Architecture

A modernist pavilion in a Melbourne park is facing partial demolition by the local council.
Architecture practice Kennedy Nolan is petitioning the council and its councillors to halt the demolition and reconsider its decision.
The structure, known as the Riverside Pavilion, consists of a double-storey building designed by Carter Couch in the 1980s. It has a pyramid-shaped roof with a tall, ventilating chimney.
In October 2019, the council made the decision to demolish part of the structure in order to make way for a storage shed for the neighbouring Ivanhoe Northcote Canoe Club, despite receiving nine objections to the demolition plan.

One objection was from University of Melbourne chair of architecture professor Philip Goad. In his submission to the council Goad said that the pavilion is a “rare, non-residential work by the highly regarded Paul Couch [and an example of his] long-held interest in tilt-slab precast concrete panel construction system that is often a defining feature of his better-known residential works.”

“Couch has been a pioneer in using tilt-slab concrete panels in small-scale settings,” he continued.
“In my opinion there is definitely a case for, at the very least, listing the pavilion structure and workshop/change rooms together with the bluestone amphitheatre as being of local heritage.
“I also believe that with further investigation there could be a possible case for considering the entire complex and its site as being of even greater significance.”

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Riverside Pavilion by Carter Couch.
Image: Tom Ross
A council heritage advisor agreed with Goad and told a senior statutory planner, “The existing bluestone amphitheatre and adjacent pavilion structure and workshop/change rooms have iconic, longstanding (and currently active) connections with the diverse recreational uses of the park along the Yarra. There is strong evidence that the bluestone amphitheatre and adjacent pavilion structure and workshop/change rooms have contributory social significance in and of themselves, as well as being related objects that contribute to the cultural significance of the place.

“Furthermore, research produced by professor Philip Goad and architects Kennedy Nolan in response to this application have demonstrated the potential of the structures (both amphitheatre, change rooms and barbecue area) to have both local and state level architectural significance in and of themselves.

“It is strongly recommended that the application to demolish the barbecue shelter be refused.”
The pavilion is located in Fairfield Park, which itself is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register, however the statement of significance does not mention the pavilion. Its heritage significance is defined by Edwardian-era structures and plantings.

“Yarra City Council should consider nominating Fairfield Park for inclusion on the Victorian Heritage Register with the bluestone amphitheatre and adjacent pavilion structure and workshop/change rooms listed as important contributory or related objects,” the heritage advisor said.
However, a second heritage advisor told the council, “From the photos I have been provided it is clear that the subject shed is a pre-fabricated galvanised shed, of unknown age but possibly dating from the 1960s/70s.

“The shed certainly has no architectural significance and it is highly unlikely to be of any historical significance for its age or associations.”
After the council’s decision to proceed with the demolition, Nolan and others took the matter to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, which found in favour of the council.
“The Council submitted that the demolition of the post-war gazebo structure is of no consequence from a heritage perspective,” VCAT senior member Bill Sibonis said in handing down the tribunal’s decision.

“A key consideration is that the structures to be demolished are not identified as contributory to the heritage precinct. Whether this is a correct designation is not a matter for the Tribunal. I must take the planning scheme as I find it.

“The demolition of the structures would not be inconsistent with heritage policy, which only seeks the retention of significant and contributory buildings. Based on the Heritage Review and the Statement of Significance, the structures do not contribute to the significance of the heritage place. Accordingly, their loss would not represent an unacceptable outcome from a heritage perspective.”
Kennedy Nolan had prepared an alternative scheme that would retain pavilion and also provide additional storage spaces for the canoe club. However, “The Council have made no comments about our proposal – we [had] to pressure them to even acknowledge the receipt of the documents,” Rachel Nolan told ArchitectureAU.
The pavilion has been nominated for state heritage listing. Heritage Victoria will consider the nomination on 21 September.
At the time of publication, the petition has attracted more than 2,000 signatures. More

A survey of Victorian architects has found around $6.85 billion worth of the state’s construction sector is in jeopardy as a result of the pandemic lockdowns.
The survey conducted by the Association of Consulting Architects received responses from 196 practices, representing 1,215 full time technical staff and 161.5 full time equivalent casual technical staff.
Around 80 percent of practices reported having project cancelled or put on hold, with $2.3 billion worth of projects cancelled and $4.55 billion put on hold. This amounted to a total of $6.85 billion worth of projects or an average of $36.8 million worth for each firm. The cancelled or on-hold projects represent around 16 percent of the total construction sector, which included $42.4 billion worth of projects in 2018-2019.

The survey sample represents 18.7 percent of Victoria’s 1,046 architectural companies registered with the Architects Registration Board of Victoria. Most of the responding practices (67 percent) are very small enterprises employing five people or fewer.

The survey found widespread concern for current and future work with 28.49 percent of practices having less than two months of work in the pipeline and just 15.7 percent of practices having more than six months of work.

A majority of responding practices experienced declines in revenue, with just 10.5 percent reporting no decline. More than two-thirds (69 percent) of practices are receiving the federal government’s Job Keeper wage subsidy, which is preventing a majority of practices from staff losses. However, 11 percent reported that Job Keeper has not prevented staff redundancies or stand downs.

Around one in five (22 percent) of practices have had to make changes to employment arrangements, most commonly by reducing working hours (50 percent), changing roles (33 percent), reducing pay (32 percent), standing down staff (15 percent), or instituting redundancies (12 percent).

Responding practices reported that the residential sector was most sensitive to declines, with 66 percent contributing to project cancellations, followed by the commercial sector at 14 percent.
Respondents also reported that while the federal government’s Home Builder grant scheme had resulted in increased enquiries it was not having any effect in generating new projects due to the time restrictions of the grant, which stipulate that contracts must be signed before 31 December 2020 and construction must begin within three months of the contract date.

Respondents called for further government stimulus measures, including extending Job Keeper to sole traders and increasing infrastructure spending in public, education, health, community and housing projects.
They also called for the mandatory involvement of architects in design and construction of buildings greater than three storeys – something that architects have advocated for repeatedly throughout the development of Victoria’s apartment design standards.
The ACA’s survey was conducted between 20 and 27 August, three weeks after the stage four restrictions came into effect, which mandated that architectural services close their on site operations and limited workers on construction sites to 25 percent.
The full results of the survey can be found on the ACA website. More

Paint manufacturer Dulux has revealed its colour forecast for 2021. With the global pandemic causing immense social change and the collision of work and home life, the company says the palettes of the 2021 colour forecast reflect people’s desire for greater balance and continuity within their spaces.
Dulux colour and communications manager Andrea Lucena-Orr and trends forecaster Bree Leech conducted research with multiple digital trade exhibitions and found trends in an increased desire for digital detox, meaningful connections with outside world, and the need for comfort and familiarity.

The 2021 forecast includes three key colour palettes:
Retreat, which embodies tranquillity and sentimentality through warm whites, brown-based neutrals and dusty blues.
Nourish, a soft and warm palette with biophilic hues of mossy and sage greens and leather-based browns.
Reset which offers renewed energy and resilience, harking back to the eclecticism of the 1970s. The Reset palette includes putty and neutral whites with playful rich blues, terracotta and coral hues.
Dulux More

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