Our future world will be very different from today. Trends in climate, society, technology and resources will have a big impact on the communities in which we live, and the places we create.
At WSP, looking beyond traditional paradigms with design solutions that have a future bias begins with listening. We see this as the foundation of good communication from where big ideas grow. Our recent work in incorporating human-centred design and Indigenous design elements into buildings and precincts are just two examples of how we’re helping clients become Future Ready.
For more information, visit wsp.com/en-AU/hubs/future-ready
Australian Institute of Architects
Victorian Chapter Level 1, 41 Exhibition Street Melbourne, VIC 3000
ABN 72 000 023 012
The Victorian Chapter and Editorial Committee acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, work and meet across the state: Boon Wurrung, Bunurong, Dja Dja Wurrung, Eastern Marr, Gunaikurnai, Gunditj Mirring, Local Custodians of the Land, Martang, Taungurung, Wathaurung, Woi Wurrung, Yorta Yorta.
Guest editor, Andrew Mackenzie on words in the culture and practice of architecture
words and architecture's lived experience
Peter Salhani looks at architecture mainly through words but also through the curation of images
and disruption Michael Smith writes about the growing challenge the profession faces communicating architectural knowledge
Humour is a universal language Emma Telfer on humour as a common or shared language
Profit, publish, and perish: words in the university sector
Hélène Frichot discusses where and whether words are being enunciated with a public in mind 52 Without words Gerard Reinmuth steps outside social media into the decimated landscape of architectural publishing 56 Words make you accountable Hamish Lyon considers whether architects will continue to write, as they have for centuries 60
Written and curated: the value of architectural stories
Katelin Butler discusses the authoritative and trusted journal of record
architect teams awarded in the DWELP and OVGA competition to design exemplar apartment buildings
Managing editor
Emma Adams
Guest editor
Andrew Mackenzie
Editorial committee
James Staughton (Chair)
Elizabeth Campbell
Laura Held
Tom Huntingford
Yvonne Meng
John Mercuri
Justin Noxon
Sarah Lynn Rees
On the cover
Artwork by Chad Mann
Creative direction
Annie Luo Printing
Printgraphics | Printgreen
14 Hardner Road Mount Waverley VIC 3149
Acknowledgements
With thanks to our Gold Patron, Carey Lyon
Bill Krotiris photo by Chris McConville
This publication is copyright
No part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, mechanical, microcopying, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the permission of the Australian Institiute of Architects Victorian Chapter.
Disclaimer
Readers are advised that opinions expressed in articles and in editorial content are those of their authors, not of the Australian Institute of Architects represented by its Victorian Chapter. Similarly, the Australian Institute of Architects makes no representation about the accuracy of statements or about the suitability or quality of goods and services advertised.
As architects we are adaptive to the language we use according to context. The words used when engaging with a laboratory stakeholder vary dramatically to a discussion with a commercial client. We bounce between specimen workflows and throughputs to cap rates in the same afternoon, addressing critical micro-planning matters, then analysing financial drivers for a commercial building. The language we use is crucial in managing our clients’ expectations while exercising levels of diplomacy at crucial meetings. Often our clients rely on our language for their own in-house bidding, assisting them with decisions and their own internal advocating for a project. Our genuine enquiring curiosity allows this varying engagement to stay on point, with an enthusiasm that is in our DNA. Architects advocating for the profession at large, particularly through government submissions, requires careful navigation to not only drive an issue, but to provide advice to a wider bureaucratic audience. Meeting and writing to government departments demands a level of language that is often foreign to architects – direct and evidence-based language with a significant emphasis on unintended risk. This is intended, and needed, for the decision makers to lose sleep over the matter – for them to act.
The last six months have been hectic with this level of communication to government at both a national and state level as we propose a framework to address design and construct issues with novation procurement, consultancy contracts, products certification and more frequent inspections suited to current construction processes. It’s a new language all together and one that I hope will make a difference for all members.
As we continue to collectively re-adjust and re-evaluate what we value in our lives during this period of global pandemic, the topic of this submission – Lost for words – is timely.
The importance of written communication in architecture – from technical reference, policy structure or cultural history – is easily understood. However, the written word also plays a critical role within design thinking. Some of the most profound insights into the shaping of new architectural thought can be achieved through reading –words provoke, refute, lead, imply, they can instruct, contrast, and align. While drawing and sketching are critical functions in exploring design possibilities, it is often the written word which sparks a whole new line of thought to the design process. While an image can be captivating, provide technical clues, compositional critique and inspiration, the written word provides access to complex thought, on the foundation of which design can flourish.
As a profession we need to continue to support, write, and purchase architectural text. We hope that this issue of AV causes you to pause and reflect on the value of words in your own career and the need to maintain their role as a fundamental pillar of architecture.
The guest editor of this issue, Andrew Mackenzie, is an editor and publisher of architectural journals, books and writing. Contributing editor to Architecture Australia (2012–2016), writer for the Good Weekend, Australian Financial Review (2011–2018), the Saturday Paper (2014–2017) and Architecture Review UK (2014–2016), Andrew is also the codirector of URO, an independent publisher of more than 40 titles on architecture. Awarded the 2021 National President’s Prize while this edition was in production, we are honoured to have him as our guest editor.
Victorian Chapter President
Bill Krotiris
Victorian State Manager
Tim Leslie
Architect at home: The Commons with Madeline Sewall, Associate at Breathe Architecture
Interview by Elizabeth Campbell
Q1 How would you describe life in The Commons and did you transition from a house when you moved in?
Life in The Commons is just right. Things I used to spend time thinking about like temperature, acoustics and lighting rarely cross my mind because the building handles all these things so naturally. There is not too much of anything, but there certainly is not too little. We love having an efficient house that we can tidy in an hour, but we never ache for more space (despite a large,
clumsy dog and an extensive collection of camping gear!). As a lazy housekeeper, for me apartment living is the perfect balance between comfort and ongoing effort. The materials in The Commons are incredibly robust and easy to look after, even with a small kid and a large dog. The bathroom is virtually bomb proof, which is one of my favourite parts of the house!
From an amenity perspective, we are completely in love with our apartment. In the summer, the apartment’s northern outlook is completely overtaken by
wisteria, which is both beautiful and functional, blocking out the hot sun. The vines create a moody quality of light inside which I find incredibly peaceful. The texture of the recycled floorboards underfoot feels like walking on a beach boardwalk – coming home to this place often feels like a vacation.
The biggest transition for me was probably having to factor an extra 15 minutes into my travel time to anywhere to account for all the friendly neighbours I chat to along the way!
Above: The Commons Breathe Architecture
Photo by Tom Ross
Above: The Commons Breathe Architecture
Photo by Tom Ross
Q2 How do you think about home as a concept?
My concept of home has been a little ad-hoc to date. Perhaps a reflection of my lifestyle and also my priorities, home has simply been a waterproof shell in a convenient location to fill with family, friends, rituals, and things.
Our home at The Commons is the perfect shell – warm, quiet, comfortable and so easy to live in. We are three different people leading different lives, and our home is a flexible space that accommodates the diverse needs of a young family – working from home, house parties, pillow fort obstacle courses, an informal painting studio, home gym, home schooling, daily meals, the list goes on. This is a lot to fit into a two-bedroom apartment, but this home was designed to be used, and it works well and works hard for our family.
Our home at The Commons is the first time I have experienced thermal comfort in a genuine sense, It sure is hard to picture living in a drafty terrace house again!
Q3 Overall, in what ways do you think apartments as homes can contribute to the wider context and the collective neighbourhood?
One of the things that’s very special about The Commons is the community that is created between all the individual units. We have a diverse group of people, but with shared values. We love being a part of a thoughtful community where we feel part of a larger system, and we can contribute to the lives of those around us. This was of particular value during COVID-19 when we were disconnected from so many of our friends and family. Lockdown on
Florence Street is something I’m still reflecting on. Neighbours went to great lengths to create small moments of joy for each other on what were otherwise quite grim days. There was a balcony disco, book swaps, make-shift exercise clubs, and many exchanges of homemade goods.
Q4 How do you choose items to fill your home with?
Well to start, we aren’t overly curated about it! Our house has layers of things we’ve made, things we’ve collected and special treasures we’ve inherited. Some favourite items are a quilt that hangs above our bed which my mum made, a French oil painting which I grew up with in my family home, and the tacky dashboard hula dancers that were on our wedding cake. To me, the quality of space feels much richer to be surrounded by so many tokens and memories, and we don’t try too hard to edit that down. We love things with stories and often look for tokens on favourite things.
Safety and comfort are high priorities, of which our home at The Commons well outperforms anywhere else we’ve lived. We love being a neighbour of people that look out for each other.
Elizabeth Campbell is a project architect at Kennedy Nolan with broad experience across single and multiresidential, cultural and commercial projects. She is a researcher, writer and contributing editor of Architect Victoria
Napier Street for Milieu Freadman White
Freadman White’s simultaneous development of Napier Street and Whitlam Place harnessed unique efficiencies and resulted in a highly efficient model for project delivery.
Located directly adjacent to their Whitlam Place apartments, Freadman White’s more recent Napier Street apartments are a refined addition to Fitzroy’s multi-residential scene. Armed with site-specific knowledge, established relationships with planners at council and coordinated consultants across both projects, Freadman White’s delivery of Napier Street was both highly efficient and well informed.
During the town planning phase of Whitlam Place, Freadman White developed a deep understanding of the community’s established objectives for future development. Through existing knowledge of direct heritage context, amenities of the area, and the significance of surrounding trees and local landmarks, the Napier Street project team were uniquely equipped with the hindsight to overcome challenges previously faced at a town planning authority level.
Another unique opportunity that arises from developing two projects side-by-side was Freadman White’s ability to navigate agreements between clients. Acting as a broker between discussions, opportunities to capitalise on certain aspects of both the design and construction phases were harnessed, and ultimately, both properties benefited from mutual consent.
With the project receiving a planning permit under a previous landowner, it was when Milieu purchased the site that a collaborative relationship was born, and a series of alterations took place. Freadman White explain that while accommodating “the preferred changes, mainly to the spatial planning, maintaining the integrity of the architectural design intent” always remained
important. There was “a shared purpose by client and architect” to engrain a level of flexibility in the development process of Napier Street, ensuring variety in the dwelling types and a sense of community in the common areas. Through the sales and marketing phase, Milieu “worked closely with their purchasers to customise spatial planning and interior design details”, while ensuring the overarching design language remained. Moves such as combining two apartments into a larger one considered the established architectural envelope of the building, as well as the interior design and its connection to adjoining common spaces.
Several consultants were engaged across both projects, allowing for unique efficiencies to be integrated into the design of Napier Street from its very early stages. The use of the same structural engineer allowed for prior knowledge of Whitlam Place’s structural design to be carried over to Napier Street; the construction team were informed of existing footings and structural systems across the duration of the build. During Whitlam Place’s construction, its shared party wall with Napier Street was constructed with foresight in mind, allowing for a boundary condition that saves space on both sides.
Napier Street references many details from both Whitlam Place and the Town Hall, as well as the architects’ reference to Heide II. Collaborative relationships were built with trades, ensuring a high level of detail such as the brickwork, which Freadman White refer to as “an intimate working relationship” with the bricklayer. Forming a large extent of Napier Street’s external skin and its
Freadman White
Words by Nikita Bhopti
Photography by Gavin Green
common areas, variations in the creamy white brick walls were achieved by saw cutting the faces of standard bricks to expose it’s coppery-brown aggregate. The process saw an ongoing collaboration in its pre-installation, having architects involved in the set-out and nominating three various laying patterns across the building.
The common spaces are laced with “elevated detail moments” through precise timber and steelwork. With brass a recurring accent from the entry facade through to the joinery details, it is evident that there is a high level of co-ordination across metalworkers, suppliers, joiners and the architects. From the project’s inception, Freadman White explain how they ensured they “met each of the personnel of the principal contractors”, forming strong bonds that play into an inclusive “workable for all” style of working.
Napier Street stands as a well-honed example of considered multi-residential development. Leaning into
known council objectives, crafting the design through unique negotiations, and maintaining strong collaborative bonds with all contractors involved resulted in Freadman White’s robust method of delivering Napier Street – a building whose side-byside consideration with Whitlam Place is not blaringly obvious, but rather, is spoken loudly through its built form.
Nikita Bhopti is a graduate of architecture working at WOWOWA Architecture. A lead curator of New Architects Melbourne, Nikita is also engaged with multiple mentoring platforms as both a mentor and mentee. She is a regular contributor to Architect Victoria and The Design Writer.
Faye Toogood, Moroso, Zanat and Molteni&C (Hub Furniture)
Right: The singular brick facade takes cues from early modernist living
Left: Each apartment enjoys dual-aspect and cross ventilation through a series of open-air pathways
Architect Victoria
Sorrento House Cera Stribley
Learning from the existing architecture, Cera Stribley developed a framework for making subtle alterations synonymous with the original house.
Set into its Sorrento clifftop landscape, the existing 1960s home by McGlashan Everist Architects is a modernist gem. Brought to Cera Stribley for an update, its owners wanted a sensitive renovation that would meet the needs of contemporary multigenerational family living. Known for their commitment to social and environmental viability, Cera Stribley approached this renovation with care, restraint and integrity, resulting in an enduring home for many generations to come.
Forming a key part of the brief was the client’s desire for a renovation that maintained “the existing character, feel, function and concept of the existing McGlashan Everist design.” With limited documentation of the original house, Cera Stribley was armed with little information recording the key design principles. It was “from walking through the house and discussions with the clients who have lived there for many years,” that Cera Stribley “were introduced to the intricacies of the house and how it operated.” With a largely timber-lined
Below:
Timber paneling was removed, stored and meticulously reinstated to make way for the integration of services, hydronic heating and double-glazed windows.
Photography by Derek Swalwell
Words by Nikita Bhopti
interior, it was the slots in the paneling and screen doors that evidenced the large role that cross ventilation played in bringing the sea breeze into the depths of this seaside home. Natural materials were found across every room of the house used with restraint and minimalism. Cera Stribley note that “the house had remained almost untouched, so it was easy to take cues from the existing.” It was through referring “to the underlying original design principles with any intervention proposed” that they could deliver a sensitive design that worked in seamlessly with the original home.
Gestures both big and small were made, in order to upgrade the home to suit contemporary multigenerational living. This included the removal of a landline phone nook in the living room and upgrading all appliances throughout the home. The large windows capturing views to the ocean were updated to double glazing, putting forward a challenge of maintaining existing detail and design, while accounting for the extra weight of modern windows. It was in the kitchen and bathroom that the home saw the highest level of intervention. However, through adopting a restrained pallet of only two or three materials, and referencing existing detailing, these areas remain synonymous with the original house.
On site, it was through the combination of working closely with builder, Leone Construction, and the use of specialist trades, that this project could be delivered with sensitivity and care. To perfectly match the original exposed aggregate floor, a specialist concrete finisher was brought in, allowing all infilled and new areas to be integrated seamlessly. The house saw a large extent of aged pine used across its existing rooms, so the engagement of a specialist in timber stains was critical for the relining of some of the pine walls. Bespoke woodwork was created for the joinery, allowing these new elements to remain in keeping with the home’s established style. The largest feat, however, seems to be the existing stretched canvas ceilings, with seaweed insulation. While being excellent sound absorbers, Cera Stribley found them in a discoloured state, having been stained from water egress. Through the engagement of a traditional canvas ceiling stretcher, the carpenters were shown how to stretch new ceilings. Larger versions of the tools traditionally used were built, and together, this team replaced all the ceilings across the home.
Chris Stribley, from Cera Stribley, speaks of a sense of camaraderie developed. “I felt that every trade had a story of loving a friend or relative’s modernist house growing up, and got a real buzz working on a project that they could relate to.” Chris speaks of the “collective goal of all parties” being key to delivering a project that upholds the integrity of the existing homea real passion project for all those involved.
The resulting home now stands as a success for multigenerational family living, while being true to its original self. It “speaks to both Australia’s growing love of modernist architecture, as well as our maturing design knowledge.” The restrained additions and subtle alterations showcase Cera Stribley’s time and care spent on learning about the existing home. Paired with clients and trades who value the project, the outcome is a wonderfully modern modernist.
Nikita Bhopti is a graduate of architecture working at WOWOWA Architecture. A lead curator of New Architects Melbourne, Nikita is also engaged with multiple mentoring platforms, as both a mentor and mentee. She is a regular contributor to Architect Victoria and The Design Writer. Architecture
A restrained palette and detailing synonymous with McGlashan Everist Architects informed the design throughout.
Sorrento House
Sorrento House
Practice Team
Cera Stribley, Chris Stribley, Katie Hope, Jess Coulter
Consultant/Construction Team
Bland Connard Menzies (Engineer)
Prime Building Surveyors (Building Surveyor)
Builder Leone Construction
Location
Sorrento, Victoria Bunurong Country
Suppliers
Windows and doors
Vitrocsa and Glass Corp
Timber specialist
The Restorators, Chris Baldry
Stretch canvas ceilings
Aesthetic Precision
Services
Hydronic DPP hydronic
Below:
Slab floors and timber-clad walls encapsulate the views afforded by its clifftop location
Parks Victoria Albert Park Office and Depot Harrison and White with Archier
Photography by Peter Bennetts
Words by Emma Adams
With a complex pattern of use as both green open space and the site of an annual grand prix, Harrison and White with Archier sought to design a building that understands this layered use and to learn how Parks Victoria works on a daily level.
Integrating the building with its park surrounds was important in this context. Planting zones, along with construction materials were central to the design’s sustainable and social credentials. Spatial planning was also key with the central courtyard acting as a source of ventilation and light and an area for gathering. Siting also contributed to the volume of added green space –amenity not commonly associated with office buildings and back-of-house structures.
Originally briefed as two separate buildings, the project comprises a works depot and utility at ground level with office areas above. Harrison and White (HAW) explain “our initial proposal for the site was to merge two separate elements of the brief – the office and depot into a single building – this was to allow greater integration of depot and office and to reduce the overall footprint in the park. This proposal was adopted as a positive evolution of the brief.” This focus and foresight contribute to its success, highlighting the value of open and collaborative communication.
Discussing further how the brief informed their approach, HAW architects note, “the project improves and re-activates this corner of the park, replacing an under-used building and improving the surrounding landscape. The project seeks to remain public despite the secure depot functions.”
With development of the site having high public importance as community green space, the procurement process was rigorous, “the project was well procured – a three stage process, starting with an open Expression of Interest”. The project team worked within council requirements and strove to reach a balance beyond the day-to-day functionality of maintaining parks. Something that visitors and parks officers and employees benefit from. “People can walk into the heart of the building, the main courtyard, which we conceptualised as the park. The perimeter of the building features an in-situ concrete seat, in the tradition of park benches, and this was included as a public offering, to imagine the building as a piece of familiar park infrastructure.” However, “since COVID-19, the courtyard has not been open to the public, which is unfortunate.”
The two architectural practices, Harrison and White with Archier, together with Accuraco project management and Openwork landscape architects were the core team. Wood and Grieve provided general structural and services engineering and Global Consultant Engineering provided specialist CLT advice and certification. HAW architects explain, “the consultant team we developed was a dynamic, design-focused collaboration with supporting engineers.” With the dual benefit of servicing and upkeep of much-loved parkland, and added amenity to those nearby, collaboration with the client, practice and construction teams helped maintain goodwill throughout the construction process. However, there were difficulties that arose. The initial
contractor “went bankrupt during the construction phase, which led to Building Engineering to finish.” From this experience, HAW recommend engaging specialist engineeers from the start of the project. “CLT structural certification is still evolving in Australia –and there isn't (or was not at the time) an Australian Standard for CLT. Ultimately, we required a specialist CLT engineer.”
HAW architects credit an excellent working relationship, aided by strong communication and design documentation, as the main factor in achieving a great result in terms of the built form. “We maintained a good working relationship throughout the project and this allowed both the hurdling of the challenges while delivering the project to budget and to a high quality of finish.”
Emma Adams is managing editor at the Australian Institute of Architects with over 20 years publishing experience. She is an editor, architectural writer and researcher with experience in literary archives and information provision.
Parks Victoria Albert Park Office and Depot
Parks Victoria Albert Park Office and Depot
Practice team
Harrison and White with Archier
Consultant/ Construction Team
Openwork (Landscape)
Accuraco (Project Manager)
Wood and Grieve (Engineer)
Metro (Building Surveyor)
HIP V. HYPE (ESD Consultant)
Builder Building Engineering
Location
Albert Park, Victoria
Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung Country
Suppliers
Cladding and roofing
CLT by KLH, Austria Rainwater tank – TankTec
Furnishings HOW Group
Lighting
Thomas and Betts
Limelite
Inlite
Cooper CocoFlip
Mlight Advance
Parks Victoria Albert Park Office and Depot
Lost for words
Guest
editor: Andrew Mackenzie
The Renaissance gave birth to a period of immense growth in the fields of arts, science and the humanities.
It was an especially good time for architecture, as a rediscovery of the art and architecture of ancient Rome and Greece brought with it a new sense of order, light and space to Italian architecture.
Morphing over time into Mannerism, Baroque, Palladianism and Neo-classicism, it radiated out from Italy into France and England, Russia and across Scandinavia, and eventually all the way to the Americas. Over time a palate of columns and pilasters, domes and vaults became the quintessential language of public, ceremonial and civic architecture across half the world. What explains the immense impact of classical architecture across the world? How did it travel across borders and climates, to propagate with such apparent ease? The answer to these questions, at least in part, is the printing press.
The reproducible book helped make this early form of cultural globalisation possible. It translated and then seeded ancient built form into the modern world of architecture. In the process it was also the medium through which the scattered miscellany of pre-modern building, drafting and making things stand up was formulated, codified and shared across the world. In doing so the book laid the foundations for what would become a profession.
Leon Battista Alberti is considered to have written the first ever printed book on architecture in 1452. However, De re aedificatoria owed a significant debt to a book written fourteen hundred years before, for which we should thank the Florentine scholar Poggio Bracciolini. Around 1414 he ‘discovered’ several manuscripts of Vitruvius's De Architectura, collecting dust in monastic libraries across Europe. He spent the rest of his life promoting the book relentlessly.
Antonio Filarete, another disciple of Vitruvius, may not have written the first printed book on architecture, but he is widely considered to have written the first polemical treatise. Inspired by Vitruvian principles Libro Architecttonico (1646) detailed not only how to design the ideal building, but also the ideal city, which he named Sforzinda. His was not simply a ‘how to’ book of materials, construction and planning. It was a book of fierce ideology, as he railed against the “barbarous modern style” of Gothic Architecture of northern Italy. Architectural criticism’s first moment of bloodsport you might say.
As the influence of the printing press on all areas of knowledge spread, so did the books on architecture. Sebastiano Serlio’s General Rules of Architecture was published in 1537. Andrea Palladio’s book The Four Books On Architecture was published in 1570. Vincenzo Scamozzi’s L’idea dell’architettura universal was published in 1615. While the latter’s work as an architect is now little known his book helped cement his reputation as among “the intellectual father(s) of neo-classicism”, according to Rudolf Wittkower (1953).
I could go on. De re aedificatoria, and the books that followed it, literally defined the principles and proportions of government buildings, galleries, court houses, palaces, cathedrals, opera houses and country manors for centuries to come. They contained detailed examples of ancient case studies and listed variations to different building parts, with advice on construction, process and materials. They were also very popular. Popular non-fiction, you might say, if only you could believe a word that Alberti wrote (Carpo, 2001).
"Wherever there was an architecture movement, there was a scribe (or a legion of them) to help define it, shape it, share it, sell it. The Arts and Crafts had Ruskin, Bauhaus had Gropius, Brutalism had Banham and Critical regionalism had Frampton."
This little snapshot of the early days of architectural publishing should make it clear that words and architecture have been indivisible for centuries. How we understand architecture, how we share its values and how architecture is situated within our changing world, is literally unthinkable without the written word.
Wherever there was an architecture movement, there was a scribe (or a legion of them) to help define it, shape it, share it, sell it. The Arts and Crafts had Ruskin, Bauhaus had Gropius, Brutalism had Banham and Critical regionalism had Frampton. Parametricism?... well I might skip that one.
Most of the greatest books on architecture were written by architects, many of whom were at the very apogee of their careers when their canonical texts were written. What would we really know, after all, about modern architecture without the writing of Wright, Rossi and Corbusier? And who would have thought that 600 years after De re aedificatoria, Robert Venturi’s ComplexityandContradiction would make columns great again. Now, look around. Who plays that role today? How would their ideas be shared? Who would contest them, and thereby make them stronger? If there were answers to these questions, who would be the audience/s for it?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, connected to the world via a HP 920 fax machine, you will have noticed that the world of publishing, printing and communication has been utterly and radically transformed, from niche industry journals to popular glossy magazines. Consider for example, the global magazine behemoth Bauer Media Australia. Last year it announced the closure of a raft of its premium mastheads, having seen its pre-tax earnings shrink from $248m a decade before to an estimated $5m last year (Meade, 2020). More are sure to follow.
Within niche design publishing this trend began almost two decades ago, around the time I first took over as editor of Architecture Review Australia. In the intervening years mastheads have disappeared or significantly slimmed, while editorial budgets have been slashed. Twenty years ago, I commissioned writers for 50c per word. Today 50c per word is aspirational. Many publishers demand writers to work for free, pitched to the author as a step on their long precarious path to a paying gig, sometime.
With the exception of a few resilient examples, publishing standards have fallen through the floor. Criticism has given way to opinions, interspersed with product releases regurgitated as native content. How quaint a footnote in publishing history it now seems, that advertorials were once required, as a code or practice, to be branded as promotional content.
The current beggared state of affairs can hardly be surprising, now that everything’s free. Why buy a book or magazine when there are 130 000,000,000,000 pages of content on Google? This collapse in retail revenue, along with the migration of display advertising revenue to big tech platforms, has forced many niche publishers to hitch their revenue wagons to the canapé train of experience marketing. An expanding spectrum of awards, forums, product launches and speaker tours have created a new subsistence business model, with vendors given paid access to shark among a publisher’s invited readers.
Closer to home for this author, the closure of specialist bookshops like Architext in Melbourne and Sydney in 2017 have been sad to see. More recently, the closure of the Architect’s Bookshop in 2020, launched with tremendous enthusiasm, energy and commitment by Adam Haddow, was a heavy blow
for the Sydney architecture community. It simply could not be sustained.
Taken together, things are not good in the niche world of specialist design publishing. Yet there are also great challenges within academia, and how new knowledge and architectural research is shared, beyond its institutional boundaries. To be blunt, it isn’t.
By a miracle of neo-liberal free-market forces, most academic research is undertaken, written up and peer reviewed at the expense of the taxpaying public, at which point it is published (ergo locked up) on a privately owned platform, behind a paywall that charges more to download a single essay than a year’s subscription to Netflix. No wonder the public watched blithely last year as universities hit the wall. Most people have no idea what they do. End products come and go – bluetooth, microwave ovens, construction technology and design software – magically produced by the market, without any evidence of the painstaking research and theoretical development that was most likely powered by ideas formed within academia (Mazzucato, 2018).
Meanwhile the seemingly endless stream of productsponsored home-renovation TV shows has had, for the most part, a deleterious effect on the general public’s understanding of what architecture is. Who cares about urban context, natural light or enhancing our lives, when architecture’s sole role would seem to be in service of increasing a property’s resale value. As if Australia’s house prices need any further pump priming. Against this challenging background, Lost for words is a moment to take stock. In attempting to do so, I am enormously indebted to those who have contributed to this issue of Architect Victoria, and who have shared their experiences. Each in their own way have a life-long commitment to sharing their appreciation of architecture through words, talking to the profession and to the academy, as well as to that oftenforgotten species, the general public.
I have intentionally framed this theme against the present moment, because I do not believe we are sufficiently alive to what is at stake, right now. Things are, I believe, in a perilous state. However, it would be remiss not to speculate, momentarily, on a possible future. A future with some hope. Firstly, and most profoundly, the events of the last year have shaken the foundations of a free-market neo-liberalism that only recently appeared unassailable. In the wake of a spirited collective defence of the common good, perhaps there is an opportunity for our buildings and our cities to be understood as more than transactional assets. Such a return to the social purpose of architecture needs and demands advocacy, through words, argument, discussion and debate. There is an appetite for this, but it requires the support of a reinvigorated public sector. Through education, cultural programs, events, exhibitions, books, journals and digital forms, a new understanding of our built environment as a collective responsibility, is possible.
Secondly, as much as technology can create cane toads like Amazon, it can also be inherently democratic.
Anyone can be a publisher now. Ideas can be shared easier and cheaper than ever before. But it is hugely disaggregated. What is missing is a collective publishing and distribution ecology that can help organise and filter ideas. If we think of the big tech giants as vast highways of information, what we also need are the small, connecting roads, back lanes and fine-grain connections that bring richness to our daily life.
Thankfully, if we look to the parallel publishing world of news and current affairs, there is hope in the growth of small independent mastheads. Crikey, The Saturday Paper, The New Daily, New Matilda, The Guardian and Michael West Media are just some titles that have seen healthy growth, in both audiences and subscriptions. People will pay for quality news journalism, so why not in the fields of design and architecture?
The future may hold promise, yet right now there is something akin to a crisis slowly unfolding, as words are evermore devalued, degraded and distrusted. You may observe, with some irony, that this apparent crisis is communicated in the form of a magazine. Yet such opportunities to share our thoughts, learn from each other and discuss the things that matter, in a thoughtful, deliberate and generous way, are shrinking. We should treasure such avenues, in whatever format, shape, platform or mode they exist, as if they carry in them the future of architecture. I would argue, they do.
Words helped breathe life into architecture, as both a discipline and a profession, 600 hundred years ago. They have been architecture’s constant companion ever since. We must continue to value that symbiotic relationship, or watch the life drain from both.
Andrew Mackenzie is the founding director of CityLab and codirector of Uro Publications. He has advised on competitions in every state in Australia, assisting both local and state government, as well as universities, corporations, and development authorities. He is an architectural writer, columnist, speaker and the winner of the Australian Institute of Architects 2021 National President’s Prize.
References
Alberti, Leon Battista. Dereaedificatoria.Ontheartofbuildingintenbooks. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988.
Rudolf Wittkower, Vincenzo Scamozzi. London, The Burlington Magazine, 1953. Mario Carpo, Architectureintheageofprinting:orality,writing,typography,andprintedimages in thehistoryofarchitecturaltheory. Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press. 2001.
Amanda Meade, Australia's magazine industry in crisis as bauer media folds seven titles The Guardian May 2020
Mariana Mazzucato, TheValueofEverything:MakingandTakingintheGlobalEconomy. London. Allen Lane. 2018.
How
we understand architecture, how we share its values and how it is situated within our changing world, is literally unthinkable without the written word.
" "
Between words architecture’s and
lived experience
Words by Peter Salhani
In the digital age there’s every reason to think that the photograph is taking over as the medium for how we read and understand architecture.
In the digital age there’s every reason to think that the photograph is taking over as the medium for how we read and understand architecture. More accessible than the written word – and particularly architectural writing that’s heavily theoretical and excludes many from the conversation – an image captures and records a physical moment. But in the seeing of it, imagination can edit that moment, implying alterations and atmospheres that allow us to recognise something beyond the object of the image. So, it is both literal and highly subjective. Few explorations of this idea are as compelling as John Berger’s 1972 opus, Ways of Seeing, a book that changed the modern world. In his introduction Berger wrote: “Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognises before it can speak… It is seeing that establishes our place in the world; we can explain that world with words, but words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by it. The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” The same can be said of architecture. Whatever else has motivated or inspired it, architecture’s spatial purpose is – arguably – best understood by experiencing it ourselves, both as an object in space and as the space within an object. That’s not to invalidate the more considered explanations of a building’s conceptual origins, but it doesn’t make the scholarly review the only path to enlightenment either. Our lived experience may be less erudite and informed but is no less valid. As a writer/interpreter in this space, I’m equally drawn to the visceral response as I am to a scholarly metaphor.
To give culture – particularly the art world – a shakedown, Berger drew together threads of Marxism and art theory to supplant scholarly writing with the primacy of the image. He did it in a visual way, coupling post-Renaissance paintings of nudes with contemporary posters and magazine centrefolds, to prove how similarly they objectified women for the gratification of men.
Audience is crucial to any communication, because we perceive the world subjectively through the lens of our own experience and imagination. This makes the internet such a great enabler in the consumption of architecture – as well as everything else – with archi-porn from around the globe emailed, blogged, Instagrammed and tweeted 24/7. Thousands of projects with crisp headlines and saturated images. Filtering for meaning is overwhelming, so most of us toggle somewhere between surrender and retreat. Berger reflects on cinematic editing as a crucial driver of narrative, using ‘long vistas and close-ups one after the other’ to craft a story that is not explained but
implied. Much of architecture in the media uses this same tactic – to tease narratives out of photographsbut are all narratives equal? No. In making the medium mainstream, the internet has democratised authorship.
Notwithstanding the power of global titans to wield their influence by working the algorithms that harvest and distribute information online, today – in terms of tools and training – all you need to be a publisher is a smart phone and some digital images. No cadetship in journalistic ethics, balance, fact checking and proofreading, just photographs and a few lines of text. Digital publishers have capped our attention spans at 800 words and rarely like to test this limit. And let’s not even start on train-wreck TV shows like The Block or House Rules – a race to the bottom of the renovation-to-riches barrel – offering neither insight nor useful critique, just banal blabbering about taste and real estate value.
At the other extreme is the architects’ own austere website and self-published monograph. Both favour the image over the written word – by reducing barely legible typefaces to mere graphic imprints on a page - knowing that however much or little is written about a project, the images are incontrovertible and seemingly un-editorialised. Architects have long understood this; it’s the basis of their symbiotic relationship with photographers. Indeed, a number of eminent Australian photographers in the field have also studied architecture, creating an interesting chicken-and-egg scenario.
But understanding architecture for me is also experiential. I am not religious, but when I visited Jørn Utzon’s Bagsværd Church on the outskirts of Copenhagen, I was moved beyond words. I’d read almost nothing about this unassuming building, which from the street looks a bit like a warehouse. Perhaps my reaction was to the Utzon story. Perhaps it was because his church – all light, warmth and wit – was the incandescent opposite of the cold oppressive Catholic churches of my childhood, in which I felt diminutive and diminished.
Having spent a large chunk of my life mediating architecture and the thinking behind it to many different audiences – mainly through words but also through the curation of images – I’ve come to believe that words and images are equally important. Before Berger, the Gestalt psychologists of the early 20th century posited that in human perception the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. So, between words and images, combined in a thoughtful way, there may be no dichotomy at all. The image sets imaginations soaring, while the words ground it in context, so that each benefit from the other.
Peter Salhani is a freelance architectural journalist published online and in print, and a content creator for design-based clients. He is a former editor of architectureau and Monument magazine, and cofounder of sparkkle.space, an independent platform interviewing creatives from architecture, design and social action. From 2013 to 2020 he served on the NSW Architects Registration Board, representing consumers and the public interest.
Bagsværd Church by Jørn Utzon on previous page by Seier + Seier
Architect Victoria
Communication
disruption and
Words by Michael Smith
The architecture profession has a growing challenge with how we communicate our knowledge. This challenge is a broad one that spans universities to practice, public outreach and advocacy. While our ideas and knowledge are as vital as ever, our ability to effectively communicate them is changing.
The architecture profession has a growing challenge with how we communicate our knowledge. This challenge is a broad one that spans universities to practice, public outreach and advocacy. While our ideas and knowledge are as vital as ever, our ability to effectively communicate them is changing. Communication is critical for architecture for many reasons; it progresses our profession, improves our practices and transfuses a richness of thought into our projects. It also enables us to connect with our communities, advocate for our profession and the importance of high-quality built environments. It is difficult to overstate the rapid change that has occurred and continues to manifest in the architectural media that is disrupting our communication. This unprecedented change is not simply a story of the old world catching up with technology. It is a confluence of factors from global mega-trends through to crises particular to our profession.
Perhaps the single underlying theme that unites the tangle of factors is the notion of survival. Almost all businesses, organisations and industries are operating under the threat in one way or the other of being disrupted. If you combine this disruption with the challenges of a global pandemic and global climate crisis, it is fair to say that business as normal has never felt more precarious. For media organisations, there has been the long-term struggle to survive a transition to digital media combined with the sudden downturn in advertising revenue of between 40% and 70% due to the pandemic. Among the many broader challenges is how to protect the communication that underpins architecture during this upheaval. In 2016, the now editor of The Age, Gay Alcorn wrote:
For architecture today, we need to face up to the question of how to reinforce the thinking and the communication that underpins our profession, regardless of whether architecture magazines survive. It wont be news that architects have adopted Instagram as their preferred social media. Over the last ten years an entire architectural culture has been developed on this platform. The appeal is obvious, it enables architects to promote their work to a wide audience and it is free to use. This trend is part of a wider movement that has seen architecture practices becoming their own publishers, bypassing editorial assessment, and engaging directly with the public.
This trajectory has seen a massive shift in resources away from publishers. Architectural writers are being employed directly by communications teams within practice and at the same time advertising revenue is moving away from magazines and journals. A recent report from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found that Facebook, Google and YouTube accounted for over 80% of all digital advertising spending in Australia, leaving less than 20% for other forms. Consequently, with this shift we have also seen a dramatic rise in architectural events and awards programs. Events have fantastic social appeal with time-poor experts; it is quicker and easier to appear on a panel than it is to write a long-form article.
The practice-as-publisher model also appears to have had a chilling effect on discourse with the public. The substance of this communication has largely been reshaped into a practice publicrelations exercise rather than critical discussion. This has a significant impact on how architecture practices are perceived by the public.
Open House Melbourne has become one of the leading bodies for speaking directly to the public about the value of good design. Although COVID-19 has clearly interrupted normal operations, there is huge potential to expand these efforts with a permanent space for public advocacy.
In the end it is journalism that matters, not whether newspapers survive
With the pivot to online platforms, the solution is not in doing the same thing with more resources. For this reason, I consider the Built Environment Channel a beacon of opportunity for our profession. By delivering its medium directly into practices, it is a platform by our profession for our profession, a short-form medium streaming industry news and architectural project images with a commitment to putting funds back into our profession.
Finally, on the matter of advocacy to political decision makers, it seems politicians look at our profession’s position statements as the
Long House
self-interested view of a small percentage. The weight of our expertise is either not recognised, or it is drowned out by louder voices. The Our City, Our Square campaign that was undertaken by the Citizens For Melbourne Association helped shape the outcome at Federation Square. This included activities such as letter writing to politicians and newspapers, speaking at council meetings and protesting in a variety of different ways.
An environment without a strong culture of architectural criticism and built environment advocacy, is one that is destined to make mistakes set in concrete. So, where to from here? If we want to be more effective in our built environment advocacy, we need to bring the community along with us. We need to ensure that our objectives and goals are always about the public interest and that we can communicate that interest clearly and concisely. Imagine a world where a community of 100,000 felt empowered to write to politicians, in an informed way, on issues such as design quality, better housing and improving environmental standards. The future success of our profession relies heavily on our ability to communicate, being proactive in adapting to the environment in which we find ourselves by designing and building replacements for the models that no longer work.
Michael Smith RAIA BArch BCM is an architect, writer and co-director of Atelier Red+Black. As a design advocate Michael was involved with the Our City, Our Square campaign and the campaign against the EastWest Link. Michael is also the consulting architect for the Built Environment Channel.
Left: The Yarra Building, Federation Square. Photo by Michael Smith
Humour
is language a universal
Words by Emma Telfer
Sharp wit and a touch of well-timed sarcasm can be the first door for a populist audience to walk through in contemplating what is right and what is fundamentally wrong with our modern built environment.
Sharp wit and a touch of well-timed sarcasm can be the first door for a populist audience to walk through in contemplating what is right and what is fundamentally wrong with our modern built environment.
During an interview with architect Peter McIntyre (2018) for the Modern Melbourne series, his admiration for one of Australia’s most notable public architectural critics Robin Boyd was palpable, “Boyd’s writings in The Age were inspirational. Melbourne just waited for his Monday morning article. It was so beautiful. But he wasn't without critics.” McIntyre recounted how: “Boyd would draw sketches of modern houses and say how they work and so forth. And I do remember the occasion when somebody wrote in and said, that house that you published, it's not really fit to be a house. It's more like a hen's house. The following week, he wrote the most critical article. And the heading was ‘A Hen's House is Not Always a Fowl House’. He was so witty. He was absolutely, unbelievably witty. He could convey the message brilliantly.”
Our discussion brought into sharp focus two strategies that Boyd deployed to create meaningful public engagement with architecture through the written word: he created a vital feedback loop through his writing in The Age from 1948, inviting readers to ‘critique the critic’, voicing their opinion on the latest housing design printed in the paper's pages; and he deployed humour to create a common or shared language that resonated with a popular audience.
Boyd encouraged written dialogue between the profession and the public, providing an opportunity for the profession to listen (if they were paying attention) to public opinion and gain a deeper societal awareness of what Australians valued in their homes, their streets, and their suburbs. However, we haven't had a Boyd for a generation in Australia, partly because the role of public-interest architectural journalism has been decimated and partly because of the increasingly litigious nature of our society – and resultant fear of public critique.
I recently spoke with Christopher Hawthorne, who was the architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times (2004—2018) before taking on the inaugural posting of Chief Design Officer for the City of Los Angeles. What struck me about our discussion was the important role he played and continues to play as a design translator. Not only have we not had a Boyd, but we have also not even had a Hawthorne in past decades within Australia – a design translator who interrogates the transformation of our cities through the pages of a popular daily paper that reaches a great diversity of readers.
But perhaps we have moved beyond the need for one authoritative voice in our pages when the voice of many can be heard across the new communication landscape of podcasts, social
Above: Peter McIntyre at MPavilion 2021
Still from: Peter + Dione McIntyre 1950–1960, directed by Toby Reed
media, and on-demand TV, and are represented by a new generation of design commentators and even entertainers.
Tim Ross (aka Rosso) is a modern-day master at connecting audiences to deeper design issues through the use of humour. A strange breed of comedian, activist and design aficionado, Ross has a natural bent towards Australia’s architecture of yesteryear, with his Man About the House series located in some of our finest modernist treasures. But ABC’s Streets Of Your Town punched past modernism to consider the aesthetics of our suburbs including our recent obsession with McMansions, the largest houses by square metre in the world.
Take Ross’ Streets Of Your Town (2016) interview with a couple who have a lot of love for their oversized McMansion in Melbourne’s suburbia, reflecting on the convenience of their drive-in existence.
Tim Ross: Do you actually use your front door at all?
Couple being interviewed (who
look perplexed by
the question): No.
The tone may be light and lacking in critical review of the issues inherent in the modernist movement he is so fond of. Still, Ross’ approach has serious undertones, and he has been awarded the National Trust Heritage Award for Advocacy (2018) and the National President’s Prize from the Australian Institute of Architects (2019) for his significant contribution to Australian architecture.
However, Ross’ approach to inspiring everyday Australians to appreciate our rich design heritage is far out shadowed by the plethora of renovation reality television, shows which suck the air out of smart debate and dumb-down design discussions. Maximising capital growth is thinly veiled in a veneer of ‘interior design’ and ‘architectural features’ and documenting a contestant’s selection
of crappy counterfeit lighting for the 50-square-metre butler’s pantry is as sophisticated as it gets. Advocates and drum bangers need to tread carefully so as not to alienate audiences when interrogating popular taste and preferences, and Rosso walks a very fine line. Instagram accounts such as @uglymelbournehouses stomp all over said fine line, calling out houses and developments of questionable taste and quality with scathing and hilarious comments, much to the chagrin of the owners or developers. While not created as an advocacy platform in the traditional sense, these accounts do inch their followers closer to understanding the persistent flaws in much of our suburban residential development, while inviting non-experts to have a say about their changing neighbourhoods.
Social media can be dangerous territory when seeking to better understand societal views, as the bloodsport that is social media commentary and 1-star Google reviews can, at times, dominate what would be a valuable tool for engagement and inciting curiosity in its viewers. However, public debate is important to harness.
In early 2018, Open House Melbourne hosted a free public debate (hosted in public space) about the most contentious issue facing Melbourne’s civic heart at the time: Apple moving into Federation Square. The state government decision to demolish the Yarra Building to make way for a holier-thanthou Apple Store included zero public consultation
Above: Tim Ross, awarded the 2019 National President's Prize
Social media can be dangerous territory when seeking to better understand societal views, as the bloodsport that is social media commentary and 1-star Google reviews can, at times, dominate what would be a valuable tool for engagement and inciting curiosity.
and the announcement rolled out under the cover of Christmas holidays.
The purpose of the debate was to make the decision by the Victorian government more public and to provide a diversity of views in real time, instead of relying on the echo chamber of opinion that is social media. Face time not FaceTime. And although the tone was serious, there were some entertaining moves by debaters, once again illustrating how humour can bridge across the divide.
The debate was one cog in a campaign that resulted in Apple pulling out of the deal, a campaign that demonstrated public opinion does matter, and people feel very strongly about place. Did Boyd’s writing ever mobilise people to affect real change in their city such as this example?
What is clear is that the challenges of our time are immense, with the context of rapid climate change, and the social effects of pandemic at the forefront of our minds. More than ever, we need design translators who can engage the public on intrinsic values and around the pivotal role of design in enabling improved quality of life.
There is a need to find a common ground with people in an industry increasingly distant from those it serves, and humour can be that ground –warming up the room for deeper design discussion. No one communication platform can offer an answer, rather there is a need for clarity and accessibility of messages across the spectrum, from public programming to social media. New, diverse voices should be given opportunity to contribute to our discourse on cities.
Ultimately, at a time where negativity fatigue is a risk, we need to construct collective and positive – if not a touch funny – messages about a better built future, enabled through design.
Emma Telfer is director of culture and strategy at Assemble, a housing developer (and publisher of Assemble Papers) on a mission to make thoughtfully designed, sustainable homes more accessible to more people. Prior to Assemble, she was at the helm of Open House Melbourne, a public architecture organisation and registered charity that works to improve design literacy.
Profit, publish,
and perish: words in the university sector
Words by Hélène Frichot
At a loss for words. Struck dumb. Speechless. Responses such as these, suffused with affective shock, suggest that you have apprehended something incomprehensible. You have no words readily available to describe what you are witnessing.
Certainly, 2020 erupted with a number of mediated events sufficient to render you, anyone, speechless: from raging bushfires and other incidents of the climate emergency, to a virulent pandemic that continues to spread, to the disturbing rise of populism, to the horrors of class, race and gender injustice. When words are the stock and trade required of your profession, then words must continue to be sourced, tamed and redistributed. Here the profession or sector in question is higher education, and the concerned intellectual labourer is the architectural academic. In higher education, organised as it is by the expectation that active researchers will publish, and that those published outcomes will satisfy an agreed metric of so many peer-reviewed articles per year, then clearly the time is never right to suffer a loss of words. You must represent even the unrepresentable to achieve career progression. In fact, there is a surfeit of words, a seething excess of the slippery, discursive things with something like two million articles published each year across more than 30,000 journals worldwide. The process is an arcane one relying on the unpaid labour of academics to undertake the blind or double-blind peer-review; blind being where the reviewer is given the author’s name but not vice versa – often the case with book manuscript reviews; double-blind assuming author and reviewer’s names are both concealed.
I say ‘unpaid labour’ here, in so far as such peer-review work is expected to be undertaken above and beyond the general day-to-day work demands of academia. There is the editorial selection of adequate reviewers, and then the agreement of two reviewers to accept the author’s work into their shared community of research, or not. Given time constraints and tendencies toward the territorialisation of knowledge domains, peer reviewers’ responses can be hasty, and even downright nasty. Still, double-blind peer-review can be the means by which otherwise under-represented scholars are allowed into the academic game. Ideally, class, race and gender, and the unconscious bias associated with their designations, disappear under the covers of such blind-folded review.
Then there is the matter of where all this material, these thousands and millions of words, is being published. The most strategic researcher will identify those journals that result in a higher H-Index, this being – along other indexes such as the i10Index used by Google Scholar – the means by which the success of a scholar is generally recognised. This has to do with the reputation of the journal, how much the scholar has published and importantly, how often the
scholar has been cited by other scholars. The system, perhaps unsurprisingly, is set up predominantly with the sciences and less with the humanities in mind. Architecture, it goes without saying, sits somewhere uncomfortably between.
Then there is the issue of what kind of obscure global system of power and influence you are subscribing to, depending on which journal you publish with, and who owns it. Just to mention two obvious choices, there are those journals, including The Journal of Education, Architectural Theory Review, Architecture and Culture, that are owned (and not always by choice, but because they have been traded onwards) by Informa under the Taylor and Francis imprint. Then there are journals such as Environment and Planning A, B, C, and D, owned by Sage. You might be uneasy to discover that if you publish under the umbrella of the former – which includes those book titles held by Routledge – then the acquisition hungry profitmaking venture is listed under the FTSE 100 and has interests in pharmaceuticals, biotech and the beauty sector. Sage Publications, in contrast, will be owned by a charitable trust once its current majority owner Sara Miller, who co-founded the company in 1965, passes away. The aim being to maintain its independence in support of its credo to improve society and support the citizens of the future. It’s an interesting exercise to peruse both websites to check out the different messages and policy frameworks being communicated.
The difference and the role that profit plays is worth reflecting upon, and it’s also worth reflecting on the intellectual labour-time dedicated to producing content that is often supported by taxpayers’ money. For instance, where research is emerging from an Australian Research Council grant, or in the Swedish context where I have been working the last eight years in higher education, where your position as a civil servant means you are funded by the taxpayer toward whom you might consider yourself ethically responsible. Let’s say you want to make your publicly funded scholarship available to the public who has funded it, and yet may not have a subscription to the university library that has paid a considerable amount to include the journal in its database. You would be obliged to pay a sum, something between $1500-3000 per article maybe more, to make your work openly available. From the position of the unaffiliated, those members of the public keen to engage and read recent scholarly research, one article can cost around $AUS 60 (I just checked one of my own from Architectural Theory Review, which was published in 2010).
One essay download = 1 year Netflix
Private company charges for access
Research publicly funded
Research undertaken
Research peer reviewed
Research locked behind paywall
Research copywrited
With popular sites like Academia.edu where scholars can build their profiles and upload pdfs of their work to be shared with others, the lines demarcating copyright permission tend to be tested. As an article I spotted in The Scholarly Kitchen points out, much of the content hosted by Academia.edu is probably illegal in terms of contravening copyright agreements, though it is complicated. Academia. edu is crafty in its insidious inflation of an anxious academic’s ego, sending notifications to alert you to how many reads you have succeeded in attracting this month, including graphs describing the analytics. There is a catch though, should you want to know who exactly is reading, or should you want more information, then it quickly becomes a user-pays system. ResearchGate, another site for building profile and rendering visible one’s research publication track record, explains that you can upload an article for private use and to be shared with co-authors. Though by rendering the name and bibliographical details of the article available, and perhaps even providing a brief abstract, eager punters may approach you to send them a copy. It remains unclear whether these and other such platforms are in any way the answer. It’s always important to ask: who is likely to profit the most? It’s unlikely to be either the academic or the curious member of the public.
In this wordy mix of profit and the wellknown mantra ‘publish or perish’, you might begin to wonder where and whether words are being enunciated with a public in mind, and whatever happened to the public intellectual, and is it even possible to speak of such a thing as the public good, without being laughed at? McKenzie Wark, for her part, argues that rather than lamenting the demise of the public intellectual – here you are to think of such existentialists as de Beauvoir and Sartre – a shift in vocabulary would be worthwhile toward a thinking with general intellects, in the plural. This is a notion she gleans from Marx, nodding to the fact that today the process of extracting value from intellectual labourers has become more refined in the university sector which, as we all know, is meanwhile run like a business. General intellects make the collective attempt, despite all the considerable constraints and inevitable co-options, to offer an account of the situation we find ourselves in today as we grapple alongside so many others with the “forward momentum of commodification” and its associated “destruction of both nature and social life.” (McKenzie Wark, (2017) GeneralIntellects:Twenty-OneThinkers for the Twenty-First Century, London: Verso: 3) Platforms which claim to collectivise our efforts
and then sneak in a pay wall so that authors might receive more data analytics simply do not perform the task of collecting and making publicly available our shared-knowledge resources.
We might further ask who we are speaking to when we write, who is our audience and if we are reaching out far enough? If it turns out we are only speaking to ourselves and doing so in shibboleths that turn in hermeneutic circles, then no doubt it’s time to stand back and rethink our approach.
You might well be at a loss for words, but as a well-paid intellectual labourer in the university sector, it seems to me there is an urgent need for words to be spoken. At the same time – suffering and enjoying the current experience of a great slowing down brought on by the pandemic – wondering where and when words might be spoken more slowly and published at decelerated speeds?
What if you were to publish less and let the words come to you more slowly, spending some time thinking before you rush to fill the vacuum with speech? To give pause, to hesitate, amid a loss of words. I speak to myself as much to you, dear reader. For we must also remember the dearth of time available to sit down and slowly, closely, read these proliferating, sometimes profiteering, sometimes politically urgent, words.
Hélène Frichot, architectural theorist and philosopher, writer and critic, is professor of architecture and philosophy, and director of the Bachelor of Design, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at The University of Melbourne. She is guest professor, and the former director of critical studies in architecture, School of Architecture, KTH Stockholm, Sweden.
Words by Gerard Reinmuth
Can the desire to reproduce the formal, spatial and material repertoire that garnered the most ‘likes’ possibly be resisted? Is our work being curated by Instagram?
“It was inconceivable it was already over it was foreseeable that most of Australia would become uninhabitable that Australians might become climate refugees in their own land said a visiting climatologist. She wanted to post something cheerful she took a photo of her feet in the new sandals she had bought at Sydney Airport. New shoes! she wrote” (Flanagan).
That Anna – the Instagram-addicted protagonist in Richard Flanagan’s latest novel – is an architect, suggests an uncanny read by Flanagan of the inherent synergy between a medium whose currency is images and the discipline best able to utilise it. And certainly, architectural discourse would appear to have been hijacked by the medium – how else can one explain the speedy erosion of separate schools of architecture that celebrated regional and intellectual diversity and their fusion now into a single, borderless Instagrammable project where, ironically, it’s harder than ever to detect an architectural project.
Chantalle Mouffe’s work on agonism gained traction over the past decade among the architectural intelligentsia clustered around the academy. Mouffe’s promise of a world where we would all be frenemies, engaged in positive conflict that further elaborated upon a society of increasingly differentiated points of view, woven together in a tapestry that, together, underpinned by their agreement to respectfully disagree, could achieve great things. The idea of being engaged in perpetual but productive contest did not reckon on the power of social media to unify and consolidate different parts of society into giant tectonic plates that push up against each other but never meaningfully fray enough to engage. The events in the US capital at the time of writing could not be a better exemplar of this consolidation of divisions into separate echo chambers, rather than a fraying and intertwining of edges. Debate is dead, long live the ‘likes’.
It may always have been so, this internal feedback loop between particular formal, spatial or material tropes popular at any one time and the constituencies that buy magazines, promote architects and commission projects. But never before has the loop been so instant, and so efficiently reinforced in the release of dopamine –the feel-good hormone that creates addictions of the type Anna experiences through its ability to provide a reward on request. In turn, this leads to a repeat in the behaviour that triggered the reward. The horizons of the mind close in and consolidate around what is rewarded by the social network.
She peruses the avalanche of ‘likes’ left in response to their latest Instagram post. Her ‘friends’
respond enthusiastically to images of raw concrete and blond timber, a tonal range helped along by the desaturation so popular in architectural photography at present. The addition of arches adds another 200 likes. Bricks? Plants? Oh, plants make them go crazy. Can any of us truly claim that they operate separate to the dopamine drive in which these platforms trade? Can the desire to reproduce the formal, spatial and material repertoire that garnered the most ‘likes’ possibly be resisted? Is our work being curated by Instagram? It would appear so, given the swarming nature of social media algorithms that lead the like-minded to each other, to be locked in an endless feedback loop of dopamine gifts, reinforcing behaviours that fuse us into a single meta-project with ever narrowing boundaries. The diversity that formed such an essential part of our collective architectural identity – and which has fuelled often ferocious debate – appears to be flattening under the same series of washed-out filters.
The dopamine contract we make with social media is however only one side of the mirror. On the other, social media in turn makes a contract with advertising, such that our dopamine is monetised. We are now the product, contributing to data fields that are so sophisticated that we are no longer in control of what we see when we open our social media accounts. Rather, we receive a curated feed that in turn leverages our time and spend on the platforms. Yes, the architectural publishing industry always depended on a contract with capital, but at least that dependency was an open contest, played out in debates between magazine editors and owners and constantly and transparently negotiated. At least we know why we have seen thousands of Zip boiler ads by the time we are fifty. But now, the flows of capital upon which the dissemination of images depends have become so efficient and all pervasive that they move, frictionless and undetected, through our own fingers as we interact with the screen.
If the showing of The Social Dilemma on Netflix incited small numbers of people to leave their social media accounts and ban children from having them – in a last-ditch attempt to save their subjectivity from total consumption by capital – then what is the architectural equivalent? The written corollary of Instagram – Twitter – might be argued as a counter. But again, although textual, the short-form rapid-interaction mode of engagement appears better suited for the exchange of short barbs than long-form reflection. Stepping outside social media into the decimated landscape of architectural publishing, perhaps solace may be found in the fully sponsored (or academy funded) journal – noting that
Yes, the architectural publishing industry always depended on a contract with capital, but at least that dependency was an open contest, played out in debates between magazine editors and owners and transparently negotiated. " "
even independent journals are effectively subsidised by the academic salaries of their contributors. While it can be argued that these journals play to a niche audience, the audience may argue that it was always this niche that moved the discipline forward. It may be no coincidence that this format has slowly increased again in promise, in parallel with the hollowing out of other journals by the forces exerted through the advertising dollar, with the last decade already seeing a number come and go – the Italian journal San Rocco comes to mind, while Ardeth is a few issues old, and Log endures. These publications, low on images and long on peerreviewed essays, attempt to find spaces to discuss architecture in a fuller political and disciplinary way than is possible in other formats that themselves are perhaps now no more than printed Instagram. These journals provide a much needed hope that while we are in what feels like an accelerating end game, exit ramps are still in place that offer a future where critique may still be possible. We must ferociously support them, lest the dopamine wash of images continues to erode space for discourse, lest we find ourselves truly lost for words.
Gerard Reinmuth is founding director of the architectural practice TERROIR (1999-) and professor of practice at the School of Architecture at the University of Technology, Sydney (2011-) where he is also currently the associate head of school. Gerard’s practice, research and teaching spins around explorations of the agency of the architect in the context of contemporary economic and political tendencies.
Penguin Parade Visitor Centre on previous page by TERROIR.
Photo by Peter Bennetts
Richard Flanagan (2020) The Living Sea of Waking Dreams, Knopf, p138
Words
Words by Hamish Lyon
accountable
make you
As the slow world of formal writing seems to fade into history, the question before us is whether architects will continue to write, as they have for centuries, or will memes and emojis become the universal measure of appreciation and success.
As the slow world of formal writing seems to fade into history, the question before us is whether architects will continue to write, as they have for centuries, or will memes and emojis become the universal measure of appreciation and success. There are many reasons why writing may be in decline, not least because it requires precision, clarity, grammar, punctuation and cognitive awareness. Good writing requires the capacity to synthesize complex ideas into a coherent written structure. None of this satisfies the voracious speed and appetite of social media.
Perhaps this is why the current perceived leaders of communication, at least in popular culture, are blue-tick Tweeters and Instagram influencers. The global explosion of commentary and debate that followed the permanent suspension of @ RealDonaldTrump, for violating Twitter’s Glorification of Violence Policy, demonstrates just how deeply entrenched social media has become, even within the highest levels of government policy and international relations. In this case it also demonstrated how, whether published or tweeted, we are all inescapably accountable to the words we use.
But I have hope, beyond 280 characters. Vasari won’t go away that quickly, neither will Le Corbusier’s Towards a New Architecture or Aldo Rossi’s The Architecture of the City. Jane Jacobs great contribution with The death and life of Great American Cities was a monument to conviction and the power of the written word. And who would have thought a clothing categorisation S, M, L, XL would be the title of an architectural treatise to explain late 20th century urbanism.
Words as currency
Given the current context of the global pandemic, many countries continue to face extended lockdowns with the daily news constantly reporting on models of contagion and death. Being confined to your house or apartment for an extended period has turned us all into news junkies. And while audiences for Netflix and other video-streaming services have boomed over this period, so too has the audience for the written word. The New York Times added 600,000 new subscribers over a single quarter, while in Australia the ABC, The Guardian and Sydney Morning Herald and other mastheads have all reported huge audience growth over 2020. This demonstrates significant public trust and support for quality journalism.
As a practising architect, the work of the Australian Institute of Architects also clearly represents its national collective members. There are, however, fewer and fewer opportunities to write as part of a public debate. As an ardent student in the 1980s, I read, re-read, studied and engaged with every edition of Transition magazine. It was one of a number of publications engaged with architectural polemic and contemporary political ideas. As an example, Ian MacDougall’s review of Howard Raggatt’s 1981 Japan Architect Magazine Competition (Shinkenchiku) for a house on the grounds of the museum of the 20th century (a call for the ‘quintessence of the urban detached house’) was a clear case of ideology, political and religious support. Raggatt’s competition entry was based on a fervent and unwavering ideal that the Christian faith would prevail as the preferred model for future universal consumption. The entry proposed a model for the future suburban house, with the benefit of the 12 apostles camped out in lodgings in the back garden but under the guardianship of a high-voltage electrical pylon. A curious suburban dream.
Some 40 years later, I’m not sure these words would represent the current global religious or geo-political context. The ten-minute podcast or TedTalk seems to be the current forum for ideology and religious dissemination. The important factor (for this student forty years ago) was that the written review was published for students to learn and develop their knowledge. The debate was both frozen in print and time, yet also allowed to develop over time.
The word and the sketch
When architects no longer write, ideas can drift into cartoon narratives. The Hollywood cliché of
a masterpiece drawn on the back of a napkin is commonly seen as a creative, benign and nonpolitical activity. It can, however, be corrosive to the community it intends to serve. Recently, this was placed into sharp focus by a Melbourne architect who erected large hand-drawn political placards in his front garden. Multiple illustrations were used to compare the Victorian Premier, Daniel Andrews, with the infamous dictator Adolf Hitler. Extreme, absurd, bizarre? Politics and historical facts aside, the association between the Holocaust death camps and the COVID-19 lockdown seemed an odd message for a Victorian community trying to emerge from a pandemic.
So why use this technique of caricature to demonstrate a political and ideological point of view? Perhaps because it is easy. Too easy. To reason and debate through the written word is difficult, complex, ambiguous, annoying. It takes time. Words require deep thought, historical perception and the possibility of being proven wrong. Words make the writer accountable.
Translating this to the world of architecture, there was once a time when the architect/patron relationship could be close and trusting, even for projects of great cost and complexity. In such a world an inspired sketch or parti was often all that was needed to win the commission. Today it is not that simple. More robust and analytic tools are needed.
From Utopia to Request For Tender and back again
For the professional practice of architecture, both large and small, clarity of communication is of paramount importance. Although the precise definition of drawings, schedules and specifications are becoming ever more important, words remain the top of the legal list. If the words are not well crafted, architects can be condemned to being simply the purveyors of documents for the managing contractor and on occasion used against them for the purpose of litigation.
The written word, as documented intent, has always been the backbone of the practicing professional, whether the architect is delivering a house, a school, a hospital or even a major national infrastructure project. The irony and comedy of the ABC program Utopia reveals today’s reality. The constant reports and submissions that appear on (the main character) Tony’s desk every day highlights a true reflection of how public policy and project outcomes are interconnected. Despite the comedic
background, the show illustrates that national, state and local policy can be made on the back of written recommendations. What is also sadly all too true in this all-too-real comedy, is the idea that, at the policy level, genuine writing has become replaced with slogans.
At a contractual level, current procurement process for most large public Infrastructure projects requires a complex multi-staged process that starts with an Expression of Interest (EOI) followed by a selected Request for Tender (RFT). The final tenders are required to respond to a complex series of proforma documents, schedules, spreadsheets and all within strict word limits. This tightly organised system produces, on the one hand, extreme limitations, while on the other the opportunity for creativity. Written text aimed at maximum benefit is not much different to an end of school exam. The over-used request for value-add, global engagement, or point of difference, means minor advantages must be utilised to maximum effect. Thankfully architects and the profession are still tenuously bound by a number of complex and legislated requirements, including the Architects Act 1991
The Architects Act
The Architects Act remains the cornerstone of the practicing architect. It is the foundation of professional acumen. But to accord with its requirements the practicing architect must develop a range of skills, experiences and the ability to use the written word as a mechanism to engage with clients, managing contractor and a never-ending range of legal opinions. Evermore challenged by the emergence of contemporary procurement processes, such as Early Contractor Involvement, Design and Construct or Town Planning Drawings are good enough’, the Architects Act continues to support the need for clarity and the opportunity for architects to work from a defined scope of service – in writing. A well-crafted variation response or a forensic reply to a Request for Information from site, is the equivalent to a major design idea. The narrative in the responding text needs to be both persuasive and aware of ongoing liabilities. Sometimes writing is all that stands between a disastrous value-managed design variation and an architectural idea that is followed through to completion. Between failure and success.
Although architects are seen as simply a profession that draws the pictures to create a built object, the reality is far more complex. It requires
the translation of information through a complex series of systems to mediate the quality of the final built outcome. These processes are a great benefit to architects who can find themselves on an equal footing with clients, managing contractors and sub-contractors, using written correspondence to overcome the old fashion idea that it was ‘lost in the mail’. Enormous server farms in the mid-west of the US now keep everything ever written and everyone somewhat equally liable.
Architect as future citizen
For these reasons the future of writing, not just as critical and cultural commentary, but as professional practice, must be defended. It must not be allowed to be stifled by convention, governance and legality. It remains the architect’s right to express their individual or collective ideas through writing. The necessity for communication via the virtual and digital platforms of Zoom, Teams and other programs has highlighted the need to make communication a vital part of operations. It also demonstrates that physical geography, locality and nationality has become less of a constraint.
The COVID-19 pandemic may yet leave a positive footprint. In learning to adapt to the new normal we may yet return to the solidity of words to record important ideas, rather than shifting distractedly through the perpetual blur of images on social media.
Sometimes writing is all that stands between a disastrous value-managed design variation and an architectural idea that is followed through to completion.
"
Hamish Lyon is the director of architecture and design at NH Architecture and leads the practice’s design thinking and direction. He is involved in projects of all scales and typologies and is responsible for coordinating the design continuity of the NH studio.
Written
and
the value of curated: architectural stories
Words by Katelin Butler
Architectural journals are powerful agents in the story of architecture, not only through the projects that are published, but in the way the editor of the journal critically represents them.
Architectural journals are powerful agents in the story of architecture, not only through the projects that are published, but in the way the editor of the journal critically represents them. The highly considered editorial composition or act of curation becomes a commentary in itself, both on the architecture presented within the pages of the magazine and on a particular architectural moment in time. Through this lens, the activity of editing might be understood as a mode of architectural story telling or critical analysis.
In my role as editorial director at Architecture Media, I always endeavour to take an objective viewpoint when collating a journal, particularly a journal of record such as Architecture Australia. The selection of projects and commissioning of content is not about publishing buildings that an editor may or may not personally like, but rather selecting those projects that have architectural merit or warrant further discussion by the industry. Although these are educated decisions, an aspect of personal judgement is inevitable – alongside incident, chance, and serendipity. While the editor’s own judgement or subjective viewpoint is subtly infused into the journal, it is not only the editor who contributes to this commentary. Other cultural agents – such as the photographer, advisory committees, writers and even the commercial arena in which the journal finds itself –also have a bearing.
As we all know, architects rely on publication of their projects for promotional purposes. The curatorial selection of which projects make it into the pages of various architectural publications (whether online or physical) can impact the commissioning decisions of prospective clients. The benefits of having a project published are significantly elevated if the critique is authoritative and engaging. This raises the responsibility of the editor to make considered decisions on what to publish and who to write about it – as it may have influence on who designs our buildings.
An architectural journal of record is also an important educational resource for the industry itself – it is usually comprised of critical, peer-reviewed articles and is aimed at furthering knowledge within the profession. A journal of record is authoritative and trusted, giving voice to research and theoretical propositions that advance architectural thinking. Even more significantly, its role within the industry means that it is referred to by people beyond the industry, including decision and policy makers, and other people who can have a huge impact on what is broadly understood as public debate about the city and the future of our built environment.
An architectural journal of record is also an important educational resource for the industry itself – it is usually comprised of critical, peer-reviewed articles and is aimed at furthering knowledge within the profession.
A particularly overt example of this occurred in the Parliament of Victoria in 2018, when Philip Dalidakis, then Minister for Trade and Investment, read out an entire article written by Donald Bates commissioned by ArchitectureAu.com In this oped, Bates explained his reasons for supporting the controversial proposal to build an Apple store at Federation Square, which was originally designed by his practice, Lab Architecture Studio. His reading means that this information is now in Hansard.
However, traditional publishing models are currently in a state of flux. The way we consume architecture and the ideas that shape buildings is changing, bringing both challenges and opportunities. The journal of record now competes with a barrage of unfiltered content in the form of click-driven online publications and social media. This content –a stream of the ever-present in which images often crowd out the written word – is produced much faster than traditional publications and consumed at a similar pace. The editorial composition, although often aesthetically pleasing and inspiring, does not offer the commentary or critical analysis of a wellcurated publication.
It is important to note that this is not about print versus online publishing. There are plenty of finely curated publications online, rich with critical commentary. Rather, it is about slow versus fast publishing. They each have a different nature and serve a different purpose. These days, it is normal to use both fast and slow publishing simultaneously – such as a magazine that has an associated suite of social media accounts. While these new media models give anyone the opportunity to have their say, they also make it more challenging than ever to decipher who has authority or credibility and what is worth our engagement. To add to this, often the level of commercial transparency is compromised making the source unclear – especially for a reader who has not got a discerning eye over what they consume. Traditionally, a journal of record was about documenting what is happening at the time. With the onset of social media and other fast publishing, the journal’s role has evolved to be more permanent or book-like. (An increase in the number of themed issues of Architecture Australia per year is a tangible example of the journal’s evolution.) Fast publishing is akin to watching a sports match in real time, whereas slow publishing is the more analytical interpretation of the game. The concern with fast publishing taking over the role of recording a moment in time is that the story is there one minute and overrun by new content the next. What happens to the capturing of a memory? What, indeed, would happen to our
collective industry knowledge if our only source of information was social media? A collated set of journals, in print or online, are a valuable point of reference for the industry – the cyclic nature of the world makes it difficult to distinguish innovation from iteration. We must simultaneously learn from the past and look to a future of new ways of applying architectural and design agency – and having the significant body of knowledge thoroughly documented is paramount.
Images and words can travel far and wide, but a building is fixed in its place. The only way to experience architecture, other than travelling to the building itself (which, in these times, is more challenging than ever!) is via media, regardless of format. Therefore, how architecture is published plays a critical role in its representation. Both fast and slow publishing have their roles and we need to learn to navigate this hybrid world. The risk, however, is that fast overruns slow, which would be to the detriment of the profession.
During these times of crisis, I would argue that research, knowledge and critical thinking have never mattered more. With the state government looking to the built environment to stimulate the economy, this is our chance to make sure that the message is clear about the value of architects and good design. The careful and considered curation process needs to be retained to ensure that exposure is given to valuable research and theoretical propositions. An absence of trusted architectural criticism has far wider ramifications than those within the industry alone. If it is ever going to have a seat at the public policy table, architecture needs its stories, written and curated.
Katelin Butler is the editorial director at Architecture Media, publisher of Architecture Australia, the national magazine of the Australian Institute of Architects. She holds a Bachelor of Environmental Design and a Master of Architecture.
CELEBRATING 90 YEARS OF THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS
As we mark our 90th year, we’ll be looking back on how Australian architecture has shaped our cities and communities, recognising the rich history and bright future of the architectural profession.
President’s Prize
The President’s Prize was created in 2000. It is awarded “to an individual or company for outstanding achievement or contribution for the profession over a period of time”.
Amy Muir is the Director of MUIR Architecture, Immediate Past Victorian Chapter President, and a lecturer at RMIT University. Amy achieved the recognition of Fellow Institute membership in 2020. She has been instrumental in championing best practice for all architects both within our industry and the broader building and construction sector.
Amy is committed to supporting the education of young architects, she continues her engagement as a guest lecturer at numerous universities alongside her current role at RMIT. She was recognised for her professional engagement in 2016 when she was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects Victorian and National Emerging Architect prize. Amy has shown incredible dedication to the membership, extending her presidency and placing the profession first throughout an extended period. Her leadership and commitment to architecture is exemplary.
Fellows
Andrew Maynard is a passionate, innovative and intuitive architect, whose conceptual work and built projects have been recognised and celebrated on a global scale. As founder of Austin Maynard Architects, his office won the inaugural Asia Pacific ‘Design Studio of The Year’ and, in 2019, were awarded the Canberra Medallion for the highly considered, historically sympathetic renovation of a post-war bungalow. With sustainability at the core, Maynard’s work embraces culture, context, deliberate design and community connection, producing architecture that is, at once, thoughtful, intelligent, playful and edgy.
Antony DiMase, sole director of DIMASE ARCHITECTS, created an architectural practice that has served the local community for the past 20 years. His practice in Fitzroy North is also a part time art gallery for emerging artists based on the theme of the art of the built environment. He has trained graduates to become registered architects and supported practitioners from nonEnglish backgrounds. Antony helped set up Australian Architects Declare and the secretary for the Citizens for Melbourne which successfully stopped the demolition of the Yarra Building at Federation Square and prevented an Apple megastore being built in its place.
Delia Teschendorff is an awardwinning architect with a diverse career spanning over 20 years, founding Delia Teschendorff Architecture in 2009. Delia is actively involved with the profession, including teaching, jury panels and professional appointments. She has taught design and construction studios at numerous universities, served as a Victorian Chapter Councillor, has been an examiner for the ARBV and has been involved in the development of the Victorian Chapter Reconciliation Action Plan and Acumen Practice Notes.
James Staughton co-founded the multi award-winning partnership Staughton Architects in 1999 and merged with Tony Styant-Browne Architect to form Workshop Architecture in 2008. James is a keen contributor to both the architectural profession and to architectural education. He was a longtime Chair of the Victorian Awards Committee and has sat on award juries as both member and Chair. He is currently Chair of the Architect Victoria Editorial Committee, has guest-edited two editions and initiated numerous others.
Kirsty Bennett's architectural career has focussed on designing for older people and people living with dementia. This is an area where design (and therefore the architectural profession) can have an enormous impact on the lives of vulnerable people who often don’t have a voice. Through her work in architectural practice, a client organisation, and in delivering in education in aged care and acute settings, as well as giving lectures in universities and professional associations, Kirsty has strived to address this. Her experience as a volunteer caregiver (including returning to spend time volunteering in an early project) has proved invaluable, as has the knowledge gained from a Grad Dip Gerontology.
Richard Leonard, as an architect, Richard has focused on his passion in education and to contribute to the improvement of places where students learn. In this capacity, he leads the education sector within Hayball (since 1987) and established a national and international reputation for both design excellence in the sector and thought leadership. The leadership in the sector has been recognised with numerous project awards, and with Honorary Life Membership of the Association for Learning Environments Australisia (which he chaired for two years).
Fellows
Judith North & Neville Cowland set up practice in July 1984. They have been members of the Institute since this time. In an era where the building industry seems keen to value manage or project manage architects to the sidelines of the construction process, Neville and Judith’s diverse range of awards and distinctions commending them on design skill, business integrity, client satisfaction, heritage and ESD innovation demonstrate their holistic commitment to the advancement of architecture and advancement of respect of the value of architects within the community.
Robert Simeoni established Robert Simeoni Architects in 1996. The practice has since grown through its commitment to considered design and craft in construction. His practice has been recognised through numerous Victorian, national and international awards which acknowledge design excellence and commitment. A longstanding member, Robert first joined the Institute in 1994 and has been part of numerous Institute awards juries. Respectful and respected, Robert is held in the highest regard by his peers and colleagues.
Roger Nelson is the MD and a Founder of NH Architecture. NH has been recognised by industry awards in architecture and urban planning and significantly been awarded the Melbourne Prize four times. As part of NH's interest in the future of cities, and Roger's personal interest in the furthering of architecture as part of city making, he chaired the influential Melbourne Retail Advisory Board. The board advised the City of Melbourne and Victorian State Government around the merging of Melbourne's profile as a business city, a design city, and most importantly, a public city.
Tim Black is a Founding Principal of BKK Architects and has specialised in public architecture, urban design, infrastructure and transport projects in over twenty years in practice. Tim has led a number of BKK’s highest profile projects including ACMI Renewal, Swan Street Bridge widening, and the Acland Street precinct upgrade. Tim holds an MBA from the Melbourne Business School and has undertaken Civil Engineering studies at The University of Melbourne. He has taught both Design and Communication at RMIT’s Department of Architecture and has lectured internationally on his practice’s work.
Honorary Fellows
Life Fellows
Naomi Milgrom This honour recognises Naomi’s significant and substantial contribution as an architectural philanthropist and patron of architecture and art. The Naomi Milgrom Foundation supports innovative design projects that invest in the creative economy in collaboration with cultural industries and education partners, aiming to position Melbourne as a hub for design and architecture within the Asia-Pacific region. Through the delivery of the MPavilion project she has brought contemporary architecture into the public realm, combined with programming to deliver value to audiences and the communities involved, including the Institute.
David Sainsbery has made a significant contribution to the development and promotion of architecture throughout Australia. This is evident in his varying capacities including Director of Architectus, involvement in the boards of the AACA, ARBV, Victorian Chapter and national councils, forums/committees and numerous bodies associated with the architectural profession. His role in the regulation of the profession as well as streamlining the registration process to suit various scenarios, including experienced overseas architects, experienced local practitioners and graduates, is to be commended. This contribution verifies that the profession is accessible to many.
Tony Styant-Browne is a man of many talents - an architect, urban designer, writer, teacher, peer reviewer and triathlete. He founded Workshop Architecture in 2008 with James Staughton. Having recently stepped down as Director, he is now a sole practitioner (Anthony Styant-Browne Architect) and a consultant to Workshop Architecture. Tony sees all facets of his professional and academic activities as comprising a holistic engagement with the built environment in both its urban and rural condition. Moreover, he is considered by many both within and outside the profession as a mentor and friend.
2020 Graduate Prize
Jury:
Catherine Duggan, Rodney Eggleston and Robert Stent
Commendation
Hugh Bailhache Goad, University of Melbourne
Xinyun Li, University of Melbourne
Laura Szyman, RMIT University
Honourable mention
Julie Pham, Deakin University
Amy Tung, Monash University
Victoria King, The University of Melbourne with – ‘Blueprints for Observing Contamination in the Sydney Harbour Estuary’
Unanimously awarding the 2020 Graduate Prize, the jury were impressed with the clarity of intent and skilful execution in Victoria King's Blueprints for Observing Contamination in the Sydney Harbour Estuary. A beautifully rendered and thoughtful response to environmental issues offered via a series of sensitive and robust architectural interventions that cleverly navigate historic fabric in a marine context.
The project skilfully and elegantly weaves factual research, historic investigation and hazard identification, into a scheme that is at once pragmatic and poetic. An inherently hopeful response to current environmental issues with a clearly articulated understanding of its complex context, it offers a resolution that reaches beyond the present, confidently conveying the power of architecture to be a positive wayshower for the community. The jury congratulates Victoria on an outstanding, elegantly conceived and convincing body of work.
Student Prize
2020 Student Ideas Prize
Jury:
Rosemary Burne, Daniel Moore,
Jill Garner, Gumji Kang and Dimitar Petreski
Commendation
Samantha Romana & Andy Lei
Vince Nicandro
Emily Sproule
The Student Prize is open to all currently enrolled students from the Schools of Architecture at Deakin, Monash, Swinburne, RMIT and Melbourne universities. This year, the design competition asked entrants to consider the possibilities for the development of a new vertical primary school in North Melbourne, 2km from the CBD, considering the design possibilities of developing an inner urban school in a large-scale urban renewal area. The submissions this year were exemplary, it is heartening to see the evident talent amongst the students and graduates. The submissions this year all came from Monash University.
Matthew Christy with ‘Arden Macaulay Primary School’
The winning entry, Arden Macaulay Primary is a design that is conceptually clear and strong. The design instantly conveys activation and connection both vertically and horizontally, offering something that is delightful and playful, bold and dynamic, yet sensitive to its site and wider context.
The architectural proposal offers a compelling formal and spatial consistency and legibility – an arrangement of a family of five buildings sitting as a community of buildings within a network of porous open spaces structured around existing vegetation, and urban scaled walkways that provide strong and well-defined links to the wider community open space infrastructure of the surrounding established boulevards and significant expanses of recreation reserves and sports fields. The drama of the site – a 6-7-metre drop, from the Sheil Street edge to Macaulay Road is replicated in the architectural form –consistent topographical forms by way of inclined facades make reference to the original escarpment believed to have existed on the site. A thoughtful and well resolved project.
Q1 Can we start with a little bit of background, how you met and why you chose to start your own studio in Melbourne?
We met on the first day of university back in 2004, the journey to running our own practice has been a slow one.
After graduation I joined Tara at Clare Cousins Architect (CCA) where she had started as a student. Tara continued on at CCA eventually becoming a Senior Associate and
Fowler & Ward: Jessie Fowler and Tara Ward
Interview by Elizabeth Campbell
running some of the practice’s most complex projects including Nightingale Evergreen. After two years with CCA I left Melbourne and spent four years working in Boston where I gained experience in completely different types of work including a large-scale urban regeneration project in Detroit and enormous tech-company office fit outs.
On my return from the US I spent around 12 months working alone and decided that sole practice was definitely not for me. While the idea of our own business
had been floated over beers many times, we didn’t start a serious discussion until I was back home. Eventually in 2020, we both started working full-time in the business. Tara and I had worked together in so many different capacities over the years and we knew that we would be a good fit.
Fowler & Ward
Thornbury Townhouse right and next page
Photos by Tom Ross Bourke Street Apartment page 83
Photo by Tom Blachford
Q2 How did you procure your first project?
Our first built project was the Bourke Street Apartment. The project started while I was still overseas when one of my oldest friends asked if I would help her renovate an incredible apartment she had recently purchased in the city. While this was a side-hustle for me, I asked Tara to occasionally jump in and help when distance and time zones made things impossible. Not long afterwards, Tara began working on the Thornbury Townhouses for her brother and his wife’s family. We were incredibly lucky to have each other for support and a second opinion while undertaking our first individual projects. It also meant that when we launched the business, we collectively had a portfolio of built work which is invaluable for securing the next job.
Q3 What design principles do you live/work by?
We’re very committed to creating strong spaces and environmentally responsive designs regardless of budget. Often this is a challenge, but we enjoy the process of stripping things back and focusing our energy where simple moves will be the most transformative. We’re particularly satisfied when we can get a project’s heavy lifting done through volume, outlook and access to light. We’re very keen to contribute to responsibly increased density in Melbourne’s suburbs and love working on multi-residential projects that offer a different product and don’t overwhelm their neighbourhoods.
Q4 What is the process of a project from concept to completion?
We’re both very pragmatic designers and our starting point is always exploring the constraints of a project. We design very collaboratively, and our process starts with a real outpouring of ideas from the whole team. Sometimes a strong concept presents itself and just fits, but more often than not the end product is a union of several ideas and is stronger for it. As the project develops, one of us generally takes the reins with the help of our team.
Q5 There is a clear sense of clarity, colour and softness in your published work, can you explain why and how this theme/idea/ concept is explored?
We’re not precious designers and are happy to let ideas grow from a project – it’s context, it’s the clients, it’s constraints. So, from that perspective we’re rarely aiming to explore a particular concept from the outset. Our work reflects the negotiation that happens between Tara and I in the design process. I’m a bit more bold in my aesthetic choices and love colour. Tara, on the other hand is drawn to a more neutral and textured palette, and unlike me, she always knows where to draw the line! We’re both becoming more comfortable pushing this dynamic and forcing ourselves out of our comfort zones because our work is definitely more exciting when both of our points of view are visible in the final product.
Q6 There is a lovely sense of relaxed humour and humbleness (not sure if that’s a word, but you know what I mean) between you both and your social media presence, is this deliberate, and if so, why?
We’re firm believers that good architecture should be accessible, and I think our social media presence reflects this. Although it’s not highly curated, we’re aware of how important our social media is. We’re both consumers of other people’s content and it’s lovely to feel connected to work being produced by the broader architecture community so easily. Humour and humbleness also come easily to us because like any new business owner it's easy to be racked with self-doubt You need to laugh about it and just keep pushing forward.
07 Who are your mentors? Idols? References? And why? They can be local or global. (If any at all – they don’t need to be architects, they can be artists, story tellers, landscapes.)
From a business perspective, both of us have spent the majority of our careers working for women-run businesses both in Melbourne and overseas. I’m sure this has given us the confidence to go out on our own. Additionally, working overseas in an environment where people are unabashedly self-promoting was a surprisingly refreshing experience. The Australian selfdeprecating manner makes us great employees, but I think it means we often question our ability. While my overseas experience provided an invaluable perspective, it also made us aware of the opportunities that exist back home - engaging with a client base who are interested and informed about design, and being part of a local design community who are always producing interesting and inspiring work.
08 Are there any aspects of architecture you're still trying to really nail? A small detail that hasn't turned out quite right, or an idea that you're still waiting for the right client?
I don’t think we’ll ever feel like we’ve nailed architecture. That would mean it’s time to retire!
So much of our profession is problem solving, from the initial stages of design through to working with builders on site. It’s pretty easy to find projects where challenges have been ignored. For instance, I’m sure the design and delivery of volume-built homes is pretty stress free, but the outcome then reflects that. I think as architects we’re essentially seeking out the challenges of any project. Sometimes you can address them in design, sometimes you jump on them during construction and sometimes you miss them, but you always learn from them and take that with you into the next project.
Elizabeth Campbell is a project architect at Kennedy Nolan with broad experience across single and multi-residential, cultural and commercial projects. She is a researcher, writer and contributing editor of Architect Victoria
Assembled by
Elizabeth Campbell Slice
Project 1 Auhaus Architecture
Cliff House
Bellarine Peninsula, Wathaurung Country
The site sits at the top of a wind-swept sand dune, dropping down to the beach at its base. The house is designed as a response to the harsh weather conditions, to views and surrounding vegetation, and to multigenerational living and the kind of spaces that entails. Materials are rustic and low maintenance, an in situ concrete shell warmed up with grey box timber – a particularly dense Australian hardwood. The plan wraps around the site, enclosing an elevated, tiered central courtyard, pool and dune roof garden with views through the house to the ocean horizon beyond. Entry is via a battened screen and into a double-height pocket courtyard. Inside, the split-level plan sets the house over three main level, with a sculpted central atrium and stair linking the layers.
Purposed for longevity, the design offers gathering spaces, moments of privacy and room to grow.
Project 2
Kennedy Nolan
Housing Choices Australia Dandenong, Boon Wurrung and Woi Wurrung Country
Kennedy Nolan was engaged by Housing Choices Australia (HCA), a not-for-profit housing association, to deliver this apartment building on a site in Hemmings Street, Dandenong. The brief was to provide safe, quality, affordable housing for people who are struggling to find a home in Australia’s challenging private rental market. Our Client’s charter was to maximise yield, while maintaining high-quality amenity. Other important priorities included conforming to the Liveable Design Guidelines and HCA’s own design, construction and maintenance standards. The project is an exercise in the delivery of rational, robust and economical apartments that also deliver the warmth and delight of good housing and avoid the dispiriting and stigmatising visual cues of institutional architecture.
HCA Dandenong looks and feels different –it was inexpensive to build and manages high standards of accessibility, amenity and sustainability but most importantly it is a place to live happily and with a pride of place.
Photographer Derek Swalwell
Photographer Derek Swalwell
Project 3 Kosloff Architecture
Pascoe Vale Primary School
Pascoe Vale, Woi Wurrung Country
The project involved an extension to the heritage significant existing neo-classical building. Designed by the Chief Architect of the Public Works Department (1922-29), E. Evan Smith, it houses a new entry to the school as well as administration and staff facilities to support the development of teachers’ assessment practices.
The street facade celebrates the civic proportion and beautiful masonry detailing evident in the original building in a manner that is clearly contemporary, but still familiar. The fence between school and street has been removed and replaced with landscape, a welcome mat that stretches the entirety of this new interface. This generous gesture shares the school grounds with the community by creating a space adjacent to the street to drop off children, meet and socialise.
This project pays homage to the significant number of proud masonry school buildings delivered by the Public Works Department in the 1920s and 30s. A legacy of quality built form that continues to this day.
Photographer Rory Daniel
Project 4 Rebecca Naughtin Architect
Turn House North Fitzroy, Woi Wurrung Country
Located in North Fitzroy, the extension of this early 1900s Victorian terrace compliments the former mixeduse residential and industrial area.
A curve in the rear laneway and title boundary is celebrated with a turn of black brickwork and playful ripple of extruded bricks. The facade is contrasted internally with an arc of white brickwork to reflect light within the space. The curve becomes a theme in the new works, from archways to the bulkhead of the operable clerestory windows. The modest size of the home is complemented with a palette of quality finishes. Heated Palermo slab, European Oak, steel-framed reeded-glass windows, brass detailing and Aristo Gold marble defines spaces without physical boundaries.
A collaborative working relationship with the owners ensured a highly customised approach as seen in the galley kitchen, with marble pâtissier’s working surface and bespoke cabinetry housing numerous appliances. A sanctuary for entertaining, this low maintenance home has been transformed with precision and passion.
Daniel Fuge
Photographer
Rob Trinca, affectionately known to his friends as Ern, has died after a long but dignified battle with Dementia.
Words by Peter Elliott with Vanessa Bird and Neil de la Coeur
Rob was educated at Geelong Grammar School where he completed his HSC in 1975. The stories he told of his time at boarding school gave some insight into Rob’s personality, his quirky sense of humour and his rascally ways. Rob was drawn to architecture from an early age. He loved model making and building things and became a skilled carpenter and joiner. He graduated from the University of Melbourne in 1981 soon thereafter working at Evans and McKernan, then Carter Meroli.
Aside from starting a career in architecture, Rob was in the music scene, touring Australia and the UK as a roadie with Hunters and Collectors. Rob featured on the cover of their 1982 hit single ‘Talking to a Stranger’ smoking a cigarette while floating in a swimming pool. Rob met his future wife Jane Sandow while they were both studying architecture at The University of Melbourne. They married in 1989 and soon thereafter bought a block of land in Kingsley Street, Elwood where over a one-year period Rob hand built a meticulously crafted cedar house for his young family. Rob was good at sport, tennis, golf, sailing and skiing. He loved the outdoors, particularly mammoth camping trips into remote parts of the country. Rob’s mates recall with much amusement his fetish for hats of all types. It is hard to find photos of Rob without a beloved beanie; it was how you recognised him. Rob was a football tragic, ever hopeful that St.Kilda might one day win a second flag. Rob joined Peter Elliott Architecture +
Urban Design in 1992 and stayed until he retired in August 2012, exactly 20 years later. Rob was a very fine architect with many skills. His special passion was documentation and detailing. He loved being on site during construction as he understood the trades firsthand. Rob was project architect for many Australian Institute of Architects awarded buildings, including:
— Robert Clark Horticultural Centre, Ballarat Botanical Gardens
— Ballarat Town Hall extensions
— Faculty of Art, University of Tasmania
— Observatory Gate, Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne
— School of Law, Victoria University
— International House, The University of Melbourne
— Urban Spaces Project, RMIT University city campus 1996–2012.
Rob was engaged in all stages of the Urban Spaces Project and several buildings on campus over a 16year period, working incrementally from masterplan to completed building. He knew the campus better than anyone. The office would regularly get calls from RMIT asking if Rob knew how to find this or that. When RMIT got stuck, Rob would happily toddle up to the campus and sort it out. The results at RMIT are a testament to Rob’s quiet tenacity and capacity to get on with people.
Above
William Buckley Bridge Barwon Heads 2011
Rob Trinca
Rob had some funny habits which endeared him to everyone in the office. He would patiently sit with the younger architects teaching them about architecture, always with good humour and a quiet effervescent optimism. Rob was never one for the limelight, always preferring the background. His talents though, complimented mine and others in the practice. The office regularly booked a table for the annual architecture awards. Rob would sneak his own bottle of wine into the event, as he thought the wine the Institute served up was ordinary. When Rob was diagnosed with early-onset Dementia, we decided he could stay as long as he felt he could contribute. This worked for some months but eventually he decided enough was enough, time to retire. Rob and Jane became advocates for the awareness of dementia in younger people. Rob was cared for at home for the entire period of his illness by his devoted family and close circle of friends. Rob is survived by his wife Jane and his daughters Delia and Lalie. Rob was very proud of his family and took great delight in Lalie becoming an architect. We will all miss this most talented genteel man. Vale Rob.
Robert Clark Horticultural Centre
“Government builds much of the social and cultural infrastructure that becomes the permanent long-term visual representation of the city – our civic and cultural memory… Government must build the best it can for all our sakes” (Denton, 2008).
Finding the right words
Words by Sarah Oberklaid
Government project managers, decisionmakers, and policy makers are rarely the target audience of architectural media and publications. Yet the choices they make have a significant impact on shaping our public buildings, infrastructure, and cities. Many of these professionals do not come from an architecture or design background, often bringing different knowledge and language to describe their aspirations. It is critical that we bridge these gaps by finding the right words and avenues
to build a common understanding and vocabulary of the fundamentals of good design and the processes to achieve it. The Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA) endeavours to build design literacy within government. Our engagements across government projects often includes helping to articulate clear design principles, translating aspirations into project briefs, and illustrating good design through case studies of built projects. It is important that our messages
are neither oversimplified, nor inaccessible and alienating. We need to take care to convey a clear message to take our audience on a journey. Over time, by gently building the understanding of a vocabulary that supports good design, we hope to further expand potential for greater and more mature dialogue with government. A measure of success is the emergence of design champions who are not necessarily designers but are confident to embed higher aspirations for good design within project expectations.
Architectural media, which appeals to a broad audience, provides an important tool for enhancing design literacy. Drawing upon architectural media in accessible language, shareable formats and by a diversity of voices helps to supplement our messages. As “a rare and early public intellectual for the Australian built environment” (Denton, 2010), Robin Boyd created a legacy for raising consciousness of the impact of design through architectural media. His weekly articles on the Small Homes Service for The Age from 1948, and his messages in The Australian Ugliness (1960), helped engage the public with architectural discourse. It is now 20 years since The Age published the last regular column by architect and writer Norman Day, which brought architectural commentary into the homes of Australians from 1976. By critiquing the architectural works of everyday environments – stadiums, museums, houses, childcare centres and public toilets – Day was able to make architectural criticism relatable and approachable. He not only educated his audience about the important contribution of architecture to the whole city but conveyed the theoretical shifts from modernism to post-modernism. Day’s column received countless letters from the public, also highlighting the impact of raising the public consciousness of architecture, and the potential to influence government decision-making.
The publication of design critique for public consumption appears to have been since re-channelled. We are more likely to consume home renovation shows and magazines with their pervasive advertising, profile-raising Instagram images or articles in Domain guiding us on how to enhance resale value. How do we re-engage those who have been easily distracted by these reductive mediums and expose them to discourse informed by rigorous thought? How do we encourage the ‘outsider’ to the discipline to seek out frank-and-fearless critique and learn lessons from past projects or processes?
Public events promoting public design discourse through exhibitions, talks and tours, such as NGV Triennial, MPavilion, Melbourne Design Week
and Open House Melbourne, and their associated media, are important for engaging a more diverse audience, and inviting them into the conversation in new ways. These forums have a life of their own as they find their way to different audiencesreviews and interviews in the news; shared images on a friend’s Instagram profile; online videos or podcasts of panel discussions. OVGA participates in many of these events to reach and communicate with a diverse audience. We often invite government clients or experts from the Victorian Design Review Panel to be part of these public events, to help demonstrate and explore the critical relationships between client, decision-maker and designer in supporting good design outcomes.
Architecture After Architecture: Alternative Pathways for Practice (2020) by Harriet Harris, Rory Hyde and Roberta Marcaccio identifies opportunities for architects to expand their influence beyond traditional boundaries. With the last year prompting a re-evaluation of priorities and highlighting the need for new ways of working, the contributors to the book describe “a future of architecture that is diverse and engaged, expanding the limits of the discipline, and offering new paths in times of crisis.” The challenges faced, do not fit neatly within disciplinary silos – but warrant an engagement across sectors. Architectural media, in a diversity of forms, has the potential to be a powerful source in shifting such vocabulary and facilitating cross-disciplinary engagement.
Sarah Oberklaid, is the senior adviser, planning and design, Office of the Victorian Government Architect.
References
John Denton (2008) ‘Victorian Government Architect Message’, Architect Victoria.
John Denton, Philip Goad and Geoffrey London, ‘Afterword’ in Robin Boyd, The AustralianUgliness, (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2010).
Harriet Harris, Rory Hyde and Roberta Marcaccio, 2021, The Great Challenges We Face Do Not Conform to Neat Disciplinary Silos, Dezeen, accessed 5 January, www.dezeen.com/2021/01/05/architects-after-architecture-harriet-harriss-roryhyde-roberta-marcaccio/
Future Homes
The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning (DELWP) in partnership with the Office of the Victorian Government Architect (OVGA) with CityLab as the competition advisor announced the winners of the two-phase Future Homes project in March 2021.
The first phase of the competition invited leading architects and designers to prepare exemplar designs for apartment buildings to be replicable in middle suburban Melbourne environments. The core competition brief asked for apartments that are a great home, a great neighbour and a great citizen.
At a dwelling level this means brilliant amenity, with high accessibility standards and a deep commitment to more family-friendly design. The neighbourhood impact of increased density is balanced by a strong commitment to landscape, plus sustainability targets that exceed current requirements in recognition of how we should expect our buildings to perform.
Four architect teams have been awarded and the state is now working closely with the winning teams and consultants to develop the designs into plans that will be readily available for use. How to realise a siteless design and translate this to a real neighbourhood will be guided by a principles document and adaptation guidance, which will become part of a new streamlined planning provision.
Homes Victoria have committed to building the first Future Home demonstration project, replacing two detached houses with 12 new apartments on a double site in Braybrook.
↳ Go to vic.gov.au/future-homes for more information
Jury
Jill Garner (Jury Chair)
Victorian Government Architect, OVGA
Jan McCredie
Jury Member, Missing Middle Competition (NSW)
Jennie Officer Director, Officer Woods Architects, Senior Lecturer, University of Western Australia
Koos de Keijzer
OVGA Design Review Panel, Principal, DKO
Matt Cohen Director Development Approvals & Urban Design, DELWP
Sadie Morgan (UK)
RIBA National Awards Advisory Panel, Director, dRMM
Tony Isaacson
Robin Boyd Foundation Chairperson, Former Director, Kane Construction
Design Strategy Architecture in collaboration with IncluDesign
The system is siteless, but when applied to a specific site, creates a proposal that fosters communities by providing high-quality dwellings and by offering a variety of shared spaces and outdoor amenities that support spontaneous everyday encounters.
This project addresses the two biggest competing factors that influence the urban Australian: how to be as close to community, amenity and services as possible, while having as much space as possible to unlock a lifestyle.
LIAN with Finding Infinity and Openwork
We need a versatile and replicable design, geared towards sustainability outcomes for the community and viability goals of future developers as well. Nimble, repeatable and more importantly, affordable.
Spiral Architecture Lab
Biodiversity and the interconnected landscape of the suburbs are disappearing, while the urban heat island effect and stormwater runoff are on the rise. The verdant image of the historic backyard is disappearing in a perverse anti-suburbanism, that predicates the single detached dwelling as the model at the expense of the enduring landscape.
McGregor Westlake Architecture
LOST OPPORTUNITIES
In any successful architect’s career there are instances where great visions are unable to be fulfilled.
Unrealised projects are a crucial and universal aspect of practice, and necessary for the development of important ideas.
Lost Opportunities will showcase international and domestic projects that were significant to their author but
were never completed; projects that represent lost opportunities not just for the architect but the entire cultures in which they would have existed.
Join us as we peer into the window of these buildings and legacies that could have been.
