Architecture

Michael Markham and Abbie Galvin didn’t gain a mention in the NHP/MFP Lifting the Vision competition to design medium density housing for a large vacant block in Port Adelaide. Not surprising. Their scheme appears to subvert the intentions of the organizers, who were seeking, according to Markham, “a more or less standard medium-density development”: a village for the proposed multi-function polis which conformed with the federal government’s draft AMCORD Guidelines for Urban Housing.

Instead the architects have gleefully critiqued the MFP’s “overt internationalist agenda,” which suggested to them the idea of a city as theme park. “We sought something a little more hopeless and inauthentic, shamelessly a sham, a resistance that might collapse that rhetoric, converting it into something slightly pathetic and, in our way, utterly regional.”
The site is an ordinary block in a residential area, bounded by busy Victoria Road on the east (front) side, by state housing to the north, the Peter Cousins Reserve to the south and a railway station to the west (rear).

The brief called for 65 units, as many as possible on Torrens Title, with off-set car parking. Markham and Galvin proposed two types of housing. One is a mat of 12 metre square courtyard houses, each with an aridly landscaped, north-facing court, and a second storey occupying only part of the ground floor. Plans vary to allow these houses to be grouped in different formats from a single dwelling to a combination of nine,
There is also a sequence of row houses facing the Peter Cousins Reserve; a line-up which kinks on plan to follow the boundary of the reserve, yet the kink would disappear in a frontal view as a result of optical adjustments to the elevations.
Three cul-de-sac streets are provided, each wavy to reduce traffic speed and landscaped to a different international theme: Australian, Californian, English Picturesque.

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One of three cul-de-sacs, landscaped as “California Street” in Michael Markham and Abbie Galvin’s Port Adelaide Housing proposal.

Proposed materials include white glazed brick for most north and south walls, dark grey textured brick for most east and west walls, aluminium windows, corrugated steel roofing and steel garage doors painted with murals.
Jury comments
A belligerent but exciting challenge to conventional expectations
– Davina Jackson
A long overdue look at the principles of courtyard housing
– Geoffrey London
Alternative concepts for living to those sponsored by the ignorant real estate industry
– Ian McDougall
With a common framework, it creates individuality and desireable living conditions
– Alex Popov
Demonstrates an alternative to the urban masterplan, using additive rather than reductionist strategies
– Kerstin Thompson
Abbie Galvin is a juror for the 2021 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work. Entries to the prize can be made via its website until 21 August 2020.
Winners will be announced in the January/February 2021 issue of Architecture Australia and on ArchitectureAU.com. More

FJMT is leading the design for a mixed-use hotel, residential and retail development for central Sydney that will feature two interconnected 80-storey towers at its centre.
The development at 338 Pitt Street will occupy nearly half a city block in Sydney’s mid-town precinct, with six podium buildings designed by four different architecture practices acomodating retail and hotel uses.
Trias will design the 249 Castlereagh Street building, Polly Harbison Design will design the 241 Castlereagh Street building, Aileen Sage Architects will do Pitt Street Hotel, and Jerde will do the retail spaces. Martha Schwartz Partners and FJMT Landscape will be in charge of the public domain architecture, while FJMT will design the two signature towers.

Designed to be “restrained and elegant” the slim towers will be be highly visible on the Sydney skyline, with unobstructed views from Hyde Park and the east side of the CBD.
The towers will predominately house apartments but the south tower will have hotel rooms up to level 17. A mid-level bridge comprising two double-height levels will connect the two towers, with a restaurant and bar open to the public on one level and the hotel and residential swimming pools and wellness facilites on another.

“The proposal has a distinctive and forward looking form but is also restrained, elegant and reinforces the geometry, urban structure and maturity of Sydney,” write the architects in planning documents.

At the base of the towers, on the ground plane, a network of public spaces will provide permeability within the city block and contributeto increased pedestrianization in the area.

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The 338 Pitt Street development, with lead design by FJMT.

“Fundamental to the urban character of the design is the fine grain orthogonal structure of the public domain and streetscape,” write the architects. “The small footprint tower forms nestle into a network of through site links and inmate public spaces addressed and activated by a variety of low scale buildings: a city in microcosm.”

The public domain will also extended vertically through the development, from the basement porte cochere, which is open to the sky to a variety of roof terrace gardens.
The FJMT-led team won a design competition for the 338 Pitt Street site in 2018, with the jury impressed by the “permeability of the ground plane, the flexibility of the podium levels and the opportunity that the two tower form presents to reduce the overall visual bulk and overshadowing of the nearby parks and the public domain, as well as providing superior residential amenity. ”
Other teams that participated in competition were: Zaha Hadid Architects, Architectus, Make and Right Angle Studio; Kohn Pedersen Fox, Crone and Andrew Burns Architecture; Grimshaw, Smart Design, Panovscott and Future City; and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, PTW Architects and Stewart Hollenstein.
The development proposal is on public exhibition until 17 August.

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Lake Macquarie City Council has launched a $40,000 nationwide design competition seeking the “next-generation of urban housing in Australia.”
The “dWELL” contest will be open to architects, building designers and students, who will be challenged to design a housing type “with wellness, innovation, affordability and sustainability at its heart.”
The council’s manager of property and business development, David Antcliff, said there is a projected demand for 13,500 new homes in Lake Macquarie in the next 16 years and the time is right to think outside the square. Lake Macquarie is in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, around 150 kilometres north of Sydney.

“We want to give a platform to the ideas that have been bubbling around in the back of designers’ heads,” he said.
“All too often, a client’s brief is very specific about what they want to achieve, how a building will look or how it will perform, and this thinking generally comes from the past.

“We want to give creative professionals and students some freedom to design homes of the future that are focused on making people’s lives better.”
The competition has two categories: one for professional architects and building designers, the other for teams comprising at least one university architecture student.

Entrants are being asked to first submit an expression of interest and description of their intended design, for a proposed site of a vacant, council-owned block on Ocean Street in Dudley.

Entries that progress past Stage 1 will share in a $10,000 prize pool and be invited to create a more detailed submission.
Shortlisted entries for Stage 2 will share in a $30,000 prize pool and the council will consider building the winning design on the hilltop site in Dudley. “Winning entries will be showcased nationally as an example of what is possible, what is practical and what is affordable in providing next-generation housing for all Australians,” said Antcliff.
The judging panel comprises: Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW CEO Steven Mann; Planning Institute of Australia NSW President Juliet Grant; University of Newcastle Head of Architecture Chris Tucker and Maxine and Karstan Smith, local residents and contestants on reality television show The Block in 2014.
For further information, head here. More

Design statement:

“I cannot see any hope for this grand building to reach its fulfilment, unless the situation concerning the approaches from Unilever House and the Botanic gardens is planned in accordance with the Opera House […] I only want you to preserve this portion of Bennelong Point for the future.”
– Jørn Utzon (letter to Davis Hughes, March 1966)

The area in question is not conducive to entry from East Circular Quay promenade. Once the Oyster Bar has been reached, there is little to interest the pedestrian in continuing his promenade north as he is confronted by a confusion of levels.

Central to the concept of the Opera House is the thesis of man-made plateaus differentiating the various functional areas from one another as well as the from the ordinary traffic in the city. The solution proposes a clear re-statement of the plateau concept by offering the pedestrian two clearly different levels – either down to the lower level along the water, or onto the top concourse leading to the main structure of the Opera House.

At a conceptual level, there is a crack in the surface which has resulted in the two plates separating into a higher and lower conjunction. The blade is symbolic of this separation. It is a clear organic form which discreetly presents itself as the entry to the Opera House itself. Fabricated in ribbed copper or brass, the blade is graphic yet subtle in its articulated, precise geometry. It houses an information booth, activity directions to the Opera House, tour guide facilities and a meeting point for the public.

The widening of the stair will entice people to descend to the lower concourse level to relax, to view, to eat. The wide staircase will ensure that the lower concourse becomes an extension of the East Circular Quay Promenade. Undercover access is reached from a covered walkway within the CML Site or immediately adjacent.
The proposed concept opens up the opportunity for commercially viable enterprises to stimulate the financial independence of the Opera House complex. A large semicircular group of upmarket shops could be laid out along the water, while brasserie-style restaurants could offer quality food for opera patrons. Thought should be given to building an Opera House Museum, as a means to attracted visitors to the lower concourse level.
Jurors’ comments
Jackie Cooper: The assessors unanimous identified this entry as the winner of the first AA prize. The scheme demonstrates the necessary qualities of architectural thought, research, resolution and presentation that the award seeks to celebrate and foster.
The clear vision and architectural delicacy and also the plausibility of the scheme make it a significant contender in the development contest that is surely to be fought out on this site, one of Sydney most important. The rare quality of inevitability that imbues this architectural idea results in large part from sheer simplicity and elegance. The scheme offers a sensitive and low-keyed denouement (at the same time pragmatic and poetic) to an architectural masterpiece.

Shane Murray: A true design investigation in that there is an observation of an existing state of affairs, a hypothesis and a speculation. The incremental development of a quite simple idea presented in an evocative manner. The design speculation is demonstrated in a manner which leaves little doubt as to the designer’s intentions and enables the viewer to assess the worth of these intentions. This project is enriched by using a significant set piece from the city as a generator, thereby extending the framework of investigation beyond the individual project.

Peter Elliott: Whilst there is a simple obviousness about the design idea, it is nonetheless impressive for its urban manners, dexterity and apparent east of fit. For this is part of the most significant urban site in the country and any architectural intervention must be clearly demonstrate its worth.

The designer extends Utzon’s concept of dealing with the ground plane. The design cleverly fits the plateau concept of two man-made plates (concourses) that could equally have been wrought by nature as “the big crack or land fault.” The bladed or wedged information building carries the ambiguity of gesture: is it man-made or natural phenomenon? The plan geometries are convincing, subtly working the two opposing “as found” natural curves of the waterline and the cliff face to the Botanical Gardens.
Entries to the 2021 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work can be made via the prize website until 21 August 2020.
Winners will be announced in the January/February 2021 issue of Architecture Australia and on ArchitectureAU.com. More

The Victorian government will partially shut down the state’s construction sites as part of stage four COVID-19 restrictions. More

Following an extensive heritage review commissioned by the City of Melbourne, 137 buildings and 5 precincts have been recommended for heritage protection. More

Known as the Greenhouse, the building designed by Blight Rayner will “epitomize the south-east Queensland relaxed lifestyle.” More

The Alastair Swayn Foundation has launched a second round of research grants for 2020, with more than $20,000 on offer. More