Architecture

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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After an interrupted year in 2020, Melbourne Design week is back with its largest program to date with an 11-day festival of exhibitions, talks, films, tours and workshops.
Exploring the theme “Design the world you want” the program of more than 300 events celebrates the diversity of Australian design and architecture. Here, we round up some of the architectural highlights, from speculations on a self-sufficient future city to opportunities in the suburbs.
A New Normal
This project led by Finding Infinity challenged a group of Melbourne architecture practice to imagine an entirely self-sufficient city through a series of installations and talks. The practices include John Wardle Architects, Clare Cousins Architects, Grimshaw, Fender Katsalidis, Hassell, Kennedy Nolan, Wowowa and Six Degrees, Edition, Ha Architects, Dreamer, NMBW and landscape architect Mark Jacques with Finding Infinity principal Ross Harding.

Home made: Reinventing how we live in Melbourne
Fri 26 March 6:30 pm – 9:30 pm
Inspired by uniquely Australian innovations in housing from the past decade, this exhibition explores the alternative ways in which sustainable housing projects are realized. The exhibition presents a number of projects, both built and unbuilt, that represent a variety of financial, design, development and shared-living arrangements. The projects include Nightingale Housing, Assemble, Property Collectives, Tripple and Third Way.
Designing a legacy
Sat 27 March 7:30 pm – 8:40 pm
Comedian Tim Ross will present a cinematic live show that integrates films, humour and tours of some of Australia’s most significant modernist houses. The show explores how these architectural gems have endured, passed on from family to family.
After the Australian Ugliness
Sun 28 March, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Robin Boyd’s The Australian Ugliness is regarded as a modern Australian classic. Now, more than 60 years after it was first published, the National Gallery of Victoria and Thames and Hudson will launch a new tome that explores Boyd’s book through new critical and creative writing, as well as photography by David Wadelton and drawings by Oslo Davis. The book will be launched at the Walsh Street House, headquarters of the Robin Boyd Foundation and the event will also include a panel discussion by Ewan McEoin, the NGV’s senior curator of contemporary design and architecture, Naomi Stead, professor of architecture at Monash University, author Vanessa Berry, and Thomas Lee, senior lecturer in design studies at University of Technology Sydney.
Wolf Prix: Architecture Must Blaze
Sun 28 March 2:00 pm – 3:26 pm
Part of the Melbourne Design Week film festival, this screening will the Australian premiere of the 2019 documentary on Coop Himmelblau founder Wolf Prix. The title of the film comes from a 1980 manifesto written by Prix in which he declared “Architecture has to be cavernous, fiery, smooth, hard, angular, brutal, round, delicate, colorful, obscene, lustful, dreamy, attracting, repelling, wet, dry, and throbbing. Alive or dead.” The film, directed by Mathias Frick, explores his life and work as urban planner, visionary, provocateur and cross-thinker.

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Aalto.

Aalto
Mon 29 March 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
Directed by Virpi Suutari, the 2020 documentary Aalto explores the work of Finnish architects Alvar and Aino Aalto. The film is a cinematic love story of the a “charismatic and fascinating couple” and the work that they created together, which included not only buildings but also furniture, lighting and decorative objects.. It is narrated by experts and includes and features never-before-seen archival footage. NGV senior curator of international decorative arts and antiques Amanda Dunsmore will present a special introduction to the film prior to the screening.
Archipitch for social housing of the future
Tue 30 March 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
As Victoria embarks on $5.3 billion program to create 12,000 social housing units, this event challenges seven Melbourne architecture practices to live-pitch their ideas for social housing to a panel of leaders in the sector. Each team will have three minutes to present and at the end of the session, the panel will pick a winner.
Kerstin Thompson Architects: Encompassing People and Place
Tues, 30 March, 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm
Launching her new architectural monograph, Kerstin Thompson will present a number of public and community projects – including Town Hall Broadmeadows and the redevelopment of the Jewish Holocaust Centre – that explore the theme of “cultural memory.” The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion, moderated by Virginia Trioli, in which Thompson will be joined by an academic, a stakeholder and an artist collaborator who will offer different perspectives on procurement, community consultation, and the design process.

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Shared-value cities.

Shared-value cities
Wed 31 Mar 11:30 am – 1:00 pm
This public symposium will explore ways to design critical infrastructure to meet the needs of growing cities, including cultural infrastructure, transport, carbon positive and regenerative communities and smart learning environments. The event is presented by Grimshaw and panellists include Andrew Cortese and Tim Williams from Grimshaw, Stephen Todd, design editor of the Australian Financial Review and Marcus Westbury, founding CEO of Contemporary Arts Precincts.
AA Prize for Unbuilt Work
Wed 31 March, 6:00 pm
Architecture Media and the Melbourne School of Design will present an exhibition and panel discussion of the shortlisted entries to the 2021 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work. The exhibition launch will be followed by a panel discussion on how schematic ideas can provoke real world solutions to contemporary challenges. The panel will include jurors Katelin Butler (editorial director of Architecture Media) and Rory Hyde (MSD associate professor of architecture) along with the prize winner Julian Anderson of Bates Smart and two shortlisted entrants, Lauren Garner of Kerstin Thompson Architects and Jacqui Alexander of Alexander and Sheridan Architecture.

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AA Prize for Unbuilt Work. Picture: proposal by Bates Smart.

Trajectories: Home
Wed 31 March 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Six architects from five practices will come together in a round-table discussion about their residential projects, particularly those that have been commissioned since the start of the pandemic. The architects will discuss the shifts that they have seen in the design and occupation of homes and their visions for home life in the future.
A cinematic vision: The architecture of Howard Lawson
Virginia Blue will present a talk on prolific Melbourne architect Howard Lawson, famed for his highly dramatic Beverly Hills apartments in South Yarra. Blue is currently writing a book on Lawson and has uncovered fascinating new information through her archival research. The talk can be watched on Public Records Victoria’s Youtube channel throughout Melbourne Design Week.
A new suburban ambition
The COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns have placed renewed focus on the suburbs and the future of what the suburbs could become. This series of events, including a public lecture, exhibition and workshops, explores the opportunities to remake the suburbs, housing alternatives through various state-government run competitions, and design investigations into both the past and future of suburbs. More

An anonymous heritage enthusiast has launched a bid to save a 1960s office building in Adelaide, designed by John S. Chappel, by submitting a nomination to the SA Heritage Council.
The modernist office building at 1 Bagot Street, North Adelaide is at risk of demolition under plans submitted to Adelaide council to build four two-storey town houses.
The heritage nomination claims the building should be protected as it is a rare example of a surviving building in the late twentieth century Adelaide Regional style.

Its architect, John Chappel, is one of Adelaide’s best known and most influential modernist architects, with the SA Architecture Awards top residential prize named after him.

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1 Bagot Street office by John S Chappel.

In the book Modernist Adelaide: 100 Buildings 1940s-1970s, Stuart Simons writes of the building: “This compact, perfectly formed and exquisitely detailed office highlights Chappel’s ability to apply domestic natural materials to a commercial setting. The timber beams and eaves, red brickwork with hit-and-miss pattern sunscreening on the ground floor and the exposed first floor concrete slab deliver functional requirements to an aesthetically pleasing effect. The juxtaposition at right angles of the two volumes forms an entrance canopy supported by fine steel columns.”

The nomination also notes that the building has been occupied by a number of architecture practices, most recently Damien Chwalisz.
Chwalisz, who relocated his office last year, told The Advertiser, that it would be a “great tragedy” if the property was lost.
“It’s a really lovely building and a great building to be in, it’s a quintessential example of Adelaide mid-century modernism and is almost original,” he said.
The proponents behind the townhouse development application and the anonymous heritage advocate will be given the change to argue their case at the City of Adelaide council meeting on 8 April.

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