NCS® - NATURAL COLOUR SYSTEM

Available in Australia through Taubmans.

The NCS® – Natural Colour System is an international colour communication system. NCS® is based on how we visually perceive colour. It focuses on the psychological and visual appearance of colour perception and not the physical properties of light.

The NCS Natural Colour System® uses a notation system consisting of a colour code, with numbers describing the percentage of Blackness and Chromaticness; the Nuance of the colour. The end is the hue, the position in the colour circle, of the colour.

NCS®’ s 2050 standard colours are now available in the Taubmans’ BIM files, and you can also access these in the NCS® Fandeck and NCS® Atlas available at our Colour Swatch Shop.

This year saw a landmark moment in the Australian Institute of Architects awards history with the inception of the mandatory sustainability checklist as part of the standard requirement for all entries, after years of promoting energy efficiency and sustainability as bespoke categories. The sustainability checklist was developed by Jamileh Jahangiri and Gabrielle Pelletier and formed part of the NSW 2022 awards program.

The sustainability checklist has been used across the country throughout the awards program, thanks to the vision of our National Council and in recognition that action is necessary now. For those of you who entered the awards you will appreciate the breadth of thinking the checklist promotes: protection of land and ecological systems, siting and urban design, energy efficiency and consumption, selection of building materials and process and social issues. I hope that this checklist can find its way into our studios and guide our day-to-day design thinking in creating a built environment that responds to our community’s ever-changing needs, to respect and protect Country and the all-encompassing natural environment that sustains us.

The 2023 Victorian Architecture Awards program received 249 entries, with 130 of those shortlisted in the sixteen architectural categories. Juries select a premier or named award, as well as architecture awards and commendations. In previous years, only one of the existing eleven named awards was named after a female architect, Marion Mahoney, and two after male and female partnerships. This year it is an honour to announce that two of the previously unnamed awards will be named after eminent living female architects. From this year forth, we shall see the Maggie Edmond Enduring Architecture Award and the Dimity Reed Melbourne Prize awarded. Both architects will be well known to members, with Maggie being a founding director of Edmond Corrigan as well as winner of the inaugural 2003 Enduring Architecture Award for Chapel of St Joseph, Mont Albert North. Dimity Reed was the first female President of the Victorian Chapter of the Institute, and aside from running a successful practice, was also Victoria’s Housing Commissioner and instrumental in engaging young architects of the time in public housing projects. Congratulations to both Maggie and Dimity, who have paved the way for the many successful Victorian female architects of today.

In that context, I would like to add my congratulations to another Victorian architect, Kerstin Thompson, on winning the 2023 Gold Medal. Kerstin and her studio, KTA, have been producing high-quality work for decades, reinterpreting our engagement with heritage and context and creating spaces that are quieter but deeply thoughtful. Kerstin is the third Victorian winner of the Gold Medal in the last four years, which underlines the quality of work currently being produced in Victoria.

This year’s Maggie Edmond Enduring Architecture Award is awarded to Brambuk: The National Park and Cultural Centre by Gregory Burgess Architects (1990). We are grateful to Parks Victoria and the three Gariwerd Traditional Owners (Barengi Gadjin, Eastern Maar and Gunditj Mirring) for their support of the award. The distinctive work of Burgess’ practice has created a legacy across Victoria with Brambuk representing a pioneering project for engagement with Indigenous communities who selected and worked with Burgess. With our current nurturing of designing for Country, it is instructive to look back at how this project was developed through dialogue with Indigenous communities to become a built reality.

David Wagner FRAIA

This year’s winner of the Victorian Architecture Medal is University of Melbourne Student Precinct by Lyons with Koning Eizenberg Architecture, NMBW Architecture Studio, Greenaway Architects, Architects EAT, Aspect Studios and Glas Urban. Forging the collaboration necessary to pull together a built outcome with so many diverse partners is impressive but has also lent the precinct a sense of diversity and interest representative of the breadth of educational inquiry and the character of our broader contemporary community.

Congratulations to all 2023 award winners with a special thanks to our volunteer juries appointed by the Awards committee, chaired by Simon Knott with Ingrid Bakker as Chair of juries. Thanks also to Victorian Chapter staff, in particular our Awards coordinator Robyn Frank, for successfully managing the complex awards program. With the inception of the sustainability checklist, it will be interesting to reflect back on this year in the future to see how the profession’s thoughts and focus, as well as architectural design generally, progress from this moment.

Australian Institute of Architects

Victorian Chapter

Level 1, 41 Exhibition Street

Melbourne, VIC 3000

Boston Publishing

Level 1, 23 Manton Road

Oakleigh South, VIC 3167

1300 838 280 james@bostonpublishing.com.au

Managing editor

Robyn Frank

Editorial director

Emma Adams

Editorial advisor

Dylan Borg

Assistant editors

Elisa Persico

Matthew Sabransky

Awards coordinator

Robyn Frank

Art director

Kate Noseda

Creative direction

Annie Luo

Graphic designer

Rizla Herdaru

Publisher

Australian Institute of Architects

Victorian Chapter

State Manager

Daniel Moore RAIA

On the cover

University of Melbourne Student Precinct by Lyons with Koning Eizenberg Architecture, NMBW Architecture Studio, Greenaway Architects, Architects EAT, Aspect Studios and Glas Urban.

Photographer: Peter Bennetts

Printing Printgraphics

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