Practice Gallery

The starting point for this instalment from the Auckland office is the article “Savile Row fit” on the St Kent’s Jubilee Sports Centre, which was published in the July/August edition of Architecture New Zealand.

Full article, PDF (42.4kb)
Copyright Architecture New Zealand, 4, 2010. Text: Tony van Raat

The author of the article suggests that Adolf Loos probably might have liked the new gymnasium. This is an opportunity to re-read some of Loos’ writing and examine the architectus design ethos in the light of “ornament and crime”.

Starting with Men’s Fashion (with reference to “Savile Row fit) Loos gave us the answer to his own question:

“But what does it mean to be dressed well? It means to be dressed correctly.”

…and his advice goes further:

“Be not afraid of being called un-fashionable.”

Moving on into the realm of the built environment, we look at what Loos had to say about Building Materials. When discussing their “value” in “Spoken into the Void” he poses the following question: “Which is worth more, a kilogram of stone or a kilogram of gold? The question probably seems ridiculous. But only to the merchant. The artist will answer: “All materials are equally valuable as far as I am concerned.”

Another point of contention decribed by Loos was the masking of the true nature and beauty of materials by useless and indecent ornament, manifested in his famous publication “Ornament and Crime”. In short – one might be allowed to summarise – Loos wanted truth.

And the office of Architectus Auckland would agree – their maxim being: “Nuda veritas” – literally translated as “The naked truth” – meaning that true beauty doesn’t need embellishment. Truth is understood as “correctness in representation” and already presupposes the notion of truth as unconcealedness.

In our work we neither reject nor avoid ornaments. But there are – let’s call them patterns – which seem to emerge nearly automatically out of a design strategy. Classical materials including concrete, stone, metal, wood and glass are skillfully manipulated into careful compositions of visual patterns.

Beauty is one way in which truth occurs. – Martin Heidegger

Competitions - the unseen works

A little while ago the Practice Gallery featured the winning scheme in the competition for the Cruise Ship Terminal on Auckland’s Queens Wharf (architectus+jasmax). More recently we announced the winning competition entry for the University of Auckland’s new Science Centre in the News Section. This time we have been to the vault to pull out some already archived competition entries which haven’t been so successful but nevertheless worth another look:

1 – a mixed use development in Auckland
2 – a performing arts centre for a college in Auckland

Raising the Bar

As part of Melbourne’s annual State of Design Festival in July, Architectus was approached to participate in the ‘Raising The Bar’ event.
‘Raising the Bar’ challenged architects to use recycled materials to design components of a working licensed bar. The exhibition features 10 architects, each using 10 different types of recycled materials (either hard rubbish finds, found objects or the reuse of existing materials). The aim was to produce, with minimal financial outlay, functional components such as seating, foot stools, serving counters, lighting, wall treatments and weather protection.

Architectus designed and built the back wall ‘The Order of Melbourne’, a rooftop bar that will be the destination for architects and the public to meet and socialise during the festival. The festival runs from 14 – 25 July.

Our aim is to give visitors to this rooftop bar a heightened experience of the city. 
Our concept is derived from a satellite image of Melbourne at night, with all the lights and glitter that go with that experience.

Reusing old circuitboards and motherboards, whose layouts and components are reminiscent of a miniature metropolis, our city’s distinct Hoddle grid is mapped and illuminated with fairy lighting glowing through holes and transparent areas.

Recycled plywood, once used to form some of the concrete construction around our city,  is painted with road line-marking paint to articulate roads and features and forms the base of our installation.

E-waste is fast becoming a major source of pollution.  At present only 12% of electronic waste is recycled in Australia. 

Interview with Carmen Yip, Model Maker from Architectus Auckland 

How did you get into model making?
I’ve always been a fan of presenting work as a student with a model in hand. I find critique more engaging and you get more out of yourself and the tutors that way. When I finished university, I was offered a model making position and haven’t looked back since.

Could you talk about how these models we are seeing now came about?
This series of models started from a small exercise, where I was asked to model some ideas based on words such as layers/ stacks, planes, towers etc. We looked at how these forms would work in context and started developing a couple of the ideas. In the end we came up with 2 designs, where the underlying theories were much the same. It was interesting developing different concepts simultaneously as it enabled us to see what was working better in one and what was working better in the other, and that allowed us to generate a strong design with solid qualities.

How do you think physical model’s best aid design?
I think physical models help with the overall picture because whilst you can avoid difficult junctions when drawing, everything is usually detectable on a 3D model, and this enables better design as a whole. You only make 3D models when you’re confident or want to be confident with the complete design.

What’s your favourite material to work with?
I am in love with working with paper and card at the moment. It’s versatile, comes in a variety of thicknesses, the bonding agent is not harmful, texture is great – I can go on and on and on…

Do you think we should try to model with different materials if we want different architecture? (i.e. rubber, clay etc.)
Absolutely. I think the choice of material can play a big part in the design process, predominantly in the concept stages of a project. They work together really well – design can dictate which medium you could use, and medium can make a design evolve.

When do you work better, morning, afternoon or night time?
I always leave the harder tasks to do in the mornings, usually because it gives me a night to think about it. At night, I’m usually on auto-pilot so straightforward work only please!

If you could pick, which super power do you like to have and why?
I would like the power of creating perfection! I know this can be done with technology these days, but I’m a hands on person and will always be more satisfied when I create with my hands. Similarly, I look at models created some 50 years ago in awe, because I know they made everything by hand, and I have so much respect for that.

What aspect of model making gets stuck in your head when you’re trying to sleep at night?
I always think why no-one has created an adhesive that can work on everything… I guess that should be my super power?

What is your favorite pick me up snack/drink when times get tough?
Peanut Slab! Only a fan of chocolate if it has peanuts or almonds in it.

If you were asked to pick any building in the world to model, which would that be and why?
Ahh I never know what to say, and I ask this very question to other model makers all the time. I guess my preference in model making is making something with finer detail, favourite scale is 1:200 (yes I have a favourite scale) and in one tone because I don’t particular like overcrowding a model with different materials. I recently lived in London and always thought a model of the inner city housing would be a fun project.

New Lynn Transit Oriented Development (TOD)

At 5.30am on Monday, the morning of March 1^st, West Auckland’s Henderson station was positively bustling. Those assembled included the clients, and members of the design and construction team, all waiting to catch the first public train to pass through the New Lynn rail trench.

This significant milestone marked the realization of a dream first promoted by Waitakere City Council some 20 years ago during a design charette organised to address the future of the West Auckland city of New Lynn.

With an overall value of close to $300 million the project is the largest railway project for several decades and marks a new emphasis on public transport in New Zealand. Work to complete the balance of the construction works will continue into late 2010 with the second track due for commissioning in June. This completes the double tracking component of the project enabling trains to run in both directions, either side of the new island platform.      

What has been encouraging throughout the project is the client commitment to a good architecture and urban planning in order to provide the level and quality of amenity, connectivity and functionality that are critical to the success of such endeavours. Once complete this first phase of the TOD, or Transit Oriented Development, will provide much improved rail infrastructure in conjunction with extensive new streetscaping, and the creation of two new connecting bridges. Together with the removal of the historic at grade rail lines these initiatives will act as a catalyst for future high density mixed-use development around the transport interchange helping to create a new and sustainable city.

New Sports Centre at St Peter’s College

The new sports centre at St Peter’s College is located on the site of the former Catholic Netball Association courts on the corner of Mountain Road and Khyber Pass.  The project includes the construction of a gymnasium, classrooms, fitness room and associated changing and bathroom facilities.

Adjacent to the site is the newly opened Grafton Road station on the western train line –an increasingly popular choice for commuting students.  The new sports centre will have an entry on Khyber Pass next to the station exit allowing students to pass through the building and link to a new walkway up to the central school area.

The sports centre will provide the College with a facility that significantly enhances the delivery of their sports and health curriculum.  The gymnasium will have a shock absorbing timber sprung sports floor and will cater for a range of sports including basketball, volleyball and badminton to national competition standards.

The main roof of the building is formed from curved steel portal frames spanning the 26 metre width of the gymnasium.  The portal frames also support the pre-cast panels on the side walls while the end walls are a combination of steel and timber framing to be clad in cedar weatherboards.  High level translucent glazing is to be installed at both ends of the gymnasium.

The two level classroom and amenities wing is constructed from concrete block and steel framing and will be clad in honed block veneer and weatherboards.

The gym is overlooked by the main school playing fields; a popular vantage point for students watching progress on site eager to test the new facility.

Queens Wharf

A wharf + a park + a large pavilion 

The Queen Street axis continues down the middle of the wharf as a central street leading to the sea. Cruise ships berth on the eastern side while the western side is turned into a park.

The proposal sits in the context of the “Auckland City Centre Waterfront Masterplan – Linking people, city and sea”. The masterplan identifies Queens Wharf as the location for a major public environment, a cruise ship terminal, expanded ferry terminal as well as future opportunities.

This proposal consist of two key elements; the open space and the built form, in other words the park and the pavilion.

The Park

The proposed Park on Queens Wharf is a special place for all Aucklanders. It is a waterfront landscape experience which builds on the existing wharf archaeology and its character.  The park provides access to city and harbour views, integrates recreational, event and ceremonial activities. It is  a place of arrival and departure, a place of gathering and celebration and simply a place to ‘touch the water’. Queens Wharf is a fundamental waterfront character element. Its marine archaeology of fendering, worn down surfaces, bollards, rail tracks etc. are retained and structural elements provide a memory of the old sheds.

Queens Wharf is for ‘gathering’. Sculptured grass lawns invite people to gather and meet by the water’s edge. The wharf  allows people to interact with the harbour.

Queens Wharf is for ‘celebrating’. A programmed urban park provides a multi-functional event space. A range of activities and attractions can be hosted here, at the bottom of Queen’s Street. Kiosks and canopies will provide amenity, shade and shelter.

Queens Wharf is for ‘touching the water’. The Wharf becomes a destination again. Sculptured lawns on a promontory are a place to rest and view the harbour. Steps leading down to the water and a floating pontoon on the end of the wharf allow for ceremonial arrivals and departures.

The Pavilion

The pavilion is a building conceived as a series of layers.

The wharf level is for cruise ship activities such as baggage handling and servicing. Outside cruise call days it can be used as a sheltered event space. An active edge with retail, food and beverage kiosks activates the central street which runs down in the middle of the wharf. These facilities open up to the west, facing the park and the afternoon sun.

The pavilion building itself is home to the cruise ship facility and a flexible and multi-functional hall. It is a place for events and celebrations – a room on the harbour. It works for a multitude of uses, from banquets - exhibitions - product launches - fashion shows to performances and concerts.

The promenade is part of the pavilion and is for the public. It connects travellers to the city and Aucklanders to the harbour. The promenade allows the public to walk on the terminal and use it as a vantage point to view the harbour.

The roof protects from the elements, it provides shade and shelter. But beyond that it provides identity. The ship and her passengers are under the roof of the pavilion - a welcome to this part of the Pacific. Detail and craft are informed by our history of boatbuilding and marine technology. With its innovative timber construction and use of environmental technologies the roof is a showpiece of New Zealand’s commitment to sustainability.

Architectus Director, Caroline Stalker spoke recently at the Green Planning and Design Conference, held in Brisbane. Her paper, Designing Public – A Sustainability Resource, raised issues with current Australian urban planning practices and offers solutions for a more sustainable future through city design.

The image of the Plan of Rome produced between 1692 and 1756 by Giambattista Nolli has become in the last century representative of a kind of arcadian ideal of the city as a civilized public realm with a legible pattern of civic buildings defining and framing a continuum of piazzas, courtyards and streets.

01: Noli plan of Rome

Working in Australia, Nolli – type figure ground plans more often look like this one shown here of Caboolture, a country-town-turned-suburb outside Brisbane where the outline of the public parts of the city, or the public realm, is only faintly traced by buildings, and consists primarily of the leftover bits between roads, railways and other infrastructure.

Noli plan of Caboolture

Rather than serving as a model for how we might build cities, the Nolli Plan in the 21^st century acts as a powerful reminder that the public realm is a central defining quality of every city.  The public realm is of key strategic value to our cities. In the context of making 21^st century sustainable cities, it is much more useful to think of the public realm as broadly as possible, encompassing buildings, spaces, and infrastructure, and to approach these in a holistic and integrated way. If our city -making can start with the public realm, and we take a broad view of what the public realm is, we have a vast to date largely untapped resource for enhancing urban sustainability.

An example of the potential for the public realm to be utilized as a resource for sustainability has been explored in an Architectus’ Think Tank held last year entitled “Retrofitting Cities for Climate Change’. The Think Tank brought together Australasian practitioners, researchers and policy makers to exchange ideas and test them in a design setting.

Retrofitting Cities for Climate Change Think Tank

In anticipating hotter days and more severe weather events in our cities, a group working on a Melbourne CBD site, led by Kerry Clare, posited that -

• Increased areas of landscaping to reduce heat island effects
• Increased areas of landscaping to increase carbon capture
• Landscape to mitigate thermal loads, assisting with bio-filtration.
• Cleansed water could be stored to counter the impact of drier climates.
• Treed streets to encourage walking, reducing ‘heat island’ effect from roads.
• Internal streets to be adapted to manage water and energy requirements of whole site – water storage, black water recycling, thermal storage, energy transformers.
• Utilise the river for heat exchange, to deal with heat surplus / deficit.  

A CBD site with multiple existing buildings on the edge of the Yarra in Melbourne.

Retrofitting Urban Buildings: Modular Roof Canopy

Infill/Brownfield Sites: How a Melbourne CBD block can be retrofitted for localized energy production

 As part of the Retrofitting Cities Think Tank, a group led by Phillip Follent, (current Qld State Govt Architect), studied a large site in the Dandenong area. The outcome was that retrofitting the suburb should start with mapping and defining the sustainability structure of the entire public realm - joining streets and drainage corridors as a continous multimodal and multifunctional space for transport, energy, food production, and water management.

An urban fringe region with a regional centre, nearby manufacturing and industry 30kms from Melbourne’s CBD in Dandenong.

Retrofitting the Urban Fringe: Dandenong Example, Restructuring of the Public Realm 

Thinking about the broader urban public realm as a resource for sustainability opens all kinds of possibilities, such as:

• Can our public realm be designed to help buffer our cities from more extreme weather, designed to adapt to changing climates and creating more occupiable microclimates for buildings in cities?
• If our urban microclimates are well designed, won’t that lessen the load of more extreme temperatures on individual buildings?
• Could all our drainage corridors become water recycling and storage centres? Or energy generation centres? 
• Could roads also become places where we generate energy, streets places where we plant trees to provide urban heat sinks? 

The latent value of our public realm in Australian cities goes largely unrecognized in our day-to-day city building. If we are able to shift our fundamental frame of reference for urban projects as starting with a public realm in it broadest sense, there is enormous potential to enhance urban sustainability while we enhance public life in our cities.

NEW FACE: PETER DAWSON

POSITION: Senior Associate, Architectus Brisbane

BACKGROUND: After a diverse introduction to architectural practice, Peter has spent more than 15 years developing special skills in education facilities ranging from early childhood to tertiary projects.

WHAT PETER THINKS:
What gets me out of bed in the mornings… The answer is ideas. I like to think that there is always a better way, a new solution. Using ideas to make better places for people to enjoy is why I love architecture. I get angry when the creative exploration of ideas is shut down or over looked out of expedience, or laziness. Such narrow thinking is disappointing to creative people but it is dangerous to a society to shut out ideas. Curiosity about ideas has been the survival tool of our species. 

Having grown up in Brisbane and practiced architecture here for 30 years I have come to refer to myself as a ‘sub tropical man’. I sometimes think I should be able to say something more substantial about myself but this place gets under your skin. The thin, light-weight buildings provide a particular experience of place through the natural world. The traditional domestic architecture sometimes feels more like sophisticated camping than the solid shelter afforded by other vernaculars. One does not so much live in our houses, as with them. I am constantly aware of light, breezes, and humidity as they cycle through the days and seasons. Mediating this experience is rich in opportunities for architects.

Technology often intervenes in our lives to create virtual experiences but it is a joy to experience the physical world. I think this what I like about open surfing and open water swimming. It is a real unmediated experience the water, wind, currents. This was captured by Roger Deakin when he wrote:

 ‘Swimming is a rite of passage, a crossing of boundaries: the line of the shore, the bank of the river, the surface itself. You are in nature, part and parcel of it, in a far more complete and intense way than on land.

 Most of us live in a world where more and more places and things are sign posted, labelled, and officially interpreted. Walking, swimming, and cycling will always be subversive activities. They allow us to break free of the official version of things.’

‘Breaking free’ brings me back to ideas and architecture. Architectus has design values that respect and celebrate ideas. Style is regarded as a reward for getting a number of things right, not a starting point. The tectonics of a building are seen as an opportunities to give buildings a character that comes from within, not one attached after the fact. This is real architecture not appliqué.

I am enjoying the energetic culture at Architectus Brisbane and the mature approach to design and architectural practice, and I am looking forward to meeting my new ‘cousins’ in other offices.

Deakin, R. (2000). Waterlog, A swimmers journey through Britain. Sydney: Random House.

NEW FACE: JIM GALL

POSITION: Senior Associate, Architectus Brisbane

BACKGROUND: After trying his hand at science and music, Jim comes to Architectus Brisbane in April, 2010 after 15 years as Director at Gall & Medek.

WHAT JIM THINKS:

“Desert island disk” questions … and I’d never be able to take just one. The world is too full of various beauties and joys for it to be possible to have a favourite and have an open mind. I’d be grabbing all I could and secreting them in every available pocket, but, if pushed, I’d probably survive with Tom Waites’ “Orphans” (cheating – its 3 disks) because it’s got a gentle touch of just about everything … but I’d still have to sneak in some Henryk Gorecki and Miles Davis. And Hound Dog Taylor and the House Rockers: who could survive without it! Uncle Bob Macon, Blind Lemon Jefferson, the Carter Family, Earle Scruggs and Lester Flatt, Jimmy Reed … No. It’s impossible.

Being asked to respond about Architecture is difficult. My first degree was in Ecology (Environmental Science) so I came to architecture not thinking like an Architect. And I think that continues to some degree…

Unless you put blinkers on, it’s very difficult to not see beauty in all its forms and guises. I think this applies to architecture, to making places. The style, the outward expression is important, of course, but there is something that ties Gorecki to Hound Dog, Miles Davis to Blind Lemon. Architecture, like any form of human work and communication, has the same core of ideas that leads us to beauty in a whole lot of different ways.

The greatest architectural challenge is always there: communication -finding ways of getting people to understand everything from ideas to the dimensions and qualities of a space to texture and feel of a piece of finished wood. There are two more specific challenges within this at the moment: getting people to understand and value simplicity and economy; and getting people to think relationally.

Building wise: every project has daunting challenges, big and small in scale. Probably the biggest, “scariest”, but also most rewarding, was getting the Lark Quarry Dinosaur Trackways facilities built 130 km outside of Winton (population 150 in a good year). Passively conserving dinosaur trackways, in a remote location, with THAT climate … and so on.

Proudest architectural achievement: I designed some Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing at Hill End nearly 10 years ago. Those Aunties can be fierce. It was hard to convince them that architects cared about the people who would live in the houses. But they were happy.

The profession has 3 related challenges. To appreciate the nature of “sustainability” (can be sustained and is sustaining); to re-design the design process, and possibly the profession, to take on responsibilities offered by sustainability; and, in the end, to re-establish its social and cultural value through its broad engagement with cultural development processes (sounds good!).

And all that’s what makes architecture exciting – people can’t live without design.