Perth: Emergence
When do you emerge as an architect?
This was the perennial and frustrating question that surfaced at a recent “Perth Sampling” architecture talk at The Bakery in Perth. As recipient of the 2011 Western Australian Emerging Architect award, Jennie Officer of Officer Woods in her presentation queried the title of the award bestowed upon her. As she said, there is no way that she is emerging. She worked for Simon Anderson and undertook research with Geoffrey London before setting up her own practice — amounting to over a decade of experience. But rather than reducing the conversation to a tedious debate about the definition of emerging, Officer took the opportunity to question whether “young” practices are given a go in procurement procedures — another reoccurring topic. When will others let one emerge?
With its cyclical adjustment to boom and bust, Perth is a constantly emerging city. In fact, one recent study of a central site in Perth counted seventeen buildings erected on one site over city’s 182-year existence. The city has been shaped first by the public infrastructure built on the 1890s gold boom (Western Australia Museum, the University of WA, the State Library); then by the nickel boom that bought the compact three-streeted CBD of the 1960s and 70s, with its splash of brutalism; and now by the current iron-ore boom that has welcomed major projects like ARM’s Perth Arena, Hassell’s BHP Billiton tower, Raine Square, and the planned Waterfront and City Link projects.
The recent construction boom has also brought projects of architectural significance: CODA’s Women’s Health Centre, Kerry Hill’s State Theatre, and one40william by Hassell show signs that Perth is not only emerging (again) but is also dealing with the fragmentation that each erasure brings. In particular, the State Theatre, found at the awkward base of William Street as it flies dog-legged over the railway tracks, solidly stitches the complex site (a former carpark) together while maintaining a slight permeability that mirrors the arcades along the strip (see Philip Goldswain, ‘State Theatre Centre,’ Architecture Australia [March/April 2011], 49).
Perth: Affirmation
The Affirmative Architecture conference held recently in Perth also touched upon the theme of emergence. The premise of the conference was that a “new crop” of practioners present “are revising the modernist ethos that architecture should provide effective solutions that benefit the community and the individual. In a contemporary context their work deals with positive consideration of social engagement, careful analysis of existing conditions and a deliberate, often challenging architectural response.” Continuing on this theme, co-organizer Martyn Hook opened up the symposium by proposing the existence of “a younger generation re-embracing the modern agenda. They are making stuff good. In the 1980s and 90s, we were distracted by glam. After the GFC, bush-fires, floods and struggle, there was a reconnection to make things better.”
The grand claim that a group of architects present in the room are reaffirming the modernist agenda is a bold stance, even if we can agree on the fact that modernism, as reduced on the symposium website, is an “ethos that architecture should provide effective solutions that benefit the community and the individual.” As the symposium unfolded over the two days, it became clear that the motivation was not to reaffirm a modernist agenda (this linkage remained unclear for the duration of the symposium). Instead, it was about making good stuff, no more no less, through incremental change to improve the built environment. This, however, is not a new or revived praxis. As Emma Williamson from CODA remarked in the opening of her presentation, “architectural practice, by nature, is to make things better. Why would architects go to all this effort without improving things?”
Diego Ramirez-Lovering, as first speaker, connected the notion of affirmation to the 1960s. He referred to the affirmative action movements of this period that represented minorities (of sexuality and race) in order to pursue a better life. He asked the questions: who or what is under-represented in architecture? Is it architecture that is under-represented in society today?
At the very least, as Ramirez-Lovering pointed out, the agency of architecture is clearly under-represented in the Australian housing market. Housing construction, he said, had changed little over the last 60 years: it has remained a craft-orientated small-business industry. The design quality is poor, he said, but this is the most affordable model, despite the average house area rising from 180m² to 250m², and despite household family structures changing dramatically. In light of this, Ramirez-Lovering with the Monash Architecture Studio has developed housing typologies to embrace the constraints of the market and thus make small improvements to the existing model. This includes increasing occupants per dwelling rather than creating a greater density in the building stock (such as via urban infill). This strategy, he hopes, by connecting research to government agencies, will see the outcomes become or influence policy.
Where Ramirez-Lovering spoke between scales of urban policy and the residential dwelling, Takaharu Tezuka highlighted the large effects that small acts in the creation of a single building can have. Tezuka’s presentation on “roof architecture” took as its premise that people enjoy ramped public spaces, citing the Pomipdou Centre and Federation Square as two examples where people liked to incline. This condition underpinned the highly published Tezuka project Roof House, where each family member could climb onto the timber-deck roof to eat, cook, shower or plainly relax. When he first developed the idea of the sloped roof terrace, Tezuka wondered whether building codes would allow it. The client, however, pointed to all of the roofs in the surrounding neighbourhood — there are no handrails on any other roof. Why should this be any different? Thus, the handrail was disregarded.
The handrail also become a point-of-discussion for another roof project, the Fuji Kindergarten, a one-storey donut-shaped building with an inclined roof for children to play upon. When the Tezukas presented the project design to the client (the kindergarten principal), the architect had suggested a handrail on the roof to stop the children from falling off, as the law demanded. The principal suggested a net to catch the children instead. While this was not possible, roof nets were located where 25-metre trees pierced through the building, so the children would not fall through the gaps.
Although it is technically forbidden for children to climb the trees, the handrails allowed for the children to go underneath. This anthropometrical detail was one of many strategies that turned a blind eye to regulation. Another was the ceiling level, which was lowered to 2.1 metres to create a connection between the ground and roof planes. This non-standard act was one reason that the Japanese government did not provide money to contribute to the kindergarten building costs from the outset. Yet after UNESCO recognized the kindergarten as one of the world’s best school buildings, the Tezukas were asked to advise the Japanese government on education buildings and learning environments.
Incremental change was also the theme of Perth practice Vittino Ashe, who declared they are “not going to change everything.” “Instead,” they said, “we make things 10 percent better at a time rather than 100 percent at once.” Through a comparison of densities in Milan and Perth, Vittino Ashe came to the conclusion that the urban does not exist in Perth. In fact, due to its lack of density, they remarked, “it is easy to leave Perth behind.” This pessimistic presentation of the local condition provoked Anthony Woete of What? Architecture on the second day to ask why people were complaining “There is good weather in Perth,” he insisted. Katherine Ashe replied, “To appreciate the weather we must also appreciate the built environment … There is a lack of engagement with high-density living.” Takaharu Tezuka seemed bemused by this discussion, saying “Density does not exist here [in Australia]. Do not worry about it.”
Officer Woods, in opposition to Vittino Ashe, declared its love for Perth, for its sparseness and geographical isolation (and this idea can be witnessed in the practice’s Moore River House, a lock-up-and-leave house that heroically grounds itself in the bush scrub). “Keeping expectations low means that everything is inherently flexible. We should be optimistic about Perth, and of architecture in general. We should say yes to everything.” This affirmation of the genius ability and demonstration of architecture to solve spatial problems was the one straightforward thing to take away from the conference. However, this is something people operating within the architectural profession are acutely aware of. Melanie Dodd summarized the nature of this in her presentation, where she said “It is not a new endeavour. This symposium is an opportunity to get together, to show how one does it. We should just do it … And importantly, we need an affirmation beyond the client.”
This was the problem with this architectural get-together. While it was an opportunity to show each other quality built work and research among a friendly crowd, the ideas did not spill out into the panel discussion or from the limited audience questions. The affirmation in Perth, then, was about showing good architecture to other architects — and evidently the spatial agency that this architecture requires. Spatial agency “presumes the capability of acting otherwise” (to quote Anthony Giddens), and the strongest presentations of the conference were from those architects who chose otherwise from their client’s and profession’s expectations in providing built solutions. These architects demonstrated an ability to effect change in behaviour where an awareness of existing rules and regulations presented this opportunity to do “otherwise.” Whether the architects present wish to be identified as spatial agents is another question.
Postscript: An earlier instance of the perennial conversation on the emerging architect in Perth is captured in a 1992 article in Architecture Australia by Simon Anderson, recently taken from the archives for ArchitectureAU. Read it here.