Architectus Auckland Guide
This map of Auckland City locates a number of key projects by the Architectus Auckland office. The map can be downloaded here and can be used for a self-directed architectural tour.
Learning Environments Spatial Lab
In an old gymnasium within the heart of a 1930s heritage listed building at the University of Melbourne, Architectus have created a truly flexible and adaptable space where educators, designers, facility managers, clients, end users and students can explore, create and test their visions of learning environments. Within the University’s mandate to provide compliant, cost effective and environmentally sustainable design, a very unique space has been created.
A visitor to the Learning Environments Spatial Lab (LESL) might encounter a range of simultaneous activity – including a small group discussion around a large kitchen table; a mock portion of a classroom set-up to model the use of a new audio-visual device for small group learning; and a design team creating cardboard templates of proposed tables for small-group learning. On another occasion, the visitor might find the entire floor space is laid out as a possible configuration for collaborative, team-teaching in a distinct disciplinary field (e.g. Physics) for a class of 42 students. The use of the LESL in this way can be programmed over an intensive period to replicate real-life, timetabled classes for trainee teachers.
The Learning Environments Spatial Lab is intended to make problematic a host of matters relating to the design of classrooms, in order to challenge users of the space in regard to their own thinking about what a classroom can be. LESL makes problematic issues such as the use of colour, materials, classroom orientation, collaborative learning group size, collaborative table shape and height, integration of technology, division of space in shared settings and provision of working surfaces for students. It is not about presenting users with an answer to these issues which we are advocating they duplicate, rather it is a matter of raising these issues in a setting where they can experience them directly.
This project, instigated and championed by the University of Melbourne’s Associate Professor Peter Jamieson, is at the forefront of exploring how collaboration can be facilitated through design.
Project Details
Project: Learning Environments Spatial Laboratory (LESL)
Client: University of Melbourne
Value: $1M
Contact
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You’ve got to have some Fins
The use of vertical fins is a fundamental part of the Architectus language. Their purpose is often related to solar shading – but never limited to that: fins create order, repetition, rhythm, abstraction and depth; fins change depending on the viewer.
Some examples follow:
At St. Peter’s Middle School, up to three storey tall concrete fins establish a powerful relationship with the school grounds – revealing the structure and providing shelter at the same time.
Fins determine the interface (or filter) between the public realm and the private loggias at Trinity Apartments, and here they are executed in frameless laminated glass. Walking past the building – looking at the façade obliquely – one perceives an ever changing veil constructed of green layers of glass.
Douglas Lloyd Jenkins comments in his article “In the Western Tradition”, NZ Listener, 2006:
“The challenge in Henderson was not simply to build a library but to build with sufficient presence to suggest the existence of an entire city. Most of the necessary motifs are there, from the open plaza to the impressive façade…. Vertical laminated timber fins – stand in for classical columns … and an impressive roof overhang stands in for the portico of old.”
152 Fanshawe Street is located on a busy intersection; one side faces a major arterial route into the city and the other looks across semi-rural parkland. A series of rhythmic yet playful vertical concrete fins form a strong edge to the street, while light aluminium vertical fins address the park.
The fins at the Telecom Headquarters are anodised aluminium extrusions, which come in three different projections, related with the width of the adjacent glass panel – resulting in a rough textured façade on the perimeter in contrast to the flush glazing to the courtyards.
At Auckland’s Aotea Centre horizontal aluminium fins are arranged in a sheer endless parallel array at the main entrance as well as in an organic organisation reminiscent of a woman’s long hair for the Bledisloe canopy.
“Of course it’s not an Architectus building if it doesn’t have fins.”
Bill McKay in “Making Connections, article on the Telecom HQ in Auckland, published in Architecture New Zealand 1/2011
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Balsa Models
Conveying design intent and rationale to clients succinctly requires a medium or a series of media that can simultaneously explain the primary concept as well as the execution. The best communication techniques offer a sense of scale that allows the observers to place themselves ‘within’ the concept whilst inferring the overall form of the building, created by the volumes and voids.
Whilst conventional plans allow the detail of a building to be clarified and individual elements of the composition to be explained, the traditional architectural tool for the communication of large scale spatial concepts has always been a physical model.
Though we continue to build physical models (of the whole project and/or of detailed parts) to test out ideas and engage the client, there are limitations to the flexibility of a physical model to explore a large variety of ideas. Architectus Brisbane has transferred the process of physical model making onto the computer; utilizing CAD to create virtual, physical balsa, cardboard, coreboard and solid wood models. This process differs from producing polished, 3D views and images. It is a testing device; allowing the designer to explore and communicate spatial intentions without attributing excessive detail to a design in the development phase. The power and danger of producing rendered images that appear resolved in early design phases is negated by the palette of the balsa model, as it replicates the materials of traditional physical model making – balsa and cardboard.
Once constructed, the model is very easy to manipulate, to explore a variety of options, and even to manipulate in real time with the client. As did the physical model, its greatest benefit is undoubtedly its ability to focus client discussions around large the strategic issues of form and relationship without being distracted by issues of materiality, detail, or appearance. It provides an invaluable testing tool and communication device for client and internal design discussions.
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DOWNTOWN
Simon Cuthbert
Cast Gallery 205
Simon Cuthbert photographs really bad restaurants, incredibly well. Just look at them; pictures of décor and scenery that you would not die for. He also photographs authentically unbelievable shop displays, old buildings, young buildings, disappearing buildings, whole buildings, parts of buildings and views from buildings, portraying both interior space, and exterior form, from Moonah to Las Vegas, Surfers Paradise to Hawaii, China, Japan, Laos, USA; well of course everywhere he travels, he goes ‘downtown’ with his camera.
I first met Simon upon my return to Tasmania after 5 years working in Sydney, where I was involved with the conceptual stage of designing a major art gallery in Brisbane. I had been out of touch with Hobart for close to 10 years and somehow our paths had not crossed. He introduced himself to me at an art opening and wanted to know all about the GOMA[1] project, since Brisbane was his hometown. He was also keen to learn that I had returned to Hobart to work on the IXL stone buildings.
My first ‘collectable’ photograph is a Simon Cuthbert, called ‘The Problem with Concrete’, which is a pre-cast concrete, multi-level car park, and shows a swatch of large paint colours; an attempt by the architect, builder, owner or developer, to come to terms with the finish. The quality of the building (soon to be lost by the regularity of paint) is heightened by the swatch itself and the moment is captured by Simon’s shutter.
The documentary function of the photograph, to record things that may be lost, recurs in Simon’s work, and is central to the process of recording what he considers as the “authentic”. He is very passionate about public space and the need for a high level of altruism in cities, a quality that is fundamental, yet has been eroded in all cities worldwide. It is no accident, therefore, amid a world of homogeneity of built form, and the privatisation of public assets, public buildings, public waterfronts, bays, public forests, etc, that Simon also works inside an art museum, one of the last generic public building types[2].
Simon Cuthbert is not an ‘architectural’ photographer per se. Rather, he appropriates architecture (often anonymous, vernacular buildings and spaces) and adds a new dimension, or ‘way of seeing’, through the camera lens. This acute ability is sharpened by his work with museological documentation of fine art and artefact.
With a level of subtlety and humbleness, Simon has recently explored and developed a more subliminal approach to taking photographs, entering a kind of interstitial photographic space, where reality is approached from the reverse side. The image, portrayed in its raw state and at first glance, could not possibly be real – yet, it is.
In these photographs, Simon invents the ‘found picture as tromp l’oiel’, placing so much emphasis on the interior space of a building and its relation to outside, or beyond the surface, that it becomes unreal. Coming Home is one such photograph, (winner of the 2005 Island Art Prize) where a huge wilderness view completes the baggage carousel experience at Hobart airport. Similar spatial qualities appear in ‘Sing Sing’, ‘Greasy Joes’ and ‘Big Foot’. In ‘Mirror Mirror’, (winner of the 2005 Prometheus Visual Arts Award), the “minimalist” subject matter – a tiled wall and a mirror – is further reduced by the simplicity of the reflection, which belies reality.
Like a photograph, the architectural drawing is a representation of reality, employed to redefine a location or a place, by stripping the accompaniments; taking away … the process of stripping an idea until it becomes something else, until it either loses its meaning, or, it takes another meaning. Simon redefines and sublimely re-presents his subject through a camera, with a precise mastery of the art of photography.
James Jones
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[1] Queensland Gallery of Modern Art (Architectus, 2001–2006)
[2] The art museum is an intellectual institution, a cultural interface, an intellectual metaphor for the present and for history. The art museum is significant for the public consciousness, characterised by the fact that it returns enclosed public space to the city.
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A diagram tells a thousand words
We are visual people. We draw diagrams to visualise our ideas. We rely on diagrams as much for communicating with others as for clarifying our thoughts, for structuring and recording them. A diagram allows us to immediately convey a concept and to explain the intention of what we are trying to achieve. It can capture the essence of a project in a thumbnail. Often buildings are easiest to understand during their construction – when they show us their bones. A diagram does something similar; it provides us with a distilled version of the design. Reading diagrams of buildings is like “zooming” right out – the small details disappear and the big idea appears clearly in front of us.
The accompanying diagrams illustrate key principles of projects from recent years. For some projects it is the plan diagram that is the primary driver behind the scheme; in others it is the section diagram that most clearly illustrates the idea of the building; and there are also occasions where the plan and section become remarkably similar – here the diagram works in the round. Diagrams – although most of the time are born out of a hand sketch – are also represented as computer generated 2D and 3D graphics, physical models and reference images.
For further reading on the subject refer to “Architectus – Between Order and Opportunity”, Essay by Haig Beck & Jackie Cooper, Chapter: Clifford: Plan as Parti
Architectus Brisbane recently participated in the Unlimited: Designing for the Asia Pacific, taking part in a collaborative exhibition entitled Moving Cities: Moving People and Moving Minds.
This was an exhibition of projects and thinking by Architectus (concerned with making public spaces), Inkahoots (concerned with messages, knowledge and ideas), Deka Furniture (furniture for transportable ways of living) and QCA Master of Design Futures Program (a platform for the discussion of the future of cities) that explored the challenges of designing secure new habitation in a world of rapidly changing climate conditions.
With much of the Asia Pacific’s population concentrated along coastlines and/or river valleys, many in our region are vulnerable to severe (and increasing) climate events, including sea level rise storms, tsunamis, cyclones, flooding and drought: Queensland is as vulnerable as Vanuatu or the Mekong or Indus Deltas. Answering the challenge means not only dealing with geographic and social ecologies, the processes of transition and change, but also the dangers of conflict coming from the mass migration of displaced people. The opportunity is to see design as a core social process, integrated with the governance, economic and ethical systems that allow the creation of desirable places of sustainment.
Office gift to retiring Melbourne Director, Andrew Bunting
Andrew retired as a Director of Architectus Group Holdings on the 30th June 2010.
Andrew formerly commenced employment with the Practice as a Director of McKeever Smith in 1985. In those days Andrew, who is an accountant not an architect, wore a range of brown and green suits, a big bushy beard and widescreen thick rimmed spectacles.
It has been a very interesting journey. He has been very much a part of establishing the Architectus culture in Melbourne – a culture built around a progressive, enjoyable and constructive workplace.
Andrew has always committed himself to lifelong learning. He has been a teacher, part time theologian; he has a Masters in Accountancy and a Doctorate in Education Design from the Faculty of Education at Melbourne University. In particular the Melbourne Practice owes a huge amount of thanks to Andrew. As we all know architectural practice has many highs and lows and through the unity and spirit of the Directors and our long serving staff we have not only survived but developed the practice in so many ways.
On behalf of all the Melbourne Practice we would like to thank Andrew for the huge contribution he has made, we will be forever grateful for the leadership, business ethics, commitment and the support that he has given us.
Andrew leaves us still sporting a thick grey bushy moustache (despite numerous attempts by various staff members to remove it), a slightly smarter dresser, wiser, slightly heavier and as a unique accountant who has made a huge impact on this little piece of the world of architecture.
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Prefabricated Student Housing at ANU Campus
The ANU Laurus Wing student housing project provides a model for the future direction of student accommodation on the ANU campus. A high quality living environment has been created in a way that is economical, sustainable and designed for expansion and staged development.
Comprising 153 self contained living units, in a mixture of studio and one bedroom configurations, the orientation of the project towards north / north west, allows maximum solar access to over 80% of living units. The living modules are arranged into two linear ‘wings’ and are linked to a common lift lobby area and associated communal spaces forming a protected courtyard space which serves as a place for gathering and interaction.
Using pre-fabricated housing modules as the primary form of construction, an architectural expression was developed to echo the language of these living units. The challenge was to develop this chosen language so that the ‘pre-fab’ and the ‘in-situ’ components of the project could be unified into a single built entity.
The in-situ component included bike storage facilities, lifts, lobbies, common areas and supports for the modules. These were constructed prior to the installation of modules. The modules were then connected to the in-situ component part of the construction.
Throughout the construction process, a total of 16 lifting days were required between Stages 1 + 2 to install all of the modules. Each module was delivered approximately 30 minutes apart transported straight from the freighter terminal in Port Botany.
Up to 18 modules were delivered and installed per day. Installation of one module took approximately 20 minutes. With all the modules in place, the pre-fabricated fire stair was installed using the same mobile crane.
Living areas and private screened balconies to all modules have a north-west facing aspect, allowing residents good access to daylight and views to Black Mountain.
The external building materials have been chosen to reflect the unique construction methodology of the project – the majority of external cladding materials are pre-fabricated and panelized to maximize assembly efficiency. Materials have been selected for durability and low maintenance.
The use of green hues to delineate ‘cool and shady’ circulation zones and orange hues to represent ‘warm’ living zones to the glass panels creates a vivid, dynamic and varied expression across the building’s façade, whilst celebrating the modularity of the building.
(Artist’s impressions by Architectus, Stage 1 + 2, April – May 2009)
The ANU Laurus Wing building integrates a low cost, high quality pre-fabricated and affordable student housing module system with built in-place elements that deliver pleasant living and working environments that actively nurture learning and openly encourages social interaction between students.
The factory prefabrication process minimises wastage and reduces site energy consumption achieving better ESD outcomes than traditional construction methods.
(Artist’s impression by Architectus; Stage 1 + 2 prior to completion, August 2010)
Project Details
Location
Australian National University, Canberra
Total Development Area
2120m²
Construction
Modular living units pre-fabricated for J Hutchinson Builders
Steel Frame Construction + plasterboard + stud wall infill.
Lift Amenities + Common Area
R/C frame + columns, blockwork infill
Total Construction Time
9 months
Contractor/Client
J Hutchinson Builders Pty Ltd
End User
Australian National University, Canberra
(Construction Photographs, July 2009 Courtesy J Hutchinson Builders)
