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      in Architecture

      'Wasteful and unnecessary' war memorial project should be ditched, Institute tells inquiry

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      The Australian Institute of Architects has told an Australian parliamentary inquiry that the Australian War Memorial’s controversial redevelopment plans should be reconsidered.
      The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works invited the Institute to give evidence on the $498 million project to redevelop the war memorial, which would include the demolition of Anzac Hall, designed by Denton Corker Marshall.
      On 14 July, Institute CEO Julia Cambage told the committee in her opening statement, “What we oppose is the wasteful and unnecessary destruction of Anzac Hall.” She also stressed the Institute is not alone in its view. The committee heard that the project has received a record number of submissions, around 80 percent of which oppose the project, among them historians, distinguished Australians and veterans.

      The Institute has long campaigned to stop the proposed demolition of Anzac Hall, the winner of the 2005 Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Architecture, but its efforts have been met with disdain from the Australian War Memorial.

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      The existing Anzac Hall by Denton Corker Marshall.
      Image: Denton Corker Marshall
      “Disappointingly, representatives of the memorial have sought to belittle the Institute’s concerns,” Cambage told the committee.
      She said the Australian War Memorial has portrayed the issue as a binary debate between the award winning status of Anzac Hall and the need for more gallery space to reflect Australia’s involvement in modern conflicts and peace keeping efforts.
      The Institute told the committee the project has had “clear and numerous failures of due process.” Namely, that the moral rights holders (Denton Corker Marshall) and the Institute were not initially consulted before the decision to demolish Anzac Hall; that the redevelopment plans contravene the Heritage Management Plan for the memorial; and that the referral of the redevelopment plans to the department did not sufficiently address the heritage impacts of the proposal.

      “When other significant public institutions have embarked on journeys of expansion and redevelopment, such as the National Gallery, they have engaged openly and constructively with our organisation and many others to achieve the best outcomes for the Australian community,” Cambage said.”
      “Had we been consulted, the Institute could have provided expert assistance in the conduct of best practice design competition to creatively explore further options identified in the Preliminary Design stage, which would have supported the retention of Anzac Hall.”
      The Institute commissioned an independent heritage report from Ashley Built Heritage, whose principal Geoff Ashley also gave evidence to the committee.
      The report found the proposal would have “significant heritage impacts arising from the bulk, scale and location of the new work such that further detail and minor modification would not remove that significant impact.”

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      A proposed glazed link between the existing building a new Anzac Hall designed by Cox Architecture.

      In its submission to the committee, the Institute also stated, “The AWM heritage listings already acknowledge the contribution of Anzac Hall to the precinct. Given time, it is extremely likely that Anzac Hall would obtain a direct heritage listing in its own right.”
      “The current and pending AWM Heritage Management Plan’s (2011 and 2019) also recognize the importance of Anzac Hall to the AWM Campbell precinct and require that Anzac Hall be retained and conserved.”
      The Institute also expressed concerns that the procurement of a design for the redevelopment did not consider the retention of Anzac Hall.

      “The Institute is extremely disappointed that not only did the Reference Design significantly constrain the usual creative competition design processes, it lost the opportunity to creatively explore further options identified in the Preliminary Design stage, which would have supported the retention of Anzac Hall,” it said in its submission.
      “We have been told by some Institute members that they did not submit an EOI on the basis that they were restrained by the EOI requirements.”

      Institute representatives also told the committee, “This is a project worthy of a genuine design competition that strives to find the best solution that supports the future of [the Australian War Memorial].”
      “Our key concern is that due process hadn’t been followed,” said immediate past national president Clare Cousins, warning that if the redevelopment plans were allowed to proceed, it would set “very dangerous precedent” for Australia’s most import public institutions. More

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      in Architecture

      North Sydney's tallest tower approved

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      The NSW government has approved the proposed Victoria Cross integrated station development, paving the way for North Sydney’s tallest tower.
      Bates Smart is the design architect for the above-station office tower, which will rise to 42-storeys, along with the three-storey retail precinct.
      Cox Architecture is designing the station and Aspect Studios is designing the public domain.
      Planning minister Rob Stokes announced the development’s approval on 8 July, noting that the excavation of the metro and service tunnels was complete.

      Along with the 42-storey office tower, the development includes a community hub, a pedestrian link from the station plaza to Denison Street and “almost 1,300 square metres” of new public open space.

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      The Victoria Cross integrated station development.
      Image: Bates Smart
      “The integrated station development at the new Victoria Cross Metro Station will double the available public open space near the tower and create a continuous ‘civic green spine’ along Miller Street, with landscaped terraces, outdoor dining, casual seating areas and pedestrian paths,” Stokes said.

      “North Sydney is already a strong commercial hub for Greater Sydney and this project will provide a much-needed boost, injecting $315 million into the economy and creating between 400-600 construction jobs to deliver the over station development.”
      Station fit-out works on the Victoria Cross Metro Station are scheduled to commence in early 2021 and the the tower is expected to be finished by mid-2024.
      The development had its assessment fast-tracked as part of the government’s Planning System Acceleration Program. It was part of the third tranche of fast-tracked projects, which included 19 major developments totalling $4.7 billion in value.

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      in Architecture

      Historic Gold Coast theatre saved from demolition

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      A 14-storey apartment tower will be built behind the preserved façade of the Old Burleigh Theatre Arcade on the Gold Coast, under plans by Conrad Gargett now before the local council.
      The historic red brick building dates back to 1930, when it was built as the De Luxe Theatre, a picture theatre and dance hall. It was remodelled in 1954 after it was substantially destroyed by a cyclone and again in the mid 1970s, when it was converted into an arcade with shops, restaurants and offices.

      It was placed on the local heritage register in 2019 following public outcry after developer Weiya Holdings purchased the site for $18.5 million and revealed plans to redevelop it. However, it was rejected for state heritage listing, with the Queensland Heritage Council pointing to the substantial changes made to the building over the years.
      Conrad Gargett’s design calls for the conservation and adaptive reuse of the front “book end” of the Old Burleigh Theatre Arcade but will see the demolition of some 1950s and 1970s sections of the building, along with relatively recent ground floor shop fronts and some internal partition walls.

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      The colonnade and new public entry viewed from Gold Coast Highway to the west.

      “We’re trying to find that happy medium between the conservation of what’s important fabric and creating a building that is of its place in Burleigh,” Conrad Gargett director John Flynn told the ABC.
      The new development will include 36 residential units – broken down into 10 four-bedroom, 17 three-bedroom, and eight two-bedroom units, in addition to a single one-bedroom unit – along with 472 square metres of retail space on the ground floor, and three basement levels for carparking.

      The former landmark theatre sign on the front Goodwin Terrace façade will be recreated, and new brick engaged piers along the western elevation will reference the rhythm of the piers proposed for demolition.

      “Interpretive displays are also proposed to convey the history, stories, key themes and phases in the life of the place as a key part of Burleigh’s and the Gold Coast’s culture and heritage,” development application states. “These proposed displays would use a combination of photos, film, physical models and display of 1950s artefacts from the rear ‘bookend’ apartment.”
      The former 1950s-style shopfronts will be referenced in the design of the new shopfronts, with the arcade entrance to be fitted with concertina timber-framed doors.
      The development will sit next to a planned light rail station connecting Broadbeach to Burleigh Heads due to be constructed by 2023. More

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      in Architecture

      Redeeming features – how Palladio marked the end of the plague in Venice

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      On the weekend of the third Sunday of every July, a pontoon bridge is constructed between St Mark’s Square in Venice and the church of Il Redentore (‘The Redeemer’) on the island of Giudecca. Called the Festa del Redentore, the weekend-long ceremony is known for its spectacular display of fireworks towards midnight and nocturnal revelry thereafter. But when the ceremony takes place this year – on 18 and 19 July – the social-distancing measures that are doubtless to remain in force will provide historically minded Venetians with a reminder of the genesis of this ceremony and of the church that sits at its heart: the city’s deliverance from the plague of 1575–77.
      The plague was devastating for Venice. With some 400 dying a day at its peak, by the time it had ended approximately a third of the city’s population had fallen victim to the pestilence, including the elderly Titian. Innovative measures were adopted to tackle its spread. These included a policy of curfew with which we would be familiar today, with residents of three of the city’s six sestieri banned from leaving their homes for eight days and dependent on the city authorities for the provision of necessary supplies.
      Procession before Il Redentore (c. 1648), Joseph Heintz the Younger. Museo Civico Correr, Venice. Photo: akg-images/Erich Lessing

      When these measures failed, the thoughts of the city turned to God. On 4 September 1576 – at the height of the epidemic – the Senate vowed in the presence of the Doge to make amends to the Almighty by way of acts of public supplication and devotion. The principal offering of thanks was to be the construction of a votive church dedicated to Christ the Redeemer, which was intended as the focal point of an annual ceremony of thanksgiving.
      Over the course of debates in the Senate that were held on 17 and 22 November, a frontrunner as architect for the church swiftly emerged in the person of Andrea Palladio (1508–80). Already an old man by this point – he died more than a decade before the church’s consecration in 1592 – Palladio had his whole architectural career behind him. Having established himself in Vicenza as an architect of palazzi and villas for local noblemen, he had found his greatest success in Venice as an ecclesiastical architect, with his facade for the church of San Francesco della Vigna and the church and cloister of San Giorgio Maggiore establishing a new language of ecclesiastical architecture for the city.
      With the site and architect chosen, the only matter that remained to be decided was the form that the church should take. In one further discussion in the Senate on 9 February 1577 a question over which the architects of the High Renaissance had long agonised again became a point of contention: namely, whether the church should take a forma rotonda, i.e. a centralised plan, or a forma quadrangolare – a more traditional, longitudinal design. It is likely that Palladio’s sympathies were with the former scheme, the most eloquent proponent of which in the Senate was his patron Marc’Antonio Barbaro, whose advocacy for the form, the art historian Deborah Howard has shown, was in part derived from his first-hand experience of the recent mosques of the Ottoman architect Sinan. The Senate sided with tradition, however, voting in favour of the longitudinal scheme by a majority of almost two to one, with Palladio’s design officially approved on 17 February.
      The procession across the pontoon bridge would have been at the forefront of Palladio’s mind as he worked up the accepted design. With the church to be approached centrally on processional days, the facade needed to provide a magnificent statement of the pietistic aims of the city and of its government. As a result, Palladio returned to a solution that he had explored in his earlier Venetian churches. For these, he had created a facade that was a wholly original deployment of antique motifs to suit the requirements of Roman Catholic liturgy. Memorably described by Rudolf Wittkower as comprising interlocking temple fronts, this solution – derived from the architect’s reconstruction of the Basilica of Maxentius (the Temple of Peace, as he called it) in Rome – creates a central pediment of four half-columns flanked on either side by lower half-pediments of a subsidiary order.  Simultaneously monumental and harmonious, it was perfectly suited to the glorification both of God and of the city.
      The interior of the Chiesa del Redentore. Photo: Didier Descouens/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

      The Redentore is perhaps Palladio’s most successful variation on this theme. The grand flight of stairs by which the church is approached disguises the inherent conflict residing in the fact that the major and minor orders – Composite and Corinthian respectively – cannot share the same pedestal without it being disproportionate to one of them. Furthermore, the introduction of an attic storey flanked by additional half-pediments (disguising the buttressing behind) lends a more imposing character to the facade, while continuing to express the division of the interior.
      As in the exterior, internally Palladio continued to develop ideas that he had first explored in his earlier ecclesiastical architecture, most notably at the nearby San Giorgio Maggiore. Here, however, his solutions are determined by the requirements of the annual votive processions. As at San Giorgio, the church is divided into three zones: nave, crossing and retrochoir, but at the Redentore they have been modified to express certain processional requirements.
      The nave, through which the Venetian people would have moved in procession, has been expanded to achieve a spaciousness redolent of the Roman baths. Instead of aisles, the barrel-vaulted side chapels contain openings along the east-west axis that allow them to act as ambulatories when needed. In the approach to the area beneath the dome, where the city’s officials were intended to sit on processional days, the walls of the nave turn inwards, allowing Palladio to provide the most important space of the church – both ceremonially and liturgically – with a monumental arched entrance. At its easternmost end, behind the altar, a semicircular screen of columns emphasises the centralising impetus of the dome and connects the church with the retrochoir housing the monks (kept plain in a concession to the austere Capuchins, who were the church’s caretakers).
      With the Redentore and the annual procession, the Venetian republic was able to provide a monument to its experience of plague of such grandeur that even today this experience has not been forgotten. More than four hundred years later, as lockdown is cautiously eased across Europe, what monument will be appropriate for a secular age and who will be our Palladio?

      From the July/August 2020 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
      Lead image: Longs Peak/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0); original image cropped. More

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      in Architecture

      Mid-century North Sydney MLC building to be replaced

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      The historic North Sydney MLC Building, originally designed by Bates, Smart and McCutcheon, is set to be demolished under a development application for a new commercial office building submitted to North Sydney Council.
      The building, completed in 1956, was the first high-rise office block in North Sydney and the largest building of its type in Australia at the time of its construction. It is listed as an item of local heritage.

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      The existing North Sydney MLC building by Bates Smart and McCutcheon, completed in 1956.

      Bates Smart is also the architect of the building’s replacement – a sculpted, tapered commercial tower with a naturally ventilated atrium along its height.

      In documents submitted to the council, Bates Smart stated that it had worked with the building’s owners for more than a decade to find a way to refurbish it, but the plan was eventually deemed unviable because of an “unsympathetic relationship to the heritage of MLC [and] overshadowing of [the adjacent] Brett Whiteley Place.”

      Bates Smart’s long history with MLC dates back to 1937, when it won a competition to design the company’s Sydney headquarters. Since then, the firm has designed nine buildings for MLC across Australia. Former Bates Smart chairman Roger Poole wrote that the North Sydney MLC Building “retains its importance as a significant intact example of the 1950s International Style in post-war architecture.”

      However, the design of the building was flawed from the beginning due to its east–west orientation. This led Sir Osborn McCutcheon to issue an edict that, from then on, no Bates, Smart and McCutcheon building was to be oriented east–west. Nonetheless, the building is significant for its early use of a glass curtain wall and for having the largest floorplate in Australia at the time of completion.
      In a letter supporting the development application for the proposed building, Bates Smart said it accepted the commission to demolish the MLC Building and design a replacement on grounds that “the replacement be of greater significance in the development of innovative office typologies.”

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      The proposed development designed by Bates Smart will create the largest publicly accessible space in North Sydney.

      “Bates Smart are highly aware of the importance and legacy of this pioneering piece of architecture,” it said in a design statement. “Our aim is to design a building in the spirit of MLC that is as pioneering for the 21st century as MLC was for the late 20th century, creating a new legacy for North Sydney in the 21st century.”
      The proposed 27-storey building will have a tapered form with a curved crown shaped by the sun’s angles to protect solar access to the adjacent Brett Whiteley Place to the south and the nearby Greenwood Plaza.
      The tower will be raised to create a naturally ventilated space connecting Brett Whiteley Place with the Miller Street Special Area via an “urban room,” which will constitute the largest publicly accessible space in North Sydney.
      A 7.5-metre-wide atrium will extend the full height of the tower, bisecting two plates. The atrium will be naturally ventilated and will include landscaped breakout social spaces.

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      The atrium will have landscaped breakout social spaces.

      “The design is based on a campus workplace typology, where two or more floorplates are vertically connected by an atrium, usually over 6-8 floors; however in this case extend the typology vertically into a tower form to create Australia’s first vertical campus workplace, creating an innovative new typology,” said Bates Smart in a design statement.
      “We believe 105 Miller Street is the first genuine vertical campus tower [and that] this project represents a breakthrough typology that humanizes the high-rise for the 21st century workplace.”

      The building will have a distinctive triangulated facade pattern, designed to enable views to the Sydney Harbour Bridge while simultaneously providing solar shading. It will be the first net zero carbon ready building in North Sydney and will also be self-sufficient in its water use.
      An underpass beneath the building will connect it to the future Victoria Cross metro station, designed by Cox Architecture and Aspect Studios. Bates Smart also designed the proposed Victoria Cross over-station development, which was approved for construction on 6 July. More

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      in Architecture

      Winning design for Brisbane waterfront tower unveiled

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      An international design team comprising Hassell, New York’s Rex and Brisbane firms Richards and Spence and Arcadia Landscape Architecture have taken out a design competition for a 37-storey office tower at 205 North Quay on the Brisbane river.
      The development is being touted as a catalyst for the regeneration of the CBD’s North Quarter. The winning team’s design is intended to take advantage of Brisbane’s subtropical climate, with deep building overhangs, multi-level cross-ventilation and shady planting throughout.

      The design is distinctive for its cleverly conceived shading system. On the south-east and north-west facades, elliptical shading elements in a light copper colour offer protection from the harsh morning and afternoon sun; and on the south-west and north-east sides bold vertical elements, that run the height of the building, protect from the high, oblique midday sun angles.

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      205 North Quay by Hassell, New York’s Rex and Brisbane firm Richards and Spence.

      Triple-height terraces open the office levels up to the outdoors at intervals along up to the top of the tower, with vertical landscaping offering organic articulation and reinforcing the subtropical aesthetic.
      In addition to the office floor plates, the scheme includes a child-care centre and “wellness” floor, along with an open public plaza at the base of the tower.
      “Conceived as an outdoor room, the public plaza is immense,” planning documents before Brisbane council state.

      “The space is designed as three ‘ground planes’ – all publicly accessible, all providing multiple diverse experiences.”
      The central space of the plaza is framed by a colonnade and activated by various programs on three sides across three levels.
      On the ground floor hospitality and retail tenancies address external courtyards, activating the entry to the plaza and extending the perceived public realm.
      To the south-west a wide staircase links to a significant restaurant overlooking the river with views through to Mt Coot-tha, the Brisbane River, Southbank and the streets below. And on the second level – accessible by lifts and elevators – a “sky lobby” takes advantage of the climate, with a sliding glass doors facilitating an ambiguous indoor–outdoor environment.

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      205 North Quay by Hassell, New York’s Rex and Brisbane firm Richards and Spence.

      At the top of the tower, another outdoor space offers a flexible multi-purpose environment including meeting spaces along with indoor and outdoor collaboration spaces.
      “205 North Quay will set an unparalleled benchmark for building and public realm outcomes in this developing precinct of Brisbane CBD [that provides] a wide range of environments for work, play and leisure,” state the proponents.
      205 North Quay Street is a project of developers Cbus Property and Nielson Properties.
      The design competition for the project included three other shortlisted international teams: Cox Architecture, SOM (Chicago) and Rapt Studio; BVN and Shop Architects (New York); and Architectus and Woha (Singapore). More

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      in Architecture

      Down to earth – the revival of building with mud

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      Earth as a building material is, simply, as old as the hills. As a small child I remember modelling a ‘Saxon’ village in clay, an exercise which might not have met modern curriculum standards but combined a light-touch history lesson with the satisfaction of kneading wet mud. Jean Dethier’s immense, collaborative and globally inclusive new […] More

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      in Architecture

      Brisbane tower sprouting 1,000 trees proposed

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      Koichi Takada Architects has designed a 30-storey tower for South Brisbane that is being touted as the “world’s greenest residential building.” With landscape architecture by Lat 27, the Urban Forest tower will be home to 1,003 trees – more than five times the number of trees in nearby Musgrave Park – with 260 plant species […] More