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Woods Bagot’s Perth studio has been appointed to design the Western Australian government’s new agriculture headquarters. The New Metropolitan Facility for the Department of Primary Industry and Regional Development will be built on Murdoch University’s Perth campus and will feature modern laboratories and technical workspaces for around 350 staff. The $320 million project is intended […] More
The 2023 Serpentine Pavilion by French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh will open to the public on Friday 9 June in London’s Kensington Gardens.
Named À Table, the 300-square-metre pavilion is a circular timber structure with a birch plywood roof, inspired by the form of a palm leaf. Pleated wooden plates radiate out from a central lightwell with scalloped edges, allowing natural light and ventilation into the pavilion.
According to Ghotmeh, the title À Table is a French call to sit down together at a table to engage and participate in dialogue while sharing a meal. She further explained that the design is inspired by the nearby tree canopies and aims to create a gathering space to generate conversation.
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The 2023 Serpentine Pavilion is designed by French-Lebanese architect Lina Ghotmeh Image:
Harry Richards
“À Table is an invitation to dwell together in the same space and around the same table,” said Ghotmeh.
“It is an encouragement to enter into a dialogue, to convene and to think about how we could reinstate and re-establish our relationship to nature and to Earth.”
A series of glued laminated timber columns draws the perimeter of the pavilion, supporting the cantilevered wooden beams that connect to the centre of the structure. Between the beams are wooden screens with plant-like cut out patterns.
The low roof, which measures 4.4 metres high at the centre and drops to 3.1 metres high at the eaves, references the “toguna,” a structure found in Mali, West Africa, which is traditionally used for community gatherings to discuss current issues.
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A lightwell at the centre of the roof allows natural light and ventilation into the pavilion Image:
Iwan Baan
Inside the pavilion, a circular table skirts the perimeter, inviting visitors to sit and convene. Crafted from oak, with a dark-red finish, the table features scalloped edges that mirror the roof.
The pavilion will be dissembled and reassembled at a different location after it closes at Kensington Gardens on 29 October 2023, thanks to a modular system that has been adopted in the making.
Ghotmeh is the 22nd person to be commissioned for the Serpentine Pavilion since the first structure was designed by architect Zaha Hadid in 2000. Last year, Chicago artist Theaster Gates created Black Chapel. More
The Australian Institute of Architects has announced its support for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament and constitutional recognition of First Nations peoples in the referendum scheduled for later this year. “We recognise that Constitutional Recognition of First Nations peoples is the right and just thing to do and is a critical step in righting many […] More
The final leg of the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2023 Dulux Study Tour was like an architectural amazing race from Zürich to the Alpine Rhine Valley, back to Zürich, ending at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
The tour bus, carrying five of Australia’s best emerging architects, wound its way past glistening lakes and rivers with the limestone peaks over the horizon. By this point of the tour, their architectural cups were full, and a day of Alpine air, fields of wildflowers and refreshing Valser water was a welcome interlude.
The final destination of the day was Peter Zumthor’s Therme in Vals, about two hours’ drive from Zurich, with several pitstops along the way to tiny villages where revered Swiss architects Peter Zumthor and Valerio Olgiati have made their mark among the untouched mountain chalets.
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Therme Vals by Peter Zumthor. Image:
Ellen Buttrose
“I just kept thinking at every project, I wonder what the locals think of this?” Sarah Lebner said. “Because most of the projects that we saw that day, even though they were an interpretation of traditional form, they were quite confrontingly different.”
Valerio Ogliati’s Atelier Bardill project, while volumetrically the same as an old barn it replaced (thanks to local controls), stands wedged between two almost identical timber barns with green shutters, under the watchful eye of Piz Hünzu. Even in its vast courtyard, its context is inescapable.
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Atelier Bardill by Valerio Olgiati. Image:
Linda Cheng
“There was so much regional tectonics,” Lebner continued, “and such a maintained tradition in the materials they used and how they built.”
“I really like the animal structures in the landscape,” said Bradley Kerr. “They were like little boulders sitting down the hill, and they aged like a boulder as well.”
Tiffany Liew observed, “There was more texture in the regions, like the landscape, the shape of the hills and the mountains, and the textured materials. It was a complete contrast and how rigid the city felt.”
In Zürich, the study tour winners found themselves in a very formal city with an orthogonal, gridded and rule-based architectural language. At the Kunsthaus Zürich Museum Extension by 2023 Pritzker Prize laureate David Chipperfield, the gridded language of the city was also extended vertically onto the facade.
“I liked how the Chipperfield Kunsthaus sat within the context,” said Edwina Brisbane. “He really understood the expectations of the city and its inhabitants. It was a good mix of ‘I am Chipperfield’ and ‘I am Zürich.’”
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Kunsthaus Zurich Extension by David Chipperfield Architects. Image:
Linda Cheng
“The only building that we saw that didn’t have a grid on the facade was the social housing project that we went into, and it had a bit of a disrupted grid,” she continued.
Haus G, designed by Pool Architekten, is one of 13 apartment blocks in the Hunziker Areal precinct – a flagship project for the “Mehr als Wohen” (More than Living) housing cooperative, founded in 2007. The masterplan by Duplex Architekten and Futurafrosch set out a number of “rules” for the architects of the 13 buildings, principally that each architect was assigned three buildings to design – a “couple” neighbouring each other, and a “satellite” – and the articulation of the buildings subtracted the extruded volume of the buildings’ footprints.
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Haus G at Hunziker Areal by Pool Architekten. Image:
Linda Cheng
While the group of on site, a resident spontaneously – and proudly – invited the group into her home, which, even to the architects’ surprise, had remained remarkably unchanged over the past decade.
“I really like what Pool Architekten said about creating possibilities for the inhabitants and how their designs do that both in the urban space around the buildings and the dwellings themselves,” Brisbane said.
Finally, the study tour arrived at the Venice Architecture Biennale in the middle of National Reconciliation Week in Australia – the timing made more poignant with tours of the Australian and Canadian exhibitions, which each examined their respective countries’ relationships with First Peoples in their own ways.
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Unsettling Queenstown, the Australian exhibition at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image:
Linda Cheng
Australia’s Unsettling Queenstown explored the legacy of colonialism via a process of “demapping” to reveal erased Indigenous inhabitations and histories, while Canada’s Not for Sale addressed issues of housing alienation for its Indigenous peoples.
“It was interesting to see them next to each other – the way they were both talking about working with community,” said Ellen Buttrose. “But I found the Australian exhibition to be a little bit hierarchical, in comparison to what was happening in the Canadian exhibition. Literally what they were talking about was completely reflected in their occupation of [their pavilion]. The reconfiguration and the ad hoc nature of it and the fact that it didn’t have to be an object.”
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Canada’s exhibition Not for Sale at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image:
Linda Cheng
Bradley Kerr (Quandamooka) found the Australian exhibition lacked context, particularly for international and non-architect audiences.
“It’s really hard to have these conversations without a general understanding of Australia,” he said. “We can’t present this type of information without understanding first very complex ideas like Country. If you ask any First Nations person what Country is, there’s a familiar response like we might all have some kind of understanding that Country is family, Country is kin, there’s a responsibility to care for Country, look after Country, there’s all these things. But it’s a very personal relationship.
“There’s also the context of understanding that there are hundreds of Countries within Australia so the conversation isn’t about one homogenous group with one culture and one language, and one relationship to Country. It’s far more of a complex relationship, and before you can get into some of the complexities of the exhibition is talking about, you need to have an understanding of that kind of context.”
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Unsetting Queenstown, the Australian exhibition at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image:
Pete Wood
Kerr also observed that the exhibitions reflected the sociopolitical undercurrents in their respective countries. “We’re in the throes of a political debate over whether or not the First Nations Peoples in Australia have a constitutional right to have a say over matters that impact them directly. Politically we’re going hear a lot of horribly unjust and factually inaccurate things, just to establish a position where we can then move to discuss the other parts of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a treaty.
“And while I’m not super familiar with Canada’s history and their situation is not perfect, they’ve had a treaty since 1982.
“We’re just trying to define what architecture of Country is – what does that look like, feel like, smell like, and how does that change for each Country in Australia. We’re still trying to discover that and combining Indigenous ways of being, knowing, seeing and relating to things with colonial ways.”
Linda Cheng travelled with the 2023 Dulux Study Tour. Follow #2023DuluxStudyTour on social media and the blog. More
SJB has lodged plans for a five-storey apartment building in Gurrajin (Elizabeth Bay), Sydney that would echo the “evocative” forms of its Art Deco neighbours.
The proposed building at 4 Barncleuth Square would include nine large apartments with two, three and four bedrooms. Located on the corner of Ward Avenue and Barncleuth Square, behind Darlinghurst Road, the property is surrounded by brick apartment blocks built in the 1930s whose facades display an array of unique patterns and textures.
“Playful brick detailing references the facade treatment of its Art Deco neighbours,” SJB says of the new buidling, in a design statement.
“The horizontal datums that run throughout Ward Avenue, and especially along the facade of No. 2 Barncleuth and Marlborough Hall, continue in the rounded facades of the proposal.”
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4 Barncleuth Square by SJB. Image: SJB
“Curved solid banding wraps the facade in reference to the Art Deco horizontal datum lines of Ward Avenue. This banding is accentuated by patterned brick coursing and recessive window detailing.”
The building meets Ward Avenue with a tripartite of soft, rounded forms, with the middle section featuring open balconies.
“The transparency of its southern edge, allowed through large curved windows, softens its visual intersection with its southern neighbours,” SJB states.
“The material palette references the Art Deco tones that underpin the built environment of Elizabeth Bay, in [a] softened, contemporary manner. Pale brick is chosen, in combination with fine steel detailing and lush planting.”
Black Beetle is responsible for the landscape design, which includes planting at ground and roof level, with the garden “spill[ing] from the parapet of the roof terrace.”
The $17 million development application has been lodged with the City of Sydney and is currently on public exhibition. More
On 2 June 1973, then-prime minister Gough Whitlam officially opened the Adelaide Festival Centre, establishing the South Australian capital as a major arts city and marking a “major step forward in modern architecture.”
On that night, the Festival Theatre – the complex’s main building, and the first to be finished – played host to a performance of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony and Fidelio (Act Two, Scene 1). Fifty years later, the Festival Centre is an established icon of arts and architecture on the banks of the Karrawirra Parri/River Torrens, and it will mark its anniversary with a gala concert.
The Festival Centre was designed by Hassell and Partners and built in three stages from 1970 to 1980. It comprises the multipurpose, 2000-seat Festival Theatre; the drama theatre The Playhouse (now the Dunstan Playhouse); the experimental theatre The Space (now the Space Theatre) and a number of smaller galleries and function spaces.
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Festival Theatre interior. Image:
Peter Bennetts
Leading the design was the late John Morphett, an architectural rebel who brought the lessons of Walter Gropius and other leading modernists to Australia. In his obituary for Morphett, Gordon Kanki Knight relates how the architect prepared for the commission by visiting the world’s best theatres, taking in 42 halls in 42 days.
Following this whirlwind tour, Morphett “designed the building quickly, opting for two white octagonal shells in concrete.”
“I didn’t do many designs for the place,” Knight has Morphett saying. “It was remarkably simple. I went home one night and built a little cardboard model and I thought that it might work. We refined it, but initially it was essentially as it came out.
“The design encloses fairly logically the functions inside,” he explained. “You need an auditorium, you need a stage, so you put a different shell over each one and where they join is critical – the proscenium line is expressed where the volumes meet.”
The design was, for the most part, applauded. In a 1997 Architecture Australia review of the centre, Ian Brown concluded that the centre was designed “in the right place at the right time for a right price.”
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Ian Brown’s review of the Festival Centre in Architecture Australia, November 1977. Image:
Architecture Media
(The entire centre cost $21 million, compared to $102 million for the Sydney Opera House, completed in 1973.)
Brown praised the functional aspects of the three performing spaces, as well as the siting of the centre’s steel-framed “mushroom caps.”
“In fact the setting is so appropriate that the scale of the city-scape seems larger than it is, but complements entirely the proportions of the Centre,” Brown writes. “By which ever way you approach the Centre, from the River Torrens, bank, from the main traffic corridor of King William Street, from the Adelaide Railway Station, the sweep of the plaza provides exciting vistas with a surprise around every corner.”
The centre was added to the SA Heritage Register in 1997. Its heritage listing describes an “unashamedly modern complex notable for its bold structuralist approach to form” whose architecture “may be regarded as progressive while reflecting the period in which the concept was first mooted.”
The most controversial aspect of the centre has been the vast concrete plaza that surrounds it, punctuated by a large-scale environmental sculpture by West German artist Otto Hajek.
In his review, Ian Brown commented on “the entire bleakness of the Plaza area,” which he said offered no protection from extreme weather.
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Aerial view of Adelaide Festival Centre. Image:
Tom Balfour
Hajek’s sculpture, comprising a series of colourfully painted concrete forms that camouflage the airconditioning vent from the carpark below, was awarded a “brickbat” by the Civic Trust in 1977, while in 1986 its distinctive form was emblazoned on a commemorative stamp. When it was announced that the sculpture would be decommissioned as part of the $90 million redevelopment of the plaza in 2015, some welcomed its removal, while others decried the move as “vandalism.”
The latest redevelopment of the Festival Centre and its plaza has been led by original architect Hassell, with ARM Architecture and landscape architects TCL and Aspect Studios responsible for the outdoor areas.
Of the new works, Hassell described a “restrained approach” that “will enhance the existing fabric and enable the elegant geometry to maintain its presence within an increasingly complex urban precinct.” More
Fender Katsalidis has designed a 23-storey dual-tower build-to-rent development in Brisbane’s Hamilton, which is poised for major development as the site of the 2032 Olympics’ main athletes village. The proposed development, submitted for approval to state government planning authority Economic Development Queensland, would include 560 apartments, including studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom units. They […] More
Smart Design Studio is continuing with its experiments in parametric modelling and curled brick facades in Alexandria, Sydney, revealing designs for another sculptural office building next to the firm’s own office on Stokes Avenue.
Dubbed Stokes 18, the new building would house five levels of office space at the transition between Alexandria’s heritage conservation area and the taller North Alexandria Enterprise Area and Green Square City to the southwest. The open-plan offices would be flexible spaces that were designed to be repurposed.
In planning documents before the City of Sydney, Smart Design Studio states that the $26 million project would “raise the architectural bar in Alexandria,” setting a benchmark for quality sustainable design.
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Stokes 18 by Smart Design Studio. Image:
Smart Design Studio
Echoing the earlier Stokes 14 development, the design takes inspiration from the industrial character of the local conservation area, incorporating standard building materials and brick facades that curl out to collect water and provide shade.
“On entering the building, you are greeted with a dramatic five-storey void, 21 metres in height and full of natural light,” a design statement reads. “A sculptural stair connects all five office levels and includes curved detailing that continues the external curved language internally, however in concrete. The entire space uses one material to create a monolithic form, which has peeling curves that allow light to enter the space.”
The office floors will each feature generous 3.7-metre ceilings.
“Robust materials are used to create dramatic office interiors, including octagonal columns, sand-blasted concrete, and sculptural ceilings with integrated lighting and industrial ceiling fans,” the design statement reads.
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Stokes 18 by Smart Design Studio. Image:
Smart Design Studio
The project includes a number of sustainability measures, including a large-scale solar array that would make the building’s operations “energy positive”, hydronic heating and “massive” fans to cut down on airconditioning needs, and end-of-trip facilities to encourage cycling.
Council requires that the development leaves 1,270 metres of land to be dedicated for the future extension of Stokes Avenue, and Smart Design Studio has proposed that the space be used for a lawn in the interim. The landscape design is by Fieldwork.
The project would require the demolition of an existing warehouse.
Planning documents are on exhibition until 5 June. More
