Architecture Australia, May 1998
Architecture AustraliaProvocative, informative and engaging discussion of the best built works and the issues and events that matter.
Comment
The Computer: Master or Servant?
Beyond CAD, new computer visualisation packages are finally performing as quick and convenient tools for free design as well as documentation and rendering. John Aspinall explains the possibilities.
Letters
Backless Bag LunchesThe forecourt of Chifley Square is described (AA Mar/Apr 98) as “a realm for public relaxation”. In the café perhaps, but certainly not …
CAD: The Wave Flows On
After years of resistance and scepticism, architects are slowly accepting computer design systems as competitive assets. We scan different positions within the current industry shift.
Foreword
When viewed objectively the RAIA appears in good health. Ric Butt has achieved great things during the past year and has put in place many …
Features
City Tempo
McConnel Smith & Johnson punctuate a closed street in Sydney’s Chinatown with poetic words erupting from a tree-lined promenade-terminated by a café shelter. Photography Bart …
Heritage Update
Sydney’s Customs House, an 1845 monument by Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis, emerges from its fourth revamp with another layer of fashionable architecture and another controversy about ruining the dignity of the existing. After years in the dark, it’s now awaiting tenants.
Lizard Working
West of Sydney’s Blue Mountains is the Googar Creative Work Centre for indigenous inmates of Bathurst Gaol. Planned like a goanna, a totem of the local Wiradjuri, the pavilion was designed by the Merrima Aboriginal Design Unit of NSW Public Works & Services, led by Australia’s first Aboriginal architect, Denis Kombumerrie.
Sports Training
When large events are held at Sydney’s new Olympic Park and Showgrounds, most spectators will arrive by train-to an airy, soaring terminal designed by Rodney …
Dune Creatures
Sheltered by sandbanks from the onshore blasts of the Fremantle Doctor, Blacket Smith’s crustaceous picnic shelters at WA’s Coogee Beach mark another step in Australia’s …
Eureka Salute
In a shift of house style, Cox Sanderson Ness deliver a compelling museum in memorium to the 1854 Eureka Stockade; the bloody battle between goldminers …
Radar
Concept
RMIT’s just-designed sport and recreation centre will talk across Swanston Street to Building 8 and Storey Hall-completing Australia’s most important and daring ensemble of millennial …
Books
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE OF THE WORLDEdited by Paul Oliver, Cambridge University Press, $1495 (three volumes). Put off leasing the new Saab for a month …
Ecology
Two recent student competitions-one sponsored by the Concrete Masonry Association and another by the University of NSW’s SOLARCH division-have focused on the design of sustainable buildings
Attitudes
Notable results from the RAIA’s biennial poll of members’ attitudes, aspirations and circumstances.About 1200 architects responded to the RAIA’s latest membership attitude survey, posted out …
Headlines
Scanning the nation for architectural news and noteworthy nuances.left Renzo Piano’s Centre Culturel Tijibaou, in Noumea; inspired by Kanak ‘cases’ (houses) and built in laminated …
Nature
With holiday snaps taken while hiking in Tasmania, French architect Philippe Robert reveals some special public works of Australia’s bush. I recently had the opportunity, …
Projects
EAST PERTH: VICTORIA GARDENS Ralph Drexel has designed bold interventions to Victoria Gardens, an upgraded park at the junction of Swan River and Claisebrook inlet, …