ArchitectureAU – Practice

iDesign: The evolution of the designer

Oliver Kratzer — Wed, 08 May 2013 00:33:01 +0000

A friend of mine recently gave up paid employment to start her own design business. Close inspection of her very nice website confirmed that it was an iBusiness: “I” can do this and “I” can do that. That gave rise to a couple of thoughts: Why are there so many micro businesses in design? Why are there so few larger practices around?

Barriers to entry are few, and low: a design qualification (optional), a computer, some software and you can hang out your shingle.

Seismic firsts

Clare Chapman — Thu, 02 May 2013 23:00:00 +0000

Construction of a $40 million medical facility in Christchurch marks a world first in low-damage seismic-resistant design. It is the first New Zealand application of PREcast Seismic Structural System (PRESSS) technology in steel construction, and the first building to utilise an advanced damping system.

Incorporating this unique combination of the latest engineering technology, the Kilmore Street facility is due for completion later this year, and will house various specialist medical practitioners, along with the former Oxford Women’s Clinic. The three-storey building also includes four state-of-the-art operating theatres, day stay facilities, and radiological and laboratory units.

Project manager Suresh Nagaiya of N-Compass said the structure was engineered to importance level four, in line with Building Code regulations for a medical facility, and would be 80 per cent stronger than a standard building.“The 2010 and 2011 Canterbury earthquakes highlighted the need for wider implementation of a damage control philosophy,” Mr Nagaiya said. “This medical centre utilises a post-tensioned steel rocking system, representing the first application of steel PRESSS technology in New Zealand,” he said.

“The system, consisting of steel braced frames, is able to rock during a significant seismic event, and the tensioning in the frames re-centres the building. The client required it to remain operational in the immediate aftermath of an event equivalent in magnitude to those in 2010 and 2011 in Christchurch so any operations could be finished, and then post-event, for the facility to be able to be able to be reopened again in the short term,” he said.

Steel Construction New Zealand manager Alastair Fussell said the traditional approach to seismic design, known as ductile design, was to engineer buildings for controlled damage in an earthquake, with the sole aim to protect lives. “Its inability to minimise structural damage, however, has resulted in significant economic loss as evidenced by the number of badly damaged buildings which have either been demolished or are still awaiting the wrecking ball,” Mr Fussell said.

“It is this high cost of building damage that will drive widespread uptake of new low-damage, seismic-resisting technology. These systems can withstand major earthquakes and require no major post-earthquake repair.”

Forward history: Practice beyond BIM

Chris Knapp — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 01:22:00 +0000

The history of the architectural discipline is punctuated with many moments of progress – leaps forward that forever change how buildings are constructed, or alter how they are conceived. Architecture typically absorbs the effects of these historical ripples, and practice moves forward in an altered state, adjusting to such shifts and integrating them over decades. The development of projective representation during the Renaissance marks one such significant shift that altered both technique and disciplinary status, elevating the act of building design from the vocational to the theoretical.

Five hundred years later, the early modern conception of simultaneous, interconnected space that led to the making of the “free plan” catapulted the intellectual project of architecture further forward. Today, the architectural profession still operates largely under the guise of the modernist spatial project, with vast segments of our work relying on nineteenth-century assembly techniques and guided by documentation which, as a contract standard, is still based on fifteenth-century conventions of representation: section, plan and elevation. However, due to the integration of new practice tools and methods, this is quickly evolving.

Material palette: Collins and Turner Architects

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 01:00:00 +0000

Naoto Fukasawa’s minimalistic wall-mount mixer and spout offer new possibilities for bathroom design by reducing the visual forms of the tapware and allowing an emphasis on the spaces themselves. (from Rogerseller)

Oregon is a distinctive straight-grained softwood that grows to a remarkable height, allowing for the manufacture of wide, solid boards that are both rustic and contemporary in appearance. Seen here in the Paddington House as flooring. (from AA Hardwoods)

Regularity and strangeness

Laura Harding — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 00:21:00 +0000

One of my favourite statements about the making of the city is an effusive English translation of a quotation from the seminal 1753 essay “Observations sur l’architecture” by Marc-Antoine Laugier: “Regularity and strangeness are needed, correspondences and antitheses, accidents that vary the picture, great order to the details, but confusion, clashing and tumult in the whole.”¹

The office of Hill Thalis Architecture and Urban Projects has been located on the top floor of a five-storey brick warehouse, in the inner-Sydney suburb of Surry Hills, for the last decade. In the tracks we make between our studio and local cafes, the bookshop, the park, and the magnificent Central Railway Station completed in 1906 by New South Wales Government Architect Walter Liberty Vernon, the members of our team have become both intuitively and very consciously aware of the “correspondences and antitheses” that suffuse this rich urban place in our city.

Arts, crafts and brutalism

Patrick Kennedy, Rachel Nolan — Thu, 07 Mar 2013 04:00:00 +0000

Architects can be very dull when they go on about details. We often hear that “the devil is in the detail,” and Mies van der Rohe told us it was God in there. Yet there is something peculiarly compelling about a beautifully executed architectural detail that often remains obscure and trivial to an untrained eye. Are details a private language or a fetish of architects?

At Kennedy Nolan we do not like to think of our work as a collection of fetishized details. Our preference is to see our work as somehow more austere: details are elements that are inherently supportive rather than a feature. At the larger scale, we make architectural form a detail. A formal element in masonry can be used to enclose space, and link to context or another element in such a way that the junction is suggestive rather than contingent.

Interview: Andy Sharp / Curtin City

Andy Sharp — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 06:22:00 +0000

What was your role on the project? As the client my role is to oversee the project from the planning stages to completion. I am responsible for the Curtin City project (a redevelopment of the Curtin University campus into a major urban centre), tasked with assembling and directing the most creative minds in landscape architecture, planning, urban design, land economics, environmental systems, transport, marketing, branding, architecture, energy, governance and delivery.

As a landscape architect what particular skills/perspectives did you bring to the process? Big-picture thinking is what landscape architects do best and I believe our strength as a profession is all about the big picture. My own experience and professional background has always been about city systems and how component parts make up an integrated whole. There are very few disciplines that understand the dynamics of the integrated whole – landscape architects just get it. My own skills, for example, are focused on identifying city-based problems and how to go about solving them. The role I play on Curtin City ranges from design – the physical outcomes – right down to the political and governance issues required to build and operate a new city with independent powers and controls. This is essentially the whole gamut of city-making and many professions will only ever be involved in a few parts of the process. As a landscape architect I feel privileged to be able to apply my knowledge to a project of this type, making a significant contribution to human settlement.

Material palette: NMBW Architecture Studio

Thu, 07 Feb 2013 03:13:00 +0000

Plywood has a set of defined properties that contribute to the construction process, including bracing in all directions, no need for trim or architraves and the ability to provide a structural membrane. It is seen here at the Sorrento House. amerind.com.au

Ampelite allows a particular quality of light into the interior, without the sense of “window” or “opening.” ampelite.com.au

Material palette: Popov Bass Architects

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 06:13:00 +0000

Exposed steel, with its light and crisp appearance, provides contrast to the more textured materials such as timber, seen here at the Kirribilli House. onesteel.com

Popov Bass Architects uses off-form concrete, which improves with age, for its structural and sculptural qualities.

Manufacturing difference: the case for customisation

Robert Beson — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 15:00:00 +0000

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — R. Buckminster Fuller, quoted in The New Global Frontier, Earthscan, London, 2008.

Lately there has been some hand-wringing about architecture’s supposed loss of agency — its inability to engage with, and effect meaningful change upon, an increasingly complex and constantly changing society. These concerns are not without substance. If the agency of architecture is reduced to describing the mere appearance of a building, then the discipline risks being marginalized to the role of a Photoshopping style consultant to the general contractor. However, part of the destabilization in the way one practises architecture is due to the means and methods of materializing architecture. And in this shift lies great potential for architects.

Sustainable Courtyard House

Jan O'Connor, Tone Wheeler — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Architects have always known that there is a big difference between how a building is designed and how it is used – and nowhere is this more obvious than with so-called green or sustainable homes. You can painstakingly design a house so that it has great sustainable values, with high star ratings for thermal comfort and appliances, large water tanks, low outgassing materials and so on, but it is all undone if the heating or airconditioning are used excessively on high settings, or if the tanks are bypassed, or if the house is repainted using the wrong paint. In short, inappropriate use can undo months of careful material selection and construction.

In our practice, we design both one-off bespoke houses and display homes that are built en masse in subdivisions. The essential difference derives from this disconnection between design and use. On one hand you have a client who will describe their life patterns and you will try to use that as a basis for the house design, as we have here; on the other, you have no client, only an imagined “customer,” whose lifestyle you infer from the successful house plans that are sold at home display centres.

Material palette: David Boyle Architect

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 10:00:00 +0000

These sashless windows allow an unobstructed view while also providing ventilation, which makes them a firm favourite of the practice. aneetawindows.com

Often specified by the practice for skylights and outdoor weather protection, Makrolon Multiwall has a twin-wall cell structure that provides impressive thermal performance. laserlite.com.au

Xanthorrhoea 1: designed for bushfire

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

In the granite belt country of the NSW–Queensland border, the Xanthorrhoea 1 building is the result of a research project by Cox Architects (Qld) into the threat of bushfire to Australian rural and urban areas. The project culminated in the construction of this full-size prototype designed to resist such attacks. While it is photographed for this story with the Rural Fire Brigade testing its suitablility as an emergency fire station, it is not designed for any one purpose in particular, but for the possibility of many. Especially in remote areas, the structural methods could work for civic buildlings such as schools and police stations, or residential dwellings.

Commencing in 2005, the theoretical aspects of the study confirmed that standard construction techniques were no longer sustainable in threatened areas due to the consistent failure of these building types. It also found there was a vast waste of resources and potentially serious threat to life to continue on the conventional path.

Past occupation

Virginia Kerridge — Wed, 07 Nov 2012 12:00:00 +0000

The essence of the magic and mystery of any great piece of design lies in the attention to the detail of human scale, just as the thoughtfulness and knowledge of the creator is evident in the smallest detail. This is evident when visiting some of the works of architectural masters such as Carlo Scarpa, which is an enriching experience. The Castelvecchio Museum in Verona, which was renovated by Scarpa between 1959 and 1973, is an extraordinarily sensitive restoration of the original building where the new additions enhance the old. The art objects of the museum are decontextualized and placed on floating platforms to separate them from the rest of the building. What is it that elevates something from the mundane to the sublime? It is normally work of the most intuitive nature, where the detail seems to be a perfect fit to the site.

I have a particular fascination with materials that have a textural or painterly quality that can add another layer to the sensory experience. This experience is heightened by the material’s association with the site, or perhaps memory of past occupations. For instance, in a warehouse project in inner Sydney, we constructed balustrades from coach rails that had been left on site, and walls were constructed of recycled bricks. We took a similar approach to another warehouse project in the inner west of Sydney, where layers were stripped off the building to reveal the original construction. Details such as door handles are often made in a shape that fits the hand or feels good to touch. The handle in the adjacent photograph was made for a warehouse renovation in Darlinghurst, Sydney, and the design of the handle mimics the shape of the hand. These are everyday items that can add a heightened experience to daily life.

Material palette: Andrew Maynard Architects

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:40:00 +0000

Well-detailed and constructed, these compact staircases, like the one at the Hill House, are easy to use.
enzie.com.au

Seen here at the Tattoo House, the thin profile of steel framing is elegant and allows for more glazing.
skyrange.com.au