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 YORKE PENINSULA: WHEAL HUGHES MINE VISITOR CENTRE
South Australia’s Copper Coast has a new visitor centre, at Moonta on Yorke Peninsula, designed and built by second and third year students of the School of Architecture and Design at UniSA. After an approach from the Copper Coast District Council, the school held a design competition for the centre; won by Tom Vinall and David Saunders with a multi-skillion pavilion of steel and timber which incorporates an exhibition wall, a stage and amenities.The design studio and student construction phase were supervised by lecturers David Morris and Nick Opie
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 CANBERRA: PLAYHOUSE
Theatre in Canberra has a new home at The Playhouse, designed by Hassell’s Sydney office with Geoff Butterworth, for the Canberra Theatre Trust. The key element of the three-storey building is a drum-shaped, timber-lined auditorium inspired by Elizabethan theatres and intended to maximise contact between performers and audiences. The bold architecture responds to the National Capital Authority’s urban design objectives for Vernon Circle and Capital Hill
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 ADELAIDE: STAMFORD COURT
Three staff at UniSA’s Louis Laybourne Smith School of Architecture and Design—David Morris, Nick Opie and Angelina Russo—have juggled tight site, program and budget ($400,000) restraints to build a Queensland-style complex of six two-bedroom apartments (two on ground level for disabled residents and four multi-storey units for students) in central Adelaide. At ground, the architects battled conflicting demands for landscaping, parking, access to all units and the need for disabled units to be on one level. The four student units rise to three floors, with projecting bedrooms, bathrooms and verandas
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 SYDNEY: EPPING OFFICES
Travis McEwen has designed a key office block for the North Ryde Technology Park, an emerging industrial estate north-west of Sydney’s CBD, which accommodates Australia’s largest concentration of high-tech corporations. The 10-storey building, set atop a carpark podium, will provide almost 18.000 sq m of space within a modified ovoid plan that is blunted at the east and west ends. The scheme responds to a significant curve in the Epping Road highway running past the site—and will be oriented to reduce solar heat load. Recreation facilities are to be installed near Shrimpton’s Creek at the west edge of the site
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 MELBOURNE: 535 BOURKE ST FOYER
Gray Puksand has completed a $1 million foyer revision at the 1960s AMP Tower in Melbourne’s Bourke Street. The scheme uses glass, granite and stainless steel as principal materials—with treatments conceived to “explore their instrinsic natures and capacities”. Glass is hung, cantilevered and illuminated to glow; wall panels are laser-engraved to produce textured surfaces and stone is installed in both polished and exfoliated finishes. Considerable care was taken to animate the multi-level foyer with area-specific and visually dramatic lighting to reinforce the design
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 HOBART: ELIZABETH STREET PIER
Elizabeth Street Pier, a 1930s finger wharf at Sullivan’s Cove, Hobart, has been converted into serviced apartments, a function centre and restaurants which open to a public promenade around the wharf. Architects Heffernan Button Voss (formerly Eastman Heffernan Walch & Button) worked with developer Lewis Davoren Urban (led by architect John Lewis) to transform the existing shed—making it considerably more transparent—with sensitivity to its existing orders of structure and fenestration. New highlights are banks of seraphic glass fins screening the apartment balconies
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 BALI: UBUD VILLAS
To the west of Ubud, traditional heart of Bali, Sydney architects Tanner & Associates are building a private residential complex on a narrow strip of land along a ridge overlooking the Ayung River. The development includes two large villas separated by a guest house, with staff quarters and a guardhouse at the site entrance. Conforming to a government requirement for traditional architectural expression, the villas are designed as walled compounds of open pavilions and lotus ponds—complemented by skillion roofs and edgeless swimming pools. Local stone and timber are being used
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 SYDNEY: ASHFIELD STATION
GSA Architects is in construction on a $10 million railway station at Ashfield, western Sydney. This node, replacing a subway station, will offer a glazed pedestrian link between commercial centres split apart to the north and south of the tracks. Heritage structures are being included in the scheme, which is distinguished by a planar roof spanning the concourse and facades layered beyond the structural envelope to provide users with various degrees of enclosure. The new development is expected to be completed in September
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