Architecture

A 28-storey office tower with a tapered form and steel and concrete exoskeleton would be built opposite the Fortitude Valley railway station in Brisbane, under plans submitted to the city council.
The building’s architect, local firm Bureau Proberts, states in planning documents that the form and architectural expression would provide a “striking alternative” to the surrounding commercial buildings of the CBD and the northern valley fringe.
“As a new type of office building for the precinct it contributes to the strong character of the neighbourhood,” the architects state.

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251 Wickham Street by Bureau Proberts.

“It’s form reinforces the strong street pattern of the Valley and the ground floor is conceived as a semi-public space, combining architecture, landscape design and public art, to create a place that is welcoming, engaging and contributes to a vibrant, subtropical streetscape.”
To be located at 251 and 253 Wickham Street, the building would feature a three-storey podium void with a cafe tenancy, pedestrian plaza and commercial floor lobby.

On the first floor above this would be an open plan gym, swimming pool and end-of-trip facilities, while above that would be the 19 floors of office space.
The project’s proponent, local developer Cornerstone, hopes that varied floor plates will provide a range of spaces to attract diverse businesses – creative business, tech start-ups – and “strengthen the Valley’s long held, independent and culturally diverse character.”
Lat27 is the landscape architect for the project and Ivan McDonald Architects prepared the heritage report.

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The Western Australian government has pledged $30 million to redevelop the brutalist Perth Concert Hall, originally designed by Howlett and Bailey Architects.
The funding is part of $76 million the government has allocated to the state’s arts and culture sector to help it recover from the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“These initiatives from the WA Recovery Plan provide reassurance to artists, arts groups and organizations that the state government is doing all it can to revive not just the Perth Concert Hall but the entire sector,” said state treasurer Ben Wyatt.

The redevelopment will see upgrades to the building and forecourts to improve accessibility and function at the venue.
Perth Concert Hall is the first facility of its type to be constructed in Australia after the second world war. It opened on Australia Day in 1973, predating the Sydney Opera House which opened in October the same year. In a 2011 Limelight magazine survey, Perth Concert Hall was ranked the best venue for its acoustics by performers, critics and audience members.

The building received the 2016 National Award for Enduring Architecture. In choosing a winner for this award, the jury focused on “which building has lasted the test of time and/or still functions as it was originally conceived without being compromised along the way.”
“Overlooking the Swan River, Perth Concert Hall by Howlett and Bailey Architects was designed in a brutalist style. The placement of the building, on top of a majestic brick plinth with stairs spanning its total width, celebrates the act of gathering,” the jury said.

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Perth Concert Hall by Howlett and Bailey Architects.
Image: Courtesy of the City of Perth
“What appears to be quite a simple, white, off-form concrete, post-and-beam construction is, upon closer inspection, understood as being completely innovative for 1973. The building is actually hung from itself, creating enormous free spans and all from one beautifully poured material.”
In its citation, the jury also warned of the at-risk nature of brutalist buildings in Australia. “Brutalist buildings like the Perth Concert Hall, if situated in lucrative residential locations and subject to government short‑sightedness, can be easy targets for demolition … It is imperative that buildings of this nature are accepted by the general population as being key to our nation’s architectural story.”
The WA government’s recovery plan also includes funding for upgrades to His Majesty’s Theatre and the Jewish Community Centre in Yokine. More

The Victorian government has release designs for the new $20.25 million library and learning hub at South West TAFE’s Warrnambool campus, revealing an “ultra-modern facility” four times larger than the old library.
Designed by Melbourne practice Kosloff Architecture, the project includes the refurbishment of an existing heritage-listed building and the addition of a multi-storey, highly transparent learning space.
A project of the state government, South West TAFE and Warrnambool City Council, the facility will sit at the heart of Warrnambool, a town of around 35,000 residents along the Great Ocean Road, and it will be open to all members of the community.

The learning and library hub will include an indoor-outdoor café, public computers, exhibition and display areas, places to study, meeting rooms, and a games and digital media zone.
The top floor will be given over to a quiet reading area with views across Lake Pertobe towards the ocean.

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South West TAFE Warrnambool learning and library hub, the view from Kepler Street.

Revealing the concept designs on 7 August, higher education minister Gayle Tierney said the hub would be “an iconic building for the whole Warrnambool community.”
South West TAFE chief executive Mark Fidge added that the learning and library hub would have something for all age groups. “It will have a dedicated space for seniors including a large print collection, a tech zone, and an outdoor children’s play space,” he said.
And local councilor Kylie Gaston said the design would fit comfortably withing the current mix of heritage and contemporary buildings. “Importantly, the new library will have more books – a key priority of the community,” she said.
The hub is expected to be ready to open by mid-2022. More

The City of Parramatta has released new vision of its $130 million civic hub, designed by French practice Manuelle Gautrand Architecture with Australian firms Designinc and Lacoste and Stevenson, as construction on the project gets underway.
The new vision includes the first visualizations of the building’s interior since concept designs were released in 2016.
“Councillors first committed to the vision of a new civic building within a world-class commercial and cultural precinct in 1996,” said lord mayor Bob Dwyer.

In 2016, the French Australian team won a design excellence competition for the building, known as 5 Parramatta Square, which will be the centrepiece of the $2.7 billion renewal the precinct.
“Parramatta Square is one of the biggest urban regeneration projects Australia has ever seen and 5 Parramatta Square will be the beating heart of this revitalized CBD precinct,” Dwyer said.

The six-storey building is to include a public library and a discovery centre for cultural heritage spaces featuring interactive displays, exhibitions, a research lab and an Aboriginal Keeping Place for local Indigenous objects.

Also in the building will be community collaborative and creative spaces, council chambers, and an “urban living room” on the ground floor with concierge, visitor services, customer services, café, spaces for live performances and cultural activities.

A key part of the winning design for the building is its multi-coloured digital facade which will be used to project specially curated creative content to light up Parramatta Square.
Designinc director Richard Does said, “5 Parramatta square is designed as an extension of its civic heart, Parramatta square. A designed based in biophilia, it reflects nature through its unique roof treatment to disperse natural light evenly and shade the interiors, which are fully visible from the square. The architecture celebrates public contribution. Its distinctive geometry makes it a landmark.”

Council appointed Built to construct the building in February 2020. Built is also constructing the neighbouring 6 and 8 Parramatta Square, both privately developed commercial towers designed by Johnson Pilton Walker. The civic building is set for completion in April 2022.
Parramatta Square precinct comprises the existing Sydney Water Tower (2 Parramatta Square), a vertical campus for Western Sydney University (1 Parramatta Square) by Architectus, completed in 2017, commercial office buildings at 3 and 4 Parramatta Square, also by JPW, and the public domain by James Mather Delaney Design, Taylor Cullity Lethlean, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and Gehl Architects. More

The South Australian government is looking for a proponent to develop its “flagship” Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre at Lot Fourteen, the site of the old Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Partly funded under the Adelaide City Deal, with the federal government contributing $20 million to the project, the Entrepreneur and Innovation Centre will be a multi-storey building with a focus on “multidisciplinary innovation, collaboration and entrepreneurship.”
The state government said that tenants interested in the building included those from the federal government, the university sector and global defence and technology companies.

A “collaborative and curated” Innovation Hub will occupy the ground and first floors to facilitate interaction between industry and research.
Adelaide architecture firm Baukultur prepared the indicative concept design for the centre while Doug and Wolf did the visualization.

Premier Steven Marshall launched an Expression of Interest process for the centre on 30 July, looking for a proponent to design, finance, construct and own the building.
“We are establishing Lot Fourteen as the epicentre of South Australia’s vision to be the leading centre for future industries and entrepreneurship in the Southern Hemisphere,” he said.
“It is rapidly developing into a magnet for international companies from across space, defence, cyber, big data, machine learning and much more.”
The successful proponent would have to move quickly, with the government targeting the second quarter of 2021 for the start of construction.
Expressions of Interests will be open until 2 pm local time on Thursday 10 September.

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The Victorian government has opened entries for the 2020 Victorian Premier’s Design Awards, calling for “ground-breaking” projects that can touch people’s lives.
The program is open to projects across eight categories – architecture, product and industrial design, communications design, fashion, digital and service design, design strategy, and projects by tertiary design students.
Winners will be announced in Melbourne Design Week in March 2021.
Creative industries minister Martin Foley said the awards, established in 1996, helped to shine a light on Victoria’s $6 billion design sector and celebrate local designers.

“From architecture to fashion, typography to industry, designers change the way we see things and the way we live,” he said. “ They create products, systems and places that touch every aspect of our lives.
“Victoria is home to a highly-skilled design community and we look forward to celebrating our local talent through the awards.”

Winners of each category will winners go into the running for the Victorian Premier’s Design of the Year.
In 2019, overall winner was Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design with TCL for the Victorian Parliament’s new Members’ Annexe.
Judging for the awards is conducted in a two-stage process, with entries first assessed by a jury of Australian and international experts to determine finalists in each field.
Entries close on 18 September, with entry free to eligible Victorian designers and businesses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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