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      DA submitted for John Wardle Architects' UTAS buildings

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      Two development applications have been submitted to the City of Launceston for the University of Tasmania’s proposed River’s Edge and Willis Street buildings designed by John Wardle Architects.
      The buildings represent the second and third stage of the wider $344 million redevelopment of the campus, which sits of the lands the palawa people, the traditional owners of lutruwita (Tasmania).
      The development applications are on public exhibition until 28 September.
      River’s Edge, designed in collaboration with Tasmanian practice 1 Plus 2 Architecture and with landscape architecture by Aspect Studios, is described in planning documents as a “vibrant learning and teaching building” nestled amongst the historic Launceston Railway Workshops by the North Esk River.

      “The building is at the centre of some of the most intriguing intersections of this remarkable precinct – between a river and a new university square; between existing historic buildings and the northern end of Traverser Lane; between old and new,” states John Wardle Architects’ design statement.

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      The proposed River’s Edge building at the University of Tasmania by John Wardle Architects and 1+2 Architecture.
      Image: University of Tasmania
      The design response seeks to illuminate the distinctive qualities of the site, reinterpreting the sawtooth geometry, metal cladding and natural atrium lighting of the historic buildings in a contemporary way.
      But whereas the buildings of this precinct were traditionally not orientated towards the river, this building offers an “optical departure” with large-format windows embracing views to the North Esk and farmland beyond.
      River’s Edge Building will house teaching and research space for the College of Arts, Law and Education, as well as a consultation hub for disability and accessibility support, counselling and student wellbeing services and the Riawunna Centre, which supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. Its estimated cost is $38.4 million.

      Willis Street, meanwhile, will have a focus on health, medicine and sciences. John Wardle Architects describes the building as “an expansive shed with an all-encompassing roof.”
      “Accessible and democratic, the single main point of entry leads to a light filled atrium with the shed that provides space for multiple modes of operation over time for the university, ranging from small to large gatherings,” reads the design statement.
      The $68.9 million building will include nursing simulation labs that will be co-located with TasTAFE, food science facilities including a sensory lab, health clinics to support dietetics, speech pathology, occupational therapy and physiotherapy. More

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      In defence of Coventry’s post-war architecture

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      The architectural historian Mark Girouard had equivocal feelings about researching his book The English Town: A History of Urban Life (1990). He appreciated that it had given him the opportunity to make the case that the Victorian cityscape, long denigrated as an unforgivable hodgepodge of pestilent slums, gloomy factories and pompous town halls, was in fact as worthy of celebration as the medieval and Georgian townscapes that had preceded it. The pain of writing the book came when visiting the towns as they now were, and he could see nothing but catastrophe in the changes that had befallen city centres during the post-war period:
      I came to know too well the boa-constrictor hug of the ring road; the cracked concrete, puddles and pornographic scribbles of the subways; the light standards rising out of tasteful landscaping on the roundabouts; the new telephone exchange pushing up its ugly head, with such inspired accuracy, exactly where it could do the most damage; the claustrophobic arcades, streaked surfaces and tattering glitziness of once-new shopping centres.
      This is a punchy paragraph, but there is something about the litany of derisory epithets that should alert us to similarities with the language that has always been used to malign the architecture of the recent past. Its fervour certainly recalls that of the master of the architectural take-down, John Ruskin, who directed his ire against such now-loved things as Edinburgh New Town or St Martin-in-the-Fields. Such linguistic echoes reveal that architectural taste is generationally cyclical, and suggest that blanket condemnations of ‘concrete monstrosities’ will eventually give way to a recognition of what was good in post-war architecture.
      A change of heart is inevitable, but it will come too late for many of the finest buildings and civic set pieces of the period. In the UK, an assault is taking place on the post-war built environment as far reaching and devastating as that of the post-war period’s erasure of the Victorian city. We will come to regard the demolition of buildings such as Alison and Peter Smithson’s Robin Hood Gardens and John Madin’s Birmingham Central Library with the same bewildered regret as we do the loss of the Euston Arch. Although it is the demolition of individual monuments by famous architects that makes the news, perhaps a more insidious loss is the steady chipping away at the urban fabric of the planned architectural set pieces of the period. Chief among these is the city centre of Coventry in the West Midlands. Sheffield, Glasgow or Liverpool may have more individual modern masterpieces, but Coventry is one of the few places outside the new towns where the post-war architectural imagination was given full reign to create a total urban ensemble.
      The freedom to remake Coventry on pioneering modern lines was forged in the aftermath of the events of the night of 14 November 1940, when much of the centre was reduced to rubble by German bombers. Coventry’s response to this catastrophe is central to why I find its post-war built environment so moving. It is sometimes asked why the Second World War did not give rise to monuments to compete with the powerful, sombre classicism of Edwin Lutyens’s Thiepval Memorial, but Coventry, spreading out from the cathedral rebuilt by Basil Spence, is in many ways a city-wide memorial: the whole place is imbued with the values of internationalism, reconciliation and rebirth. I often lead visitors around central Coventry, including people who expected not to like it, and they are always charmed by its combination of picturesque vistas, its superb collection of integrated public murals and sculpture, and its exceptionally considered townscape – created through a strict design code, good materials and street furniture, and quality architectural lettering. Above all visitors are struck by the vestiges of post-war optimism that suffuse the place, even if it is now eroded and neglected.
      The central baths, Coventry, built by the city’s Architect’s Department in 1962–66 (photographed in 1966). Photo: Bill Toomey/Architectural Press Archive/RIBA Collections

      In its day Coventry’s replanned centre was internationally lauded. Coventry was the archetypal post-war boom town, largely based on a flourishing automotive and engineering industry. Sociologists flocked there in order to study its newly affluent workforce. As Britain’s Detroit, it was inevitable that the city’s replanning would be dominated by the car, albeit with an infrastructure that ingeniously segregated pedestrians and vehicles. The reversal of Coventry’s economic fortunes, as deindustrialisation began to bite, was subsequently experienced with particular harshness. Released in 1981, the song ‘Ghost Town’ (1981), by the Coventry-based band The Specials, expressed the sense of urban crisis in Thatcher’s Britain, which they juxtaposed with a romanticised past of the ‘good old days […] inna de boomtown’. This fraught history helps to explain why the dashed optimism expressed in Coventry’s rebuilding became so difficult to stomach, and why the city has become embarrassed to the point of self-loathing by its post-war heritage, trying to force its humane and civic city centre into the mould of a mundane retail park. The nadir came with the building of the postmodern Cathedral Lanes Shopping Centre in 1990, which wantonly destroys the carefully modulated vista set up between the pedestrian shopping precinct and the cathedral.
      Those of us who love Coventry had hoped that this drawn-out architectural hara-kiri was coming to an end: the city now has impassioned champions, among them the writers Owen Hatherley and Jones the Planner, while in 2016 Historic England released an impressive report, Coventry: The Making of a Modern City 1939–73, which was followed by a number of significant listings. Then Coventry was made UK City of Culture for 2021. Here was a tremendous opportunity to embrace the city’s unique identity, making a tourist asset of its internationally significant urban planning and the moving story of its re-emergence from war.
      Depressingly the city seems intent on continuing to rely on an outmoded retail-led regeneration strategy, although it is difficult to imagine Coventry ever being able to compete with neighbouring Birmingham as an ersatz shopping destination, especially in the current climate. It is grotesque that a city supposedly gearing up to celebrate its culture on an international stage is simultaneously pushing through plans to mutilate listed buildings, including the train station, civic centre, and central baths and leisure centre, all superb instances of the refined and elegant modernism practised by the city’s Architect’s Department after the war. Huge chunks of the south of the city are set to be cleared for yet more banal retail space. The Bull Yard, an urbane square in the tougher idiom of the 1960s, is one thing set to go, despite its being elegantly detailed and home to a wonderful Aztec-inspired frieze, in seemingly kinetic concrete, by the late William Mitchell. For its year of culture Coventry should work with the grain of what it has. Taste will change. With a more sympathetic approach, Coventry might aspire in a few decades to become a World Heritage Site, emulating places such as Bath or Ironbridge – because it too is a supremely eloquent exemplar of a particular moment in urban history. The city will regret the carelessness with which it is trashing what makes it unique.
      From the September 2020 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here. More

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      in Architecture

      'Hybrid village' tower proposed for Sydney's Haymarket

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      City of Sydney councillors have unanimously voted in support of a planning proposal for 187 Thomas Street, Haymarket that will pave the way for a 227-metre, 47,000 square metre commercial tower.
      Proposed by Adelaide developer Greaton, with an indicative scheme designed by FJMT, the 47-storey tower is described as a mixed-use “hybrid village,” with multiple uses combined within a vertical arrangement, each with their own identity and requirements but sharing common facilities.

      It will be structured around a six-level innovation hub and include related functions such as hotel accommodation for business visitors, work space to support start-ups and retail and event space.
      The scheme also includes additional publicly accessible open space adjacent to the planned future public plaza on Quay Street.
      Planning documents note that 187 Thomas Street, Haymarket lies at the convergence of several precincts where the technology sector, knowledge-intensive creative and start-up industries are emerging, such as the Ultimo-Camperdown Collaboration Area, the NSW Government’s Tech Central precinct and the Western Gateway sub-precinct adjacent to Central Station.

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      The indicative design for 187 Thomas Street, Haymarket, prepared by FJMT.

      “This site has locational and site-specific advantages that will allow a future tech hub and innovation precinct to flourish and succeed,” states the proponent. “It represents a one-off opportunity to create an ‘exemplar’ development that future facilities (including the Central to Eveleigh Innovation Precinct) can learn from and leverage off.”
      The tower will be located within the Central Sydney Planning Strategy’s Haymarket/Ultimo tower cluster and the maximum planning envelope has been designed with four distinct visual elements to decrease bulk as the tower rises and maximize daylight access.
      The tower’s design will be subject to an architectural design competition.
      The planning proposal will now be forwarded to the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment for determination. More

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      Draft National Registration Framework a retrograde step

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      The proposed National Registration Framework for Building Practitioners (NRF) will result in poorer quality buildings and less safe outcomes for the public, according to a damning submission on the policy by the Australian Institute of Architects.
      Initiated by the Building Ministers’ Forum, which brings together state and federal ministers responsible for the construction sector, the NRF was developed in response to the Shergold-Weir Building Confidence report, which pointed to “significant and concerning” problems in compliance and enforcement systems for the building and construction industry.

      Since that report’s publication in February 2018, the Institute has repeatedly criticized all levels of government for their failure to fully implement the 24 recommendations, particularly in the face of dramatic fires stemming from flammable cladding, and major defects uncovered in buildings including Sydney’s Opal Tower.

      The Australian Building Codes Board released a discussion paper on the proposed NRF earlier in 2020, pitching it as a response to the first two recommendations of the Shergold-Weir report, which called for the registration of building practitioners involved in the design, construction and maintenance of buildings.

      According to the Institute, however, the proposed registration framework directly contradicts the purpose of the Building Confidence recommendations and will fail to enhance public trust and confidence in the building industry.
      A central problem is the failure to set higher levels of competence for all practitioners, and particularly for building designers and project managers.
      “[The proposals] are insufficient to raise confidence in the building industry, because the bar has been set at a level that is too low to ensure quality outcomes,” states the submission, authored by Leanne Hardwicke.

      The framework will allow building designers with a diploma in building design (a one- to two-year course) with three years’ post-qualification experience to be able to design building types that currently require a registered architect.

      The Institute’s submission notes that registration requirements for architects are much more stringent and involve demonstration of competency through an examination and interview against national competency standards that are recognized internationally. There is currently no comparable assessment process for building designers.

      “It is reasonable to state that there would be a significant reduction in public confidence in the Australian medical system if registered medical practitioners were considered equally qualified to people holding bachelor degrees in medicine or degrees in health sciences,” writes Hardwicke in the submission. “Similarly, we do not allow graduates with a medical degree who have not successfully completed the prescribed post graduate training to have the same responsibilities within medical practice.

      “However, the NRF does not recognize the significant differences in education and mandatory practical experience between registered architects and others providing building design services. This lack of regulatory recognition corresponds to confusion within the community as to the role and capabilities of an architect as opposed to a designer/drafter and can result in poor quality outcomes and risks to safety.”
      The Australian Building Codes Board states that the immediate goal of the framework is to help jurisdictions fill in the gaps in their registration schemes and to include NCC training in accredited qualifications, while the medium-term goal is to make the registration schemes nationally consistent to improve mutual recognition between the states and territories.

      The framework states that “the core design discipline” is the registered building designer. It sets out three levels of registration for building designers: level 1 (all buildings); level 2 (Medium rise buildings); and level 3 (Low rise buildings). Registered architects would meet the requirements to be registered as building designers level 1.
      The Institute notes that this categorization views architects as largely equal to building designers and other lesser qualified practitioners offering building design services, and that it would cause confusion by requiring registered architects to also be registered as building designers.
      It “strongly recommends” that the categories be reconfigured so that a registered architect would be required to design buildings of more than two storeys.
      Other problems with the framework, according to the Institute, include the use of the term “architect” in relation to people who are not registered, and insufficient clarity over who is qualified to provide access consulting and energy efficiency services. It also states that the barrier of entry for project managers is far too low, and that “architects must be included as project managers.”
      “There must be a robust system for assessing whether a person has the competence to undertake the permitted work,” states the submission. “The aim of the NRF should be to improve competency of all building practitioners over time to an appropriate minimum standard.”
      Neil Savery, Chief Executive of the Australian Building Codes Board, told ArchitectureAU that while it would be inappropriate to comment on specific criticisms of the draft framework, the board welcomed the submissions received, and would be “very open” to making changes to the framework, taking into consideration submissions from various parties. The board has contacted Institute CEO Julia Cambage, informing her that it is open to further discussion.
      To read the Institute’s full submission, head here. More

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      in Architecture

      Two towers ‘formed with golden proportions’

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      FJMT has unveiled designs for two slim tower forms at 189 Kent Street, Sydney, with a gap between the buildings to provide a “cut through the city” leading towards the nearby water at Barangaroo.
      The $80 million development, to be built on the land of the Gadigal of the Eora nation, will reach to 24 storeys (94 metres) and house 125 apartments.
      “One form is forward, the other one back, responding to the adjacent forms but also providing an invitation to investigate beyond,” FJMT state in planning documents. “This stepped form is not rigid like the adjacent walled responses along Kent Street but is open and welcoming.”

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      189 Kent Street, Sydney by FJMT.

      FJMT’s scheme for the development was selected in an architectural design competition held in January 2019. The selection panel commended the two-tower form for its flexibility and for “providing a highly legible east-west connection through the site, which recognized the axial quality of the existing Grosvenor Street and was legible at both ground level and in the upper tower form.”

      In terms of façade design, the towers will have three distinct characters at different levels. The podium will be designed to appear as if it’s “chiselled from stone,” with carved masonry embedded into and of the site. At mid-level, the towers are designed as “organic and flowing” sculptural insertions, while above, the tower forms are classic and simple.
      “The design of the tower forms are modulated through the bridging levels and the juxtaposition of smaller volumes,” state the architects. “These elements are formed in line with the golden proportions and break the bulk into smaller scale relating it to more to the human scale.”
      Planning documents for the development are on public exhibit until 29 September.

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      North Sydney MLC building ‘may be of state heritage significance’

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      The Heritage Council of New South Wales has made moves towards placing an interim heritage order on the modernist MLC Building, as the campaign to save the building gains momentum.
      Designed by Bates, Smart and McCutcheon and completed in 1956, the office building at 105-153 Miller Street, North Sydney was the largest building of its type in Australia at the time of its construction.
      Plans to demolish it and replace it with a new commercial office tower designed by the same architecture firm (now known as Bates Smart) are currently before North Sydney Council. But residents, architects, and modernism enthusiasts have blasted the demolition proposal, arguing that the North Sydney MLC building is “one of the most important mid-century modernist buildings in Australia.”

      North Sydney Council has been flooded with around 70 submissions related to the proposal, while more than 1,680 people have signed a petition protesting the development launched by modern architecture preservation organization Docomomo.

      On 1 September, the Heritage Council noted that the building “may be of state heritage significance” and resolved to notify the owner that it will be considering whether or not to list the item. The council will also invite public submissions on the potential listing over a period of 28 days.
      The MLC building currently has only local heritage status, with its listing describing it as “a seminal work in the development of high-rise buildings in Australia.”
      Scott Robertson, president of Docomomo, says that it is at least of state significance and, because of its size, quality, early date of construction and the national attention it drew upon opening (being opened by the then prime minister Robert Menzies) it is of national importance.

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

      “Demolition of heritage items can only be justified in the most exceptional circumstances and every effort must be made to find compatible uses for heritage items and to apply re-use and refurbishment strategies,” he writes, in a submission to North Sydney Council.
      “One has only to regard examples such as the Queen Victoria Building in the Sydney CBD to find an example of a development that worked with the building to find a suitable modern, viable use.
      “The evidence presented in the development application for the replacement of the MLC Building does not demonstrate in any detail that alternative strategies to demolition have been pursued with any rigor.”

      Developer IOF Custodian has said that redevelopment of the site is necessary, since a study found it would cost $118 million to adequately restore the building.
      Bates Smart states in planning documents that while it recognizes the significance of the building, it was also “flawed from the beginning” due to its east–west orientation. The firm accepted the commission to design the new building on the basis that it could “design a building in the spirit of MLC that is as pioneering for the 21st century as MLC was for the late 20th century.” More

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      Clever, sustainable architecture wins at Good Design Awards

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      A Sydney housing complex made from half a million recycled bricks has taken out the top sustainability award in the 2020 Good Design Awards.
      Arkadia, designed by Breathe Architecture and DKO for Defence Housing Australia, was judged to be both environmentally and socially sustainable by the jury. Comprising four buildings and located on a busy road, the complex forms a protective wall and creates a new park, which is shared with its neighbours.
      The use of brick is in reference to the site’s industrial history and is an almost entirely carbon neutral skin. The complex also uses other recycled materials and passive solar technologies.

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      Arkadia by Breathe Architecture and DKO Architecture.
      Image: Tom Ross
      Brandon Gien, CEO of Good Design Australia, said, “Our world is crying out for cutting edge-design innovations that are solving problems, improving our quality of life and helping our planet move towards a more sustainable future for us all. The Arkadia development is an example manifest of outstanding form and function, using technologies of the present to evoke memories of the past and be true to all elements of great design.”

      Arkadia was also awarded Best in Class in the Architectural Design, Commercial and Residential category. “This is an exceptional design on all levels. It is truly innovative and applies strong environmentally sustainable principles. A real game-changer for defence housing,” the jury said.
      The Best in Class winner in the Architectural Design, Interior Design category was 100 Creek Street Redevelopment by Cameron and Co Architecture. The jury commended the designer’s “clever approach to renewing existing buildings.”

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      100 Creek Street Redevelopment by Cameron and Co Architecture.
      Image: Toby Scott
      “This refurbishment is an exemplar of what’s possible in the upgrade of the existing tired building stock,” the jury said.
      A design project that creatively and safely diverts the public from major infrastructure construction sites was awarded Best in Class in the Architectural Design, Urban Design and Public Spaces category. Metro Tunnel Creative Program by Cross Yarra Partnership Project Co., The Place Agency and Global Arts Projects “successfully coordinates a highly creative, original and engaging program of public art activities,” said the jury.

      The Kambri precinct at Australian National University by BVN, Lahznimmo and Aspect Studios was named Best in Class for Precinct Design, a new category added to the awards in 2020. “This is clearly a very attractive place to study and will entice the broader community to gain a stronger connection and better understanding of the university,” said the jury. “The design intent has resulted in the creation of ‘connection and intimate spaces’ as well as big boulevard statements.”

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      Kambri ANU by BVN, Lahznimmo and Aspect Studios
      Image: Florian Groehn
      Interior designer Mia Feasey was named winner of the 2020 Women in Design Award. Feasey is the founder and CEO of Siren Design, which has studios in Sydney, Melbourne and Singapore. The practice’s clients include large multinational corporations such as Google, Facebook, Uber and Atlassian to Visa, KPMG, PWC and Pfizer.
      The Good Design Awards program recognizes design across a wide range of disciplines, including architecture, fashion, engineering, communications and products.
      The overall winner in 2020 was a wearable and portable medical device that provides doctors with on-demand data for the assessment of brain health. More

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      A new public square for central Sydney

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      A major new public space designed to be “cool and green” will be developed at Sydney’s Central Station, under plans unveiled by the council.
      First proposed by Danish architect Jan Gehl, as part of the 2007 Public Space, Public Life study, the new public space will be a critical component of the wider redevelopment of the area, under the state government’s Tech Central precinct plan, which aims to attract start-ups and tech-orientated firms.
      The council has prepared early concept plans for the space, to be known as Central Square, in consultation with Spackman Mossop Michaels and Tonkin Zulaikha Greer. They envisage the spaces as one square made up of four distinct spaces.

      “Central Square is envisaged as a collection of connected public spaces, with public plazas, tree-lined walkways and the transformation of Railway Square into a cool, green space,” Sydney mayor Clover Moore told media. “It’s an idea that will underpin Tech Central and give identity to the precinct as a whole.”

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      Central Square, Sydney.
      Image: City of Sydney
      Overall, the hopes for the square are that it will be vibrant and active day and night, with a focus on youth activities and places for visitors, public transport users, the university population, workers and others surrounding the city. The design will also celebrating the unique heritage of the place, carefully balancing heritage intervention with broader benefit to the public.
      Located to the west of the sandstone train station, the space will include a tree-line “Western Walk,” allowing for the safe passage of large numbers of people to nearby destinations; the Lower Square, which will be an active space 24 hours a day; the “quiet and passive” Upper Square; and the re-imagined Railway Square, which will be cool and green, “an urban setting under a copse of trees.”
      A structuring principles report for the project is going before the City of Sydney’s Transport, Heritage and Planning Committee today, 14 September. The report to the committee notes that “a major new public place at Central is a critical part of the reenvisioning of this area of the city. High quality open space will help to attract and retain talent in the new precinct and support the younger demographic including university students. More