Architecture

The City of Port Adelaide Enfield will create a new Aboriginal Culture Centre in the heart of the city.
To be located on a riverbank site formally known as Western Region Park Reserve, the centre will create an open space for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people that directly connects to the Yerta Bulti Country of the Port River.
The centre is designed by Ashley Halliday Architects and Wax Design in collaboration with the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, Port Adelaide Enfield Aboriginal Advisory Panel and the local First Nations community.

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City of Port Adelaide Enfield with Ashley Halliday Architects, Wax Design and the Yitpi Yartapuultiku Custodian Group.

The centre will accommodate a range of activities with indoor and outdoor performance spaces, public amenities, offices, meeting rooms and extensive landscaping.
It will also be a culturally safe space to gather, practise, share and record culture and connect with Country.
In August 2022 at a naming ceremony, the centre was given the name Yitpi Yartapuultiku, meaning “soul of Port Adelaide.”
“At the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, we are conscious of our sphere of influence and aspire to be a City that values its diverse community and embraces change through innovation, resilience, and community leadership. This vision can only be fully realized through the strengthening of identity, wellbeing, and sense of belonging for First Nations people in our community,” the council said.
“Our approach to this project over the past two years has allowed for cultural exchange, with Council and Aboriginal Custodians working together to co-design Yitpi Yartapuultiku in a shared and respectful way. It will be a safe and nurturing community place for healing, connection and reconciliation, for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people to learn, experience and be immersed in Aboriginal culture.”
The project received the Planning with Country Award from the South Australian chapter of the Planning Institute of Australia in 2022.
A tender for a principal is underway. The project is anticipated to be complete in 2025. More

Households across Australia are struggling with soaring energy and housing costs and a lack of housing options. Mixed with a climate crisis, economic volatility and social inequality, it’s a potent set of policy problems. Australia needs a circuit-breaker – a bold national project to tackle the climate crisis and support households by shifting to a more sustainable housing industry.
This is a project based on circular economy principles. The emphasis is on reducing materials and resources, optimising building lifespan, designing for reuse and zero waste, and regenerating nature. By getting the most out of finite resources, we can minimise waste and shrink our carbon footprint.
Our research for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) applies these principles to housing. We developed a comprehensive strategy for the sector’s transition to a circular economy. It gives priority to local jobs, access to affordable housing, resilient and functional design, and carbon-neutral, energy-efficient operation.
Solving two problems at once
The circular economy offers answers to the dual challenges of housing affordability and sustainability. These solutions work across households, renters and owners.
Both the climate crisis and the human right to adequate housing demand urgent policy responses. Despite this, new energy-efficiency standards that the nation’s building ministers had agreed would take effect in October this year have since been delayed in a majority of states.
Standards are the key to unlocking the shift needed to deliver housing that is both affordable and sustainable. In combination with fiscal and financial policy frameworks, business support schemes and education and training, the housing industry can develop its capacity to embrace and exceed standards. Australian households and the planet will benefit.
How can Australia lift its game?
Housing policymakers across Asia and Europe are actively pursuing circular economy goals. As a result, Australia can learn from a wide range of circular economy approaches. Using better designs, techniques and materials, we can readily reduce the carbon footprint of our housing.
As the AHURI report details, a step change of comprehensive housing reforms that lead to more affordable housing and energy bills can also deliver greater resilience and social justice. The strategy identifies four areas of reform:

assign a higher value to the sustainability of housing
shift market processes
tilt investment flows by providing incentives for circular housing designs and projects
build the sector’s capacities to deliver sustainable outcomes.

Our research also recognises the specific forms of housing and the supply chains of materials to build them. These forms include residential neighbourhoods and precincts, new and renovated apartments, and social housing.
Internationally, we see a growing number of “eco-precincts” – walkable, sustainable, mixed-use developments. However, these are still seen as niche experiments, individual and not joined together across neighbourhoods.
Australian apartment building standards also leave much room for improvement. Robust and specific regulations to embed the circular economy in the construction, use and reuse of apartment buildings would provide clarity for the industry.
Apartment projects typically involve major developers and lenders. As a result, success with circular economy practices in this part of the housing sector can be a catalyst for adopting them more widely.
And because a high proportion of apartments are rented in Australia, higher energy standards for rental properties can help counter increasing energy poverty.
In social housing, tenant preferences are rarely considered in sustainable retrofits. Circular economy retrofitting delivers benefits for both landlords and tenants, through better design and lower bills.
Energy efficiency and alternative energy technologies have largely driven sustainable retrofit activity in Australia. Less attention has been paid to other circular economy housing priorities. Much more work must be done to extend housing lifespans and ensure passive design as standard practice, drawing on natural sources of heating and cooling such as sunshine and ventilation.
We lack adequate data tracking material stocks and flows through the housing sector, including for retrofits. This applies to both new and recycled/reused materials in the construction and demolition waste streams.
Our analysis shows the use of concrete in housing continues to increase. This means concrete-related emissions are increasing too. Better data systems to track material flows would give us a clearer picture of where to target efforts to reduce embodied carbon in housing.
Towards a national strategy
Radical decarbonisation is needed. It won’t happen without big shifts in practices and materials.
Circular economy housing is a social project as much as a regulatory reform. Success depends on buy-in to the whole process across all levels of government, civil society, private sector and education and training institutions.
Simply relying on market demand to drive the supply of circular goods and services neglects the nature of current supply chains and the weakness of consumer voices. In particular, the one in three households that are tenants have little say in how sustainable their housing is. Stronger partnerships between governments, private developers and local communities are needed to deliver the scale of change required.
The housing industry can step up, with the support of policy incentives, to embrace leading circular economy practice. Housing has a big role to play in the economy-wide changes needed to achieve sustainable use of materials and net-zero emissions.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. More

Entries have opened for the 2024 AA Prize for Unbuilt Work, the only public recognition for unrealised designs in Australia. The jury for the 2024 prize comprises influential industry voices who have been appointed based on their expertise, professional standing and profile. Nigel Bertram is a director of NMBW Architecture Studio in Melbourne, which he […] More

More than 30 Australian projects are among the 495 from across the globe that have been shortlisted in the 2023 World Architecture Festival Awards.
Australia is among the top 10 countries with the most shortlisted projects.
“We are delighted with both the quantity and quality of this year’s entries,” said WAF program director Paul Finch. “They are a reminder in a world experiencing numerous crises that architects continue to address both everyday and unusual challenges with skill and imagination.”
The World Architecture Festival will return to Singapore for the first time since 2015. The shortlisted projects will be judged live in front of various panels of judges. The festival program will also include keynote talks and social events.
The 2023 World Architecture Festival will take place at Marina Bay Sands from 29 November to 1 December.
The shortlisted Australian projects are:
Completed Projects
Creative Re-use
55 Southbank Boulevard – Bates SmartLocomotive Workshop – Sissons Architects, in association with Curio Projects, Buchan and Mirvac DesignThe Greenland Centre – BVN with Woods Bagot
Culture
Melbourne Holocaust Museum – Kerstin Thompson ArchitectsMPavilion 2022 – All ZoneOman Across Ages Museum – Cox ArchitectureTe Pae Christchurch Convention Centre – Woods Bagot in association with Warren and MahoneyThomas Dixon Centre – Home of the Queensland Ballet – Conrad Gargett (now merged with Architectus)
Display
Puffing Billy Railway Visitor Centre – Terroir
Health
Murrenda Residential Aged Care Home – STHVictorian Heart Hospital – Conrad Gargett (now merged with Architectus) and Wardle
Higher Education and Research
Boola Katitjin – Lyons with Silver Thomas Hanley, Officer Woods, The Fulcrum Agency and Aspect StudiosUniversity of Melbourne Student Precinct – Lyons with Koning Eizenberg Architecture, NMBW Architecture Studio, Greenaway Architects, Architects EAT, Aspect Studios and Glas Urban
Hotel and Leisure
Delatite Cellar Door – Lucy Clemenger ArchitectsIron Creek Bay Farm Stay – Misho and AssociatesThe Jube – Blight Rayner Architecture
House and Villa
Concrete Curtain – FGR Architects
Housing
Liv Munro – Bates Smart
Office
Heritage Lanes 80 Ann Street – Woods BagotKew Office – Kavellaris Urban Design
Religion
Macquarie Park Cemetery Mausoleum of the Holy Way – GW
School
Alexandria Park Community School – TKD ArchitectsLibrary and Innovation Centre, Abbotsleigh Junior School – AJC ArchitectsThe Centre for Science and Art, Abbotsleigh Senior School – AJC ArchitectsWurun Senior Campus – GHD Design and Grimshaw
Sport
Allianz Stadium – Cox ArchitectureSt Margaret’s Girls School Sports Hub – Blight Rayner Architecture
Transport
Lilydale and Mooroolbark Railway Stations – BKK Architects, Kyriacou Architects, Jacobs, Aspect Studios
Glenroy Station – Genton and MALA Studio
Future Projects
Commercial Mixed-Use
Lighthouse at Darling Park – Henning Larsen, Architectus
Education
Resource Recovery Learning Centre – Terroir
Health
Alexandria Health Centre – Warren and Mahoney
Infrastructure
Metro Tunnel Project – Hassell, Weston Williamson and Partners, and RSHP
Leisure-led Development
Mallanganee Lookout – Terroir
Office
55 Pitt Street – Woods Bagot and Shop ArchitectsFulcrum – Bates SmartWarada on Walker – Woods Bagot
Landscape
Gardens, Parks, Ecological/Environmental
Delprat Cottage and Garden – Bosque Landscape Architecture / School of Architecture and Built Environment More

The New South Wales government has unveiled the winning design for a 1.85 hectare park on the foreshore at Central Barangaroo.
First Nations-led consortium Akin, which comprises Yerrabingin, Architectus, Jacob Nash Studio, Studio Chris Fox and Flying Fish Blue, with Arup as engineering consultants, has been named winner of an open design competition launched in December 2022.
The winning design features nature play for all ages and abilities, a 6,000-capacity event lawn for hosting community and cultural events and winding pathways to explore.
The design honours the long and deep history of the Gadigal people and showcases First Nations design methodologies. The Country-led design supports regenerative ecology, natural systems, drawing insects, birds and other fauna.
The landscape will be planted extensively with a variety of endemic grasses. Native trees such as Sydney red gum, casuarina and cabbage tree palm will provide canopy cover, and a series of interactive waterways and ponds will collect and filter water through the landscape before it returns to the harbour.

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The winning design for Barangaroo Harbour Park by Akin (Yerrabingin, Architectus, Jacob Nash Studio, Studio Chris Fox and Flying Fish Blue, with Arup). Image: Akin

The design also includes a series of significant public art installations that will become places for exploration, play, education, shade and celebration. The artworks reference natural elements of water, wind and moon (or “vessels”) that have special significance in Indigenous knowledge systems.
The water vessel, which will become the connection point to the harbour and a place for gathering and ceremony, will be made from timber, referencing pre-settlement campfires that burned along the harbour. The artwork will frame Me-Mel Island/Goat Island, which is the largest island in the harbour and was recently transferred back to the local Gadigal people. It will be a significant cultural landmark for Traditional Custodians.
The wind vessel will be located at the windiest corner of the site to capture the westerly winds each morning, giving “voice” to them.
The moon vessel will feature an oculus and a lined underside that reflects the tidal waves of the harbour. It will be located at the west-facing end of the site – a landscape that “never sees the dawn.”

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Annotated plan of Barangaroo Harbour Park by Akin (Yerrabingin, Architectus, Jacob Nash Studio, Studio Chris Fox and Flying Fish Blue, with Arup). Image: Akin

The design team will consult with community to further refine the design.
“We are incredibly honoured and humbled to be part of such a defining public project, weaving together the threads of landscape, art, and architecture,” said Yerrabingin founder and CEO Christian Hampson.
“For us, this is much more than a park – it’s a place for us to celebrate an enduring culture and to move with Country, acknowledging and experiencing our collective past and present while dreaming of our future. This design is a new chapter connected to the most ancient of stories, carved in the Sydney sandstone: the story of Country and of us, its people.”
“Our design is a new chapter connected to the most ancient of stories, carved in the sandstone of Sydney: the story of Country and of us, its people. We hope this new chapter inspires all our young people, fanning the embers inside them into a fire as the future artists, architects, designers, and engineers of our cities and our nation.”
Jessica Hodge, landscape architect and urban designer at Yerrabingin, added, “This project represents a symbolic shift in the landscape architecture and design culture of Sydney. It’s significant, city-shaping work led by an entirely local team, with a scheme built upon First Nations knowledge and a deep respect for Country. Setting a new benchmark for design and process, the landscape architecture unifies all elements, including art and architecture, with a shared objective of elevating Country and ultimately creating a place for all kin.”
The Harbour Park at Barangaroo will be part of a 14-kilometre continuous harbourside walk from Glebe to Woolloomooloo.
“Barangaroo Harbour Park will generate for Sydney a public place like no other: a city-scaled platform positioned on the Harbour’s edge, where a Country-led, layered landscape will positively contribute to a deeper understanding of First Nations people, culture, and knowledge,” said Architectus principal Luke Johnson. More

Private home tours are back at the popular Open House Melbourne program, in which the public is invited to explore the city’s iconic and contemporary architecture.
More than 180 buildings, tours, events and design talks are on offer during the last weekend of July, including 16 contemporary and historic houses across Melbourne.
We combed through the program, found five of the best houses to visit, and made an itinerary – so you don’t have to.
Hawthorn 1 by Agius Scorpo
The owners of this Hawthorn home approached Agius Scorpo to create a flexible studio for their adult son, a utility shed and a pool in their existing backyard. The solution was a serpentine fence that unified all the elements and avoided littering the garden with disparate structures.
Read the review by Houses editor Alexa Kempton.
Hütt 01 Passivhaus by Melbourne Design Studio
This compact home accommodates a family of five on a tiny site of 250 square metres and internal area of 78 square metres. It is also certified Passive House Premium – which means it produces more energy than it uses – and is rated the highest category in Life Cycle Assessment. The project shows how we can build better houses in Australia.
Hütt 01 Passivhaus was the winner of the Sustainability award in the 2022 Houses Awards.
Canning Street by Foomann with interiors by Bicker Design

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Canning Street by Foomann with interiors by Bicker Design. Image:

Willem-Dirk du Toit

This freestanding house is tucked behind a single-fronted worker’s cottage in North Melbourne. It accommodates three bedrooms in its 110-square-metres footprint. A sweeping curved ceiling defines the open-plan living, dining and kitchen zones.
Read the profile of Foomann by Peter Davies.
Lippincott House by Roy Lippincott, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin
This 1917 home is part of Glenard Estate in Eaglemont, designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin. The home was initially designed by Roy Lippinscott, who was the Griffin’s head draughtsman, and Walter’s sister Genevieve. It is located next door to Walter and Marion’s own home, Pholiota.
Blackburn North Passive House retrofit by Alwyn Projects, Studiofang and The Sunday Garden Landscape Design

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Blackburn North Passive House retrofit by Alwyn Projects, Studiofang and The Sunday Garden Landscape Design. Image: TK

Australia’s leaky homes directly contribute to high energy consumption. This house demonstrates how a typical 1950s suburban weatherboard home can be retrofitted with passive house principles to prioritize energy efficiency, comfort and affordability. It also demonstrates how materials that are already on site can be reused.
The 2023 Open House Melbourne will take place on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30 July. The first ticket release will take place at 12 noon on 6 July, and the second will be at 10 am on 8 July. More

The ACT government has approved the UNSW Canberra City masterplan, designed by MGS Architects, Snøhetta and Turf Design.
The major new campus, to be built on government-owned land on Constitution Avenue within the Parliamentary Triangle, will accommodate 6,000 students and become a hub for defence and security innovation.
“The campus is an ideal location for industry, government and universities to collaborate and work more closely together,” said Emma Sparks, who has been appointed dean and rector of UNSW Canberra.
“The campus will also be the new home for UNSW Canberra’s highly successful Launch initiative, which is a purpose-built precinct designed to host industry and entrepreneurs in a vibrant, connected environment.”

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UNSW Canberra City masterplan: view west to Reid Campus Core. Image:

Courtesy UNSW Canberra City

The masterplan includes 14 buildings across eight hectares and is framed as an integrated learning community with five connected precincts with distinct themes: City Edge, which will showcase the university to Canberra City; Reid Parkside, which will create a “sensitive interface” with the heritage easement and suburb of Reid; Reid Campus Core, which will form the heart of the campus; Civic Interface, which will be a “distinct and activated academic streetscape”; and Parkes View, which will “connect the campus to the city’s parliamentary and natural landscape views.”
“The last three years [have] seen UNSW consult and work with the local community to ensure the masterplan not only delivers educational and innovation outcomes, but also delivers a campus that revitalizes the eastern edge of the Canberra CBD,” said ACT chief minister Andrew Barr.
The appointment of architects will begin later this year. The campus will be built in stages, with the final stage scheduled to finish in 2036. More

The New South Wales government has finalized its Connecting with Country Framework, which provides guidance for designers, planners and governments on how to respond to Country and empower Aboriginal voices in the design process.
Developed by Government Architect NSW, the framework encourages all built environment projects to take a Country-centred approach, guided by Aboriginal people.
“What better time to introduce this important new planning and design guide than during NAIDOC Week – a time when we celebrate and recognize the rich history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” said planning minister Paul Scully.
“Introducing this framework will enable the NSW Government to better protect Country, community, and sacred sites in the planning and design of our places and buildings.
“Archaeological investigations and recording of Aboriginal heritage have been a well-established part of the planning process. This new framework builds on those practices by valuing, respecting and being guided by Aboriginal people, who know if we care for Country it will care for us.”
The framework aims to improve the health and wellbeing of Country through sustainable land and water use management in order to reduce the impacts of natural disasters; valuing and respecting Aboriginal cultural knowledge through co-designed development projects; and protecting Aboriginal sites and ongoing access for Aboriginal people to the ancestral lands.
“First Nations peoples around the world have long understood the importance of living in balance with the natural world, developing traditional practices and knowledge to support that way of life,” said NSW government architect Abbie Galvin.
“In a time of rapidly increasing development, the Connecting with Country Framework demonstrates how to work with Aboriginal communities to guide that development to be more sustainable, resilient and culturally responsive.”
A draft framework was first introduced in 2020 with a pilot program and was used on a number of government projects including Sydney Metro. Feedback from the pilot is also included in the final framework.
“The Connecting with Country Framework is critical in [the] re-imagining of how we engage with Country and cultural landscapes. It enables Aboriginal people’s values, knowledge systems and mechanisms for connecting to country to influence the design and planning processes for building and architecture,” said the NSW Minister for Aboriginal Affairs and Treaty, David Harris.
“First Nations peoples’ connection to Country can provide our state with invaluable insight to our design, construction, and architecture.” More