Architecture

Infrastructure NSW has revealed the five finalists in a competition to design a waterfront pavilion in Sydney’s Barangaroo.
The pavilion will be a shade-and-canopy structure intended to provide an area for public gathering, relaxation and a range of events. It will be located at Watermans Cove, an extension of Wulugul Walk, which, when complete in 2024, will follow the Sydney harbour foreshore from Walsh Bay to Darling Harbour.
Watermans Cove will be situated adjacent to the under-construction Crown casino hotel designed by Wilkinson Eyre. The site is located on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.

Infrastructure NSW is running a two-stage competition with the first stage being an anonymous ideas competition.
The five entries selected by the jury are:
Entry #106 by Jessica Spresser (Spresser), Brisbane
Entry #238 by John Bohane and Luke Pigliacampo, Sydney
Entry #243 by Mitchell Thompson (Retallack Thompson), Sydney
Entry #257 by Amy Muir (Muir Architecture, Openwork and Sarah Lynn Rees), Melbourne
Entry #264 by Neil Durbach (Durbach Block Jaggers), Sydney
The finalists will now develop their ideas for the second stage of the competition.
The finalists were selected by a jury that comprised Robert Nation (Barangaroo Design Advisor), Bridget Smyth (city architect / design director, City of Sydney), Abbie Galvin (New South Wales Government Architect), Peter Poulet (professor of practice (Architecture), Western Sydney University), and Kim Crestani (city architect, City of Parramatta).

The winner of the competition will be revealed later in 2020.

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Adelaide architecture firm JPE Design Studio has prepared designs for a $23 million upgrade to the Adelaide High School campus.
The school is located with in the Adelaide Park Lands by West Terrace in the central city, on the land of the Kaurna people.
The major part of the upgrade would be the Hive Building, a new social and learning hub for students, containing flexible specialist learning areas, teacher preparation, storage, amenities, canteen café and outdoor learning areas.

Also being considered for the school is a new storey addition to an existing building to provide flexible specialist learning areas and an upgrade of the student.
The Hive Building would be located what has traditionally been seen as the back of the school, facing the Adelaide Park Lands.
“It is the first building on the campus to engage with the Park Lands, inviting the landscape to become part of the learning experience day-to-day,” write the architects.

“The new terraced student verandah and café adjacent to the parklands will signify that this is no longer the back of the school. The building will be the new face to community life and will represent the school’s entrepreneurial mindset and contemporary pedagogy.”

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The Hive Building at Adelaide High School by JPE Design Studio.

Adelaide High School’s original buildings were designed by Sydney architects Edward Fitzgerald and John R. Brogan, who won a national architecture competition for the project in 1940. Their Functionalist design was realized in 1951, having been delayed due to shortages of labour and materials during World War II. Today the buildings are listed on the state heritage register.
JPE Design Studio previously designed the first major contemporary addition to the school back in 2015, the New Learning Centre. Reviewing that building in Architecture Australia, Julian Worrall wrote “While the new building appears grown from the same seed as the original, what is revealed on closer inspection is just how far the constructional and spatial dimensions of educational architecture have changed over the past 60-odd years, complicating any straightforward attempt at continuity of design.”
For the Hive Buidling, JPE Design Studio states that the design does not seek to look the same as the historic brick buildings, but to be a counterpoint to them, “expressing a new future for the school where education design incorporates the ability to adapt, experiment, and encourage independent learning.” More

The National Gallery of Victoria has announced that the city-wide exhibition Melbourne Now will return in 2023, ten years after its inaugural exhibition.
Melbourne Now will again focus on the intersection of architecture, art, design and culture in Melbourne today, exploring how these practices shaping the city’s cultural landscape.
The NGV has allocated an initial $1.5 million to acquire, commission and present new works by local Victorian artists, designers and architects for the exhibition.

“The NGV is delighted to be able to support our local creative community with the second iteration of Melbourne Now,” said NGV director Tony Ellwood. “We know new and significant works will be created by Victorian artists and designers for this exhibition, which will celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of our creative sector.”
The 2013 exhibition was lauded as the first time NGV has placed local design and architecture practices in the context of a wider survey of contemporary art.

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Sampling the City 2013.
Image: NGV
It included architecture-focused exhibitions such as Sampling the City, curated by Fleur Watson, which was centred around a four-wall cinematic presentation capturing the work and words of Melbourne’s architectural community, and a series of ideograms by Leon van Schaik.
Reviewing the exhibition for Architecture Australia at the time, Maitiú Ward described it as “a raucously diverse celebration of Melbourne’s arts culture.”
Melbourne Now was the first of the NGV’s now-familiar “summer blockbuster” exhibitions. More than 753,000 visitors attended the exhibition, representing a 32 percent increase in attendance figures compared to the same period in the previous year.

“Embraced by Victorians and visitors alike, the original 2013 Melbourne Now exhibition was a landmark presentation of the most exciting art and design being made in one of the world’s most creative cities,” said Victoria’s creative industries minister, Martin Foley. “Ten years on, Melbourne Now 2023 is set to be an equally momentous event, while playing an important role in the post-COVID recovery of our creative sector.”
The 2023 exhibition will be displayed throughout all levels of The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, including in the permanent collection galleries. It will include new works and commissions by emerging, mid-career and senior practitioners as well as local collectives.
It will cover a wide range of contemporary disciplines including architecture, ceramics, fashion and jewellery, painting, sculpture, video, performance, printmaking and publishing.
Entry will be free, as it was in 2013. More

A proposed performing arts centre at a Canberra school has been designed in the language of the school’s existing red brick buildings.
Daramalan College is located in Dickson, Canberra, on the land of the Ngunnawal people, the school invited selected architects to prepare initial concept ideas for the new building in July 2020 and selected Stewart Architecture in mid-August.
Stewart Architecture’s design for the two-storey building includes a “performative” brick facade with colonnades and bleacher seating to the north. The building will accommodate a black box theatre with more than 150 seats, a drama studio, music teaching rooms and sound-insulated practice studios.

The design also intends to better connect the school with a nearby waterway. “Daramalan College has a northern boundary facing the Sullivan’s Creek drain of nearly half a kilometre,” said Stewart Architecture director Felicity Stewart. “There is an opportunity to transform the Dickson drain into a pedestrian and bicycle parkland, linking the new Dickson and Lyneham Wetlands. The new Performing Arts Centre has the potential to face onto this area, activating the public realm both day and night.”

The performing arts centre is expected to be complete in late 2022, in time for the school’s 60th anniversary.

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Melbourne Design Week will be back in 2021 with the theme “Design the world you want” and the organizers are now seeking expressions of interest for talks, tours, workshops, launches and exhibitions.
The 11-day program showing off local and international design will run from Friday 26 March to Monday 5 April 2021 and will include events across Victoria.
Participants are being asked to consider “how the design community can work together to create a better, healthier future for the planet and its inhabitants.”

Expressions of are open to a wide range of practitioners, including designers, architects, galleries and educators.
“Melbourne Design Week has earned its reputation as an internationally renowned platform for Australian design and innovation,” said National Gallery of Victoria director Tony Ellwood. “This initiative is a celebration of our thriving industry, but also an opportunity for practitioners and visitors alike to encounter and discuss work at the vanguard of design practice world-wide.”

Launched in 2017, Melbourne Design Week is an initiative of the Victorian Government delivered by the National Gallery of Victoria.
For the 2021 program, the organizers are working alongside Open House Melbourne to put on a satellite program in regional Victoria, building on the previous success of the regional program in Geelong, which led to the establishmemt of Geelong Design Week.

During Melbourne Design Week, some of the world’s leading architects, designers and thinkers will present keynote talks and conversations.

And the Victorian Design Challenge will also return, offering a share of more than $25,000 in prizes for student and professional designers.
The Victorian government has announced it will renewed its presenting partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria, locking in Melbourne Design Week for a further four years.
Creative industries minister Martin Foley said, “As we look ahead to a post-COVID world, design and creativity will play an important role not just in our recovery but in rethinking the status quo to build a better reality. Melbourne Design Week, the largest event of its kind in Australia, this year invites the design community to ‘design the world you want’ – an important and timely provocation.”
Expressions of interest can be made via the Melbourne Design Week website. More

The Powerhouse Museum is calling for community feedback to help determine the future of its existing facility at Ultimo.
In July 2020, after years of resistance, the NSW government announced the existing Powerhouse Museum would be retained, in addition to a new museum which will be built in Parramatta.
The Powerhouse Museum and Create NSW are jointly developing a business case for the Ultimo facility.
“The Museum’s renewal gives us the opportunity to ask the public what they want to see from a modern museum experience, how we might reimagine our remarkable collection for decades to come, what role technology could play in the visitor experience, and how the Museum will remain a thriving institution within the Ultimo precinct,” said Lisa Havilah, chief executive of Powerhouse Museum.

The state heritage listed Powerhouse dates back to 1899 and was the original electricity generating station which supplied the tram network of Sydney. It was decommissioned in 1963 as the city’s tram network phased out.

The transformation of the former Powerhouse building into a cultural facility, designed by NSW Government Architect Ian Thompson, received the state’s highest honour for public architecture, the Sulman Medal, in 1988.
“Powerhouse Ultimo has a proud history of displaying our world-renowned Collection, and with the NSW Government’s recent decision this will continue to be the case for years to come,” said Barney Glover, president of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences trust.
“The Trust holds the firm belief that public institutions have a responsibility to evolve to meet the ever-changing dynamic of the communities they represent.”
Submissions on the Powerhouse Ultimo Renewal can be made on the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences website.

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A group of locals in South Australia’s Barossa Valley has launched a campaign against a $50 million, 12-storey hotel proposed for Seppeltsfield Winery, which it says is excessively large and out of character for the area. Two neighbours of the winery have also applied to the Environment, Resources and Development Court, calling for a review into the local council’s approval process.
Designed by Adelaide-based practice Intro Architecture, the “Oscar” hotel is intended to reference the history of the winery, established in 1851, with its form inspired by the wine barrels in the Centennial Cellar, built by Oscar Benno Pedro Seppel in 1878. The Barossa Valley lies on the land of the Peramangk, Ngadjuri and Kaurna peoples.

Neighbour Tracy Collins, however, says the design is inappropriate.
“It is purely the magnitude, the height, the fact that it doesn’t sit cohesively within the landscape, it isn’t sensitive to nature,” she told the ABC.

“To be honest, we don’t think it truly reflects Barossa culture.
“People come from the city with big skyscrapers and high-rises and come to the Barossa because they don’t see that.”
Collins is part of the Taming Oscar community action group, which says that while it is not in opposition to development at Seppeltsfield or the wider Barossa area, development should work with the landscape and fit in with the largely low-rise buildings of the winery region.

Preliminary plans for the hotel were submitted to Light Regional Council for consideration in February 2020. Council planning staff assessed the development as a Category 2 tourist accommodation development, which means that only owners or occupiers of adjacent land are entitled to be consulted.
Opponents of the proposal have objected to this classification, arguing that such a significant development should require input from the public at large.
In a consultation period in August, council received 11 representations from the 14 neighbours contacted, with two of the neighbours applying to the Environment, Resources and Development Court for a review of the category 2 classification.

The council has since released a statement, on 27 August, noting that it will postpone any further consideration of the development application until the review proceedings in the ERD Court have been determined.
Ultimately, the development application will be assessed by an independent assessment panel established by the council. South Australia’s planning minister Stephan Knoll advised in May that the council was the appropriate planning authority for the development, despite it holding a contractual relationship with Seppeltsfield through the Bunyip Water Scheme and planning a potential future public-private partnership with the winery.
Should the hotel be approved it will house approximately 70 rooms, a “sky bar,” day spa, restaurant and boardroom.
Seppeltsfield owner Warren Randall said, “We wanted to create a national icon for South Australia – a Sydney Opera House for the Barossa.” More

Student accommodation provider Scape Australia has lodged plans for four separate student housing tower developments designed by four architecture firms around the University of New South Wales, on the Country of the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples of the Eora nation.
The towers will be located along Anzac Parade in Kensington and Kingsford, where Randwick council’s recently passed the K2K planning framework proposal allows for towers up to 18 storeys. Together, they will house 1,528 boarding rooms.

The largest of the developments, home to 564 boarding rooms and costing $93 million, will be built at 111-125 Anzac Parade, on Todman Square intersection. Designed by SJB, it will comprise a cluster of three towers atop a shared base with community, communal and retail functions. “The base is rich and warm, drawing inspiration from the red brick common to Kensington,” SJB states in planning documents. “It forms a diverse jumble of pedestrian scale forms, encouraging the public into the laneways and plazas which proliferate [on] the ground plane.”

The accommodation towers above, meanwhile, are designed to be simple and restrained with “quieter elements which gracefully land on the brick podium.”

Each tower will have its own subtle character, with variations in façade breakup and colouring defining the presence of each form. The tallest of the towers will rise to 19 storeys.
At 182-190 Anzac Parade, another 19-storey tower designed by Plus Architecture will house 381 boarding rooms. Its form will split into two to reduce the overall appearance of bulk, with a central recess that allows space for landscaped balconies.

“The sculpted glass façade will reflect the sky, clouds and sunset in a crystalline manner to add additional interest to the poetic form,” state the architects.
Another 19-storey tower housing 179 boarding rooms will be built at 172-180 Anzac Parade. Designed by BVN, it will rise above existing heritage shop buildings facing Anzac Parade, which are listed as contributory items. BVN’s scheme includes the insertion of a “microplaza” behind these buildings. “The retained elements are able to be read as volumes within the new urban composition (rather than just façades) with the intent to build an authentic layering of place,” state BVN.

The exsiting masonry of the heritage buildings will be maintained, bagged and painted to enable the altered building form to remain a consistent materiality.
Above this, a tower clad in lightweight perforated metal screens will act as a counterpoint to the masonry shop fronts. “The perforations will add depth and dynamic quality as one moves around the building and the sun casts changing light conditions,” state the architects.
Finally, across the street at 391-397 Anzac Parade, PTW Architects has designed an 18-storey tower to include 399 boarding rooms. PTW’s design splits the built form into two distinct elements: the low, open podium and the “highly sculptural and animated” tower above, which cantilevers over the podium.

The four developments together will cost an estimated $281 million. Despite the collapse in international student numbers due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Scape executive chairman Craig Carracher said he was optimistic about the student accommodation sector’s future.
“In a post-COVID world, the weight of demand from across Asia, Europe and South America will rise again from students seeking a world-class education in Australia,” he said.
“The opportunity to continue to develop and invest in innovation and academic centres of excellence is a once in a generation opportunity.” More