Reviews

We recount the defining issues, perennial talking points and the most impactful buildings in this review of the past decade.

The final year of the decade was a testing one for architects, with a number of urgent issues – building standards, the climate crisis, and the industry’s relationship to Indigenous knowledge – all brought to the fore.

ArchitectureAU looks back at a year of Australian residential architecture and count down the top 10 most clicked-on stories.

Each year, dozens of books come across the editorial desk at ArchitectureAU, on subjects as varied as modernist houses, indoor plants and eccentric suburban interiors. Here are some of our favourites from 2019.

Philip Thalis and Benjamin Driver consider the latest planning strategy for Sydney, and ask do our conventional planning methods meet the needs of our evolving cities?

The inaugural Eat Drink Design Talks unpacked the challenges of hospitality design and speculated about its future.

A survey of modernism in South Australia offers a chance to contemplate the qualities inherent to the modern movement that are missing from today’s projects.

Ahead of a new set of pavilions set to open this summer, Rachel Hurst considers the burgeoning form. What is to be made of the pavilion phenomenon?

Part of our ongoing review of the work of 2019 Gold Medallists Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg, we turn our attention to the architects’ future projects, with a collection of responses from peers and colleagues.

Peers and colleagues of 2019 Gold Medallists Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg reflect on their formidable combination, a take-no-prisoners approach to their architectural ambition, and a life’s work founded on conviviality.

Architecture Australia reflects on Koning Eizenberg Architecture’s pragmatic yet ambitious housing projects.

Koning Eizenberg’s colleagues, peers and collaborators to speak to the practice’s diverse portfolio of sensitive and thoughtful public projects.

Russell Fortmeyer reflects on Koning Eizenberg Architecture’s decades-long transformation of the Original Farmers Market in Los Angeles.

Aaron Betsky surveys the private and public work of Koning Eizenberg Architecture and identifies a distinctive expression suited to the messy vitality of Southern California.

While it’s tricky to narrow down a must-see itinerary for Brisbane Open House from the 99 buildings on the program, the following sites are a good place to start.

Andrew Burges explores four key strategies to enhance architecture’s power in collective city-making, as demonstrated by the 16 inspiring projects presented at the 2019 Architecture Symposium, Sydney.

Muir and Shepherd’s church for a small community at Katamatite in northern Victoria represents a remarkable period of architectural experimentation.

The first major retrospective on the oeuvre of one of Australia’s pre-eminent designers and sculptors, Clement Meadmore: The art of mid-century design, makes a convincing argument that industrial design is an art form in its own right.

When a close friend recommended Dock4 Architects to Jon Swann, he felt immediately confident that the studio would work wonders on his shack in Tasmania’s Apollo Bay. Sitting down with Katelin Butler, he recounts that his trust in the design team made for a delightfully unexpected architectural solution.

Designing sustainable buildings and cities is key to reducing emissions. ArchitectureAU asks three experts what is going right, what’s going wrong and what needs to happen next.

Through six themes and a meandering series of dreamlike passages, the Home Futures exhibition revisits predictions made by twentieth-century designers to explore how our understanding of “home” is changing over time.

Could the messiness of life be the key to living in extremely dense spaces? An exhibition at RMIT Design Hub Gallery explores urbanism in Asian cities.

An exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria highlighted the dynamic and critical force of female designers in shaping contemporary design culture.

Home: A Suburban Obsession was held in March as part of the Asia Pacific Architecture Forum and continued at the State Library of Queensland until July.

While it was open for only 14 years, the Bauhaus school of art and design had a huge impact on design and architecture internationally. To mark its centenary, Colin Martin looks back at some of its key players and their influence.

Each year the Work Place / Work Life forum explores the seismic shifts happening in workplace design throughout Australia and abroad – from technological disruption to the rise of the sharing economy.

In her review of the 2019 Housing Futures conference in Melbourne, Alysia Bennett finds a forum that “provides a concrete and acute understanding of the implications of possibilities and barriers to delivery and scalability of best practice housing.”

Attending the 2019 National Architecture Conference, Sam Spurr was struck by the way the question of collective agency in architecture was grounded in an urgent conversation about how the practice relates to Indigenous knowledge.

Nicola Cortese, a recent graduate, reflects on the 2019 National Architecture Conference and its exhortation to be “less afraid of risk and more exhilarated by the potential offered by experimentation.”

Urban Hallucinations, the 2019 Gold Medallists’ Koning Eizenberg’s recent publication breaks the mould of traditional monographs and captures a distinct sense of the present and of testing methodologies.

The Australian Institute of Architects 2019 Gold Medallists Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg combine a compelling ethical position with wit, curiosity, ambition and empathy, explains Justine Clark.

The 2019 Gold Medal is awarded to Hank Koning and Julie Eizenberg.

The late Enrico Taglietti’s practice had a long commitment to domestic architecture. Here we revisit three notable examples.

Investigating Japan’s residential architecture across three categories, this exhibition looks beyond the stereotypical to reveal sincere Japanese domesticity.

In this contemporary dance performance, Liminal Studio and Dancenorth invite audience members to consider how architecture can be exclusive or inclusive, how it can set people apart or bring them together.

Ted Quinton reviews the inaugural Architecture Symposium, Hobart, a “weekend of learning in the Tasmanian landscape” that included a day filled with international and local speakers and a tour of John Wardle’s projects on Bruny Island.

From Centre Georges Pompidou to The Shard tower, the designs of Pritzker Prize-winning Italian architect and engineer Renzo Piano are famous around the world.

Rachael Bernstone reviews A House for All at the V&A in London, which looks at six experimental public housing projects from the 20th Century.

Home: A Suburban Obsession celebrates “the allure of home and the stories found within.”

Scott Petherick reviews The Architecture Symposium, Brisbane, which took place at the State Library of Queensland on 15 March.

Responding to the theme of the 2019 International Women’s Day “Balance for Better,” ArchitectureAU has asked a number of women architects about their collaborations with other women.