kitchen with the dining room. A gallery space and an outdoor kitchen will also be added to this pavilion.

A second pavilion, measuring 33 metres long with a 12-metre-wide pitched roof barn, will house further space for the school along with the various community hub facilities. It will be flanked by two three-metre-deep verandahs. The third pavilion contains a kids’ outdoor playground and three storage rooms. The new additions will be built using “off-the-shelf construction solutions typical to local agricultural sheds.”
Inside the triangular courtyard, a circle encloses a fire pit, three mounds and several trees. Around the circle is a “sensory garden,” “cool garden” and “civic garden.” The first garden is the school’s main playground and the entrance for students to arrive by bus; the second connects the existing school with its new extension; and the third opens to Murrin Bridge and the community hub.

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Murrin Bridge Preschool and Community Hub by Guillermo Fernández-Abascal (GFA2, UTS), Urtzi Grau (Fake Industries, UTS) and Campbell Drake (CD Studio, UTS) with Eduard Fernàndez and Jack Cooper et al.
Image: Choirender
The outdoor courtyard will be easily accessible from all internal areas. The design team note that the building will appear at first as a conventional rural or industrial shed.
“Working with familiar materials and building types of the area is a purposeful decision. The more recognizable the building becomes to its future users, the more it reveals its specific character as both a school and a community centre,” a design statement reads. “Playfully subversive, the building has the ability to adjust its identity, adopting a serious and formal civic role whilst at other times being comfortable, relaxed and childish. We believe that this controlled ambiguity is the best response to the complex project brief.”
Overseeing the architectural design are Guillermo Fernández-Abascal (GFA2, UTS), Urtzi Grau (Fake Industries, UTS) and Campbell Drake (CD Studio, UTS) with Eduard Fernàndez and Jack Cooper.
In charge of landscape design are Saskia Schut and Louisa King, along with and others from UTS.
The project is expected to be realized in 2021. More

A group of Quandamooka people on Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island) in Queensland have established a permanent protest camp and “Quandamooka Truth Embassy” in a last-ditch effort to stop the construction of an open-air structure housing the skeleton of a 15-metre eastern humpback whale.
The $3 million Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill) project at Mulumba (Point Lookout) is a project of the Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation (QYAC), supported by the state government, with Cox Architecture leading the design. First mooted in 2018, the structure would be both a research hub and exhibit supporting the skeleton of a whale that beached itself at the point in 2011. This would be the only intact humpback whale skeleton on display in the southern hemisphere.

The design aims at making the facility as unobtrusive as possible, with the structure to be built into the landscape and formed of “complementary materials.” Its highest point, 7.3 metres tall, will sit below the existing tree line and sections of the environment around the building will be restored to the natural topography and vegetation.

The plan is for the facility to be a place for ongoing research in partnership with the University of Queensland.
Visitors would be able talk with researchers and listen to whale songs beamed into the facility via a hydrophone, an underwater microphone system.
If construction does begin, the facility is expected to be completed in seven months.
Cox Architecture is also leading the design for the planned Quandamooka Art, Museum and Performance Institute, another major project being developed by the QYAC and state government.

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Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill) by Cox Architecture.

While the QYAC says that community response to Cox Architecture’s designs had been “overwhelmingly positive,” there has been persistent resistance to the Yalingbila Bibula proposal from both Quandamooka and non-Indigenous locals since its launch.
“For three years we’ve protested and petitioned in masses to protect our sacred headland, to oppose the whale interpretive centre due to be built on this site commencing tomorrow,” the founders of the Quandamooka Truth Embassy said in a statement. “However, we’ve been constantly ignored and disregarded by the state government and Quandamooka Yoolooburrabee Aboriginal Corporation native title prescribed body.”

Opponents of the proposal say the hanging of the skeleton would be disrespectful and that the location of the exhibit is inappropriate.
“The heritage importance as well as the environmental importance of this place is really significant,” Traditional Owner Dale Ruska told the ABC.
“This is without a doubt culturally inappropriate, and we’ve had contact with other Aboriginal groups in the state. The whale for them is a very sacred being, and it’s actually their totem.”
At the time of publication, nearly 35,000 people have signed a petition opposing the development.

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Yalingbila Bibula (Whale on the Hill) by Cox Architecture.

Despite the opposition, the state government says all appropriate environmental assessments and consultation processes have been followed, and the planning minister Steven Miles said he supports the project going ahead. “In general, I think [this is] a great project and will be great for the island,” he said.
But Dale Ruska said protesters were prepared to stand in front of bulldozers to stop construction.
“We’re willing to remain here with the aim to ensure that the… proposed extravagant, architecturally designed coffin to house the remains of a whale that died a very traumatic death does not occur,” he told the ABC. More

At the beginning of 2019, we started discussing the idea of “leverage” as a theme for the 2020 National Architecture Conference. This was a way of thinking about how to generate greater positive influence as a profession; of how to deploy our skills, training, experience and expertise to address contemporary world challenges.
Unfortunately, the conference, like so many other events around the world this year, could not proceed due to COVID-19. But Leverage was, and remains, fundamentally optimistic. We believe that architectural wit and intelligence, agility and diligence, cheekiness and humour, restraint and flamboyance, ethics and goodwill can all be deployed to maximize advantage – in social, environmental and economic terms. We wanted to explore the untapped opportunities for impact and to examine how practices are already finding ways to create progressive change well beyond the convention of our discipline.

Since these early musings, the world has shifted into uncharted waters. And there is an even greater need to find inventive ways to apply our collective intelligence to the problems that face our communities and countries, to test professional models and assumptions.
We believe that architectural wit and intelligence, agility and diligence, cheekiness and humour, restraint and flamboyance, ethics and goodwill can all be deployed to maximize advantage – in social, environmental and economic terms.In February, we established a stream of the conference around the devastating impacts of the bushfires across Australia and worked to find partnerships with organizations such as Gondwana Link in an attempt to take direct action. One of the key drivers of this approach was the recognition by many conference speakers and attendees of the impact of flights on their own carbon emissions. Our expanded awareness of our personal and corporate responsibility highlighted the need to offer a direct and targeted response to attendees. We did this through the funding of native planting and Indigenous land management practices in Western Australia’s southwest, championed for decades by community groups under the distributed network model of Gondwana Link.

As the fires registered the colossal scale of the environmental crisis, COVID-19 has illuminated the challenges that already exist (equitable access to housing, health care, public space, and even reliable information and data). For us, now, Leverage – this hopeful ambition for an amplified impact – feels more relevant and ever more urgent.
Rory Hyde discusses these opportunities brilliantly in his recent article, “A new world.”1 Rory was one of the speakers we had lined up for the conference. Although it is disappointing that we will not have the opportunity to stage live discussions with Rory and the other extraordinary speakers, in the spirit of the Leverage theme, we have “pivoted” to find new avenues to maintain connection. These important conversations will now occur via a series of edited interviews and thought pieces in Architecture Australia and online at ArchitectureAU.com.

In this first instalment on Leverage, Kieran Wong interviews Alan Ricks about the work of Mass Design Group, a practice with an extraordinary record in the world of social impact architecture. What makes Mass different from others in this field is its unique practice structure, which evolved from the founders’ commitment to global effect and working at scale, and the acknowledgement that many models of impact architecture limit participants’ own career trajectories and community agency. We were drawn to Mass’s desire to challenge accepted models of practice and create a business that is sustainable, agile and impactful.

Our theme of Leverage is focussed through four streams – Policy and Politics, Practice and Projects, People and Partnerships, and Polemics and Publishing. Mass has it all! In little more than a decade, Mass has positioned itself to respond quickly to humanitarian need, demonstrating the relevance of design thinking in creating long-term solutions to the global challenges of policy, community, health and infrastructure.
— Emma Williamson, Kieran Wong, Maryam Gusheh and Justine Clark were appointed as creative directors of the 2020 National Architecture Conference. Due to the impacts of COVID-19, the conference did not proceed. More

Sydney’s Taronga Zoo will soon have a new exhibit showing native flora and fauna, with the NSW government approving a $16 million revamp project.
Designed by Lahznimmo Architects with landscape architecture practice Spackman, Mossop and Michaels, the Upper Australia exhibit will feature minimal built forms and will not be visible from the nearby harbour.
The exhibition, which is built on the Country of the Cammeraigal people of the Gai-mariagal, will be home to a wide variety of landscape types and native animals.

“The main exhibit path will snake through various native landscapes, ranging from lush rainforest through to arid woodland and then up into the tree canopy via an elevated boardwalk to view koalas at their natural sitting height in the tree canopy,” the architects wrote.

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The treehouse of the Upper Australia exhibit at Taronga Zoo by Lahznimmo Architects and Spackman, Mossop and Michaels.

“The Australia journey then winds its way down through the Blue Mountains rock escarpment and then underground into the Nocturnal House; where a complete refurbishment of the existing building will provide state-of-the-art keeper facilities and unique night-time viewing of Australia’s nocturnal creatures.”

NSW environment minister Matt Kean said the approval signalled a new chapter for the zoo, which has been an important part of Sydney Harbour’s landscape since 1916.
“The Australia Precinct at Taronga is home to some of our Aussie icons including the koala, platypus and bilby,” he said.
“The project will see new life breathed into parts of the precinct that are more than 30 years old, improving the visitor experience and encouraging more people to get out and learn about the conservation of our iconic Aussie animals.”
Works on the exhibit are scheduled to begin in the coming months and the project will be completed by 2023.

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Blacktown City Council is planning to sell off its administration centre to pave the way for an $800 million private brain and spinal medical centre headed by prominent neurosurgeon Charlie Teo.
The Blacktown Brain and Spine Institute would be located at the site of council’s Administration Centre on Flushcombe Road, which includes the former Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils building and surrounding car park, as well as the building currently housing the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre.

The council says the sale would provide funding for the temporary relocation of some council administrative staff while eventually enabling the planned move to new purpose-built administration offices in the CBD as well as the redevelopment of the Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre.
The BBSI is being pitched as a world leader in medical research, practice, treatment and recovery, which will attract “medical tourists” from South-East Asia, China and further afield.

It is planned to include a medical research institute (with a university partner), a private hospital, a medi-hotel, retail space, and residential apartments. Announcing the plan for the institute in December 2019, Teo said “I want a centre of health that doesn’t feel like a hospital at all. I want a place that feels pleasant almost like a vacation.”

Details about business partners and funding models for the institute have not been revealed, but the Blacktown mayor says he is confident it could be a city-shaping project.
“This will be a major leap forward in the redevelopment of the Blacktown city centre,” said Blacktown mayor Tony Bleasdale.
“The Blacktown Brain and Spinal Institute will bring hundreds of millions of dollars investment into our city and at the same time, council will be able to develop a landmark administration and cultural centre.
“BBSI would be one of the most significant investments ever in Blacktown City, with an estimated total construction value of $800 million.
“It will also provide facilities to support international medi-tourism which in turn has the potential to generate income from overseas, assisting the NSW economy.” More

A 55-storey office tower complete with a rooftop garden overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge will become North Sydney’s tallest tower, under plans before council.
Designed by Hassell, the tower at 110–122 Walker Street, North Sydney is being pitched as the “future of sustainable workplaces” in what will become one of the most accessible districts in Sydney with the opening of the Victoria Cross Metro Station on Miller Street in 2024.
The developer Stockland said in a statement that it continued to foresee strong demand for quality workplaces in the post-COVID landscape. Hassell principal Liz Westgarth said the project offered an opportunity to push a social and environmental design vision for a resilient place for future generations.

“As the nature of when, where and how we choose to do our work continues to evolve, it was also important to design a building that supports a diverse range of working styles,” she said.

“Therefore, our research into the future of work and the impacts of COVID-19 helped shape the workplace offer, which will allow for highly personalized and efficient planning configurations to meet tenant’s exact demands both now and into the future.”

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110 Walker Street by Hassell.

The building’s design is defined by a porous ground plane that extends the public realm, a simple tower form, articulated to appear as two slender forms, and a crowning rooftop, where the facades extend upwards, providing protection for the rooftop garden.
“The highly activated public domain has been designed to accommodate layered activities over the lower ground and ground levels, offering a diverse landscape setting, activated street frontages with retail and food and beverage offerings to support the building and precinct,” Hassell’s design statement reads.

“This vibrancy and warmth will extend up into the podium. The transparent podium facade celebrates exchange and interaction between the public, semi-public and private experiences within the base of the tower.”

Through-site links will complement existing urban laneways in the precinct, while the landscape planting and materiality takes inspiration from the “tapestries of sculpted rocks, white blossoms and perfumed gullies” of the Middle Harbour landscape.
The design prioritizes sustainability, with an efficient structural system that aims to minimize materials, and a façade design that passively shades the workplaces. “The facade design proposes a simple conceptual approach that orientates solid portions of the facade to the north to help passively shade the facade whilst opening up the highly desirable eastern and south eastern views,” states Hassell.
Construction of the tower is estimated to cost $512 million. The development application is currently before the North Sydney Council, and is to be determined by the Sydney North Planning Panel. More

Construction of the Lyons Architecture designed Bendigo Govhub will soon start after the Victorian government appointed a main contractor for the project.
Bendigo Govhub will be located on Lyttleton Terrace on the site of the existing City of Greater Bendigo offices. The council has sold the site to the state government and will be a tenant of the new facility. It will also house staff from various state government departments.
The appointed builders, Fairbrother and Icon in joint venture, will work with the architects and engineers, Arup, to refine the design. The project team will also collaborate with the Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation to incorporate Indigenous design elements and language in the architecture, landscaping and spaces. Bendigo’s built and cultural heritage will also be reflected in the design through the use of materials such as bluestone.

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Bendigo Govhub by Lyons Architects.
Image: Lyons Architects
The four-storey building will have a glass facade that follows the curve of the Lyttleton Terrace. The project will also create a civic forecourt on Lyttleton Terrace and a pocket park on Mundy Street to the northeast, in an effort to connect the proposed building to its surrounds and create a community meeting point.

The building will be made from Victoria’s largest timber frame and will also incorporate other sustainable design measures such as efficient indoor air quality systems, solar panels, and water and energy monitoring systems.

“The GovHub is a really exciting project that will transform and revitalise Bendigo and is just one of a range of projects we’re building to make regional cities an even better place to live and work,” said regional development minister Mary-Anne Thomas.
Bendigo Govhub will be the third of its type to be delivered following Ballarat Govhub designed by John Wardle Architects and Latrobe Valley Govhub designed by WMK Architecture.
The Govhub is also part of a series of redevelopment projects in Bendigo, including Bendigo TAFE campus redevelopment by Architectus and Bendigo Law Courts redevelopment by John Wardle Architects.

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