UNDER CONSTRUCTION Gerard Reinmuth
UTS BROADWAY DENTON CORKER MARSHALL
01. Computergenerated facade modelling 02. Mass modelling incisions are computationally programmed.
As the first major project commissioned to implement the University of Technology, Sydney’s (UTS) City Campus Masterplan, the UTS Broadway building carries a weight of expectation. In response to the special status of this campus-wide redevelopment project, UTS created one of the few open competitions in Sydney in recent years. Open competitions remain a contentious procurement method – derided for the random nature of participants and lack of possible collaboration with the client and applauded as the only anonymous way to uncover great talent in a level playing field. In Stage One of the competition for this project, a broad range of practices both in Sydney and beyond entered, which, rather surprisingly, yielded a fairly conservative shortlist featuring a number of well-known quantities. The reasons for this are many and complex, and were debated at the time of the shortlist announcement, such that it is perhaps worth noting via example that the recent Green Square Library competition uncovered two fledgling practices in the shortlist, one of which – Stewart Hollenstein – went on to win. Given the competition’s conventional shortlist, it was to the relief of many colleagues within the profession that the eventual winner was Australia’s Denton Corker Marshall (DCM) – unquestionably one of the country’s finest practices over the past three decades and yet one who has built precious little north of the Victorian border. The winning scheme was vintage DCM: a clear diagram, simple functional arrangements and a clear tectonic idea underpinning the formal expression. 01 2
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UNDER CONSTRUCTION Gerard Reinmuth
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Due to the directness of the interior organisation – a result of an unforgiving ratio between site capacity and brief requirements – the expressive energy of the building was transferred to some dynamic internal stairs, leaping across a wedge-shaped atrium and the perforated screen, which clads all facades – underpinning the building’s object-like quality as a marker at the corner of Broadway and Wattle Street. The screen – known as the ‘binary screen’ due to the pattern of dots and dashes that spell out the University of Technology, Sydney Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology in binary code – is of particular interest, given it suggests a departure from the intensely confident Euclidean geometry for which the practice is well known. While the screen element in this context follows a well-worn DCM formula of a super-sized tectonic expression – facade and added screen or plate – the UTS Broadway version is formally open-ended, uncertain and indeterminate in many ways. This represents a significant departure from DCM’s built work – one has to look back to projects such as the second-placed Scottish Parliament entry from the early 1990s for an antecedent in DCM’s oeuvre. As the building is now approaching completion, the screen is of greatest interest, not only in its design and manufacture, but also how the building relates to and informs contemporary practice. It was designed and documented by an experienced DCM team – within perhaps the most confident detailers in contemporary Australian architecture – as a metal plate cladding offered up to a simple curtain wall facade. However once tendered facade → 01 3
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FEATURE Erik L’Heureux
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NATION BUILDING, BUILDING NATIONS
he typical start to any discussion on Singapore begins with a short synopsis of the city-state’s success stories. From poverty to wealth, from the mythic collection of rural kampong villages to urban metropolis, from colonial subjugation to contemporary city-state: these stereotypical attributes are coupled with a few celebratory comments on Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and his strategic vision rounding out the Singapore story. As has been retold consistently in the popular press, academic journals, biographies and numerous policy papers, Singapore’s development narrative – a ‘nation building’ story – has its foundations rooted between the east and the west, between the democratic and the autocratic, between free market capitalism and state-controlled socialism. Singapore’s current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong [eldest son of Singapore’s first prime minister] emboldens such views, claiming that ‘Nation building is never complete …’ thus reinforcing an eminently architectural narrative of a nation always in construction. The current results of nation building in Singapore create a giant exquisite corpse composed of imported architectural and urban artefacts and practices. This is an amalgam of familiar samples from New York or London, Hong Kong or Tokyo that have been tested and confirmed in their original settings before being squeezed and mutated into Singapore. The outcome is the infamous sweet cocktail – the Singapore Sling – as an urban mixology, with a pink comfortable coating, a touch of juice and a foamy cream top. In Singapore’s case, a giant swimming pool capping the three towers at Marina Bay Sands stands for the decorative maraschino cherry rounding out the mix. Sir Norman Foster, Zaha Hadid, Toyo Ito, Sir James Stirling, Daniel Libeskind, Rem Koolhaas, Ben van Berkel, Skidmore Owings Merrill (SOM),
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FEATURE Erik L’Heureux
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Kohn Pedersen Fox (KPF), John Portman, Kisho Kurokawa and Moshe Safdie have all built in Singapore, though many of the works have been subjected to less than favourable critical acclaim. These architectural imports are then cleansed, sterilised, sanitised and repackaged for export to new towns, industrial parks and masterplan visions by local practices operating quietly under the architectural innovation radar. Surbana International Consultants, CPG Consultants, RSP Architects, Planners and Engineers, DP Architects, Architects 61, to name a few, are surreptitiously transforming locations far afield into facsimiles of Singapore’s cocktail. Even the iconic Marina Bay Sands has been exported to Chongqing, China, remade larger and grander by Singapore’s own CapitaLand Limited. The Chinese version has been expanded, with six towers from the original three, complete with the familiar sky bridge and massive shopping podium: a Singapore product on steroids.
Imitating Singapore: the city-state’s model as export
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Never appearing too powerful or too aggressive, Singapore’s small size might also be its best asset. It allows itself to be copied, appropriated and sampled by other cities that would otherwise be overly cautious of following the west – becoming Americanised or following old colonial powers for inspiration. To sample Singapore is politically advantageous for the nation as it causes few negative repercussions on the world stage. Its own agendas are primarily business-oriented and its military – though highly advanced – comes off as little more than a ‘Singapore sting’. In a new form of globalised trade in city expertise and influence, Singapore’s small and large are sprouting in the countryside of China, replacing rice fields in Vietnam and reworking entire new townships in India. The Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city (Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore and Surbana International Consultants), the Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park, and the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City (RSP Planners & Architects) in China; the Vietnam Singapore Industrial Park in Bac Ninh (Surbana International Consultants), Hai Phong, Binh Duong and in Quang Ngai province, all in Vietnam; and the Pocharam-Singapore Township and the International Tech Park (Surbana International Consultants), both in India; all speak in physical terms of Singapore’s growing international influence – a nation-state which has begun to assume the role of an architect crafting cities afar in her own. At the groundbreaking of the first phase of the Tianjin Eco-city, the investors said that ‘the ten-year plan was intended to be scaleable and replicable so it could be used across China, India and other developing nations’. The ‘scaleable’ and ‘replicable’ are key terms here. Imagine a Singapore production line not of a small electronic component or a petrochemical good, but the creation of an entire urban environment able to be expanded or compacted as needed, stamped across the landscape as miniature Singapores. The plans for the Tianjin Eco-city accommodate 350,000 people across 30sqkm at a population density higher by almost 4,100 people/sqkm than Singapore itself (currently at 7,350ppl/sqkm). In addition to scaleability and replicability, the ‘practical’ (a stereotypical symbol of Singaporean know-how) rounds out the ‘three abilities’ guiding the development. Combined with the →
01. Singapore, 2010. Image courtesy Owen Lam 02 & 03. Mass Rapid Transit System Viaducts, Singapore, 2010. Image courtesy Owen Lam 04. New town housing, The Housing
and Development Board (HDB) , Singapore, 2010. Image courtesy Owen Lam 05. Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Image courtesy Safdie Architects.
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ST BARNABAS ANGLICAN CHURCH → a reference to the removal of traditions and the secularisation of the church in a contemporary environment. Where the position of the church is undergoing ideological and social change as its role in broader society is questioned, so too is its architectural counterpart. In secularised society, the church seeks to maintain its community link, with the architectural outcome communicated via an ostensibly high Modernist aesthetic – free of biblical decoration and ostentation. The church presents itself as contemporary – metaphorically camouflaged into the present urban street frontage, retreating from view. The role of the architect – and by association the architectural built work – could easily attest to such a predicament; should, though, the discipline choose to abide by such an allegory it will be interesting to see if it too can reclaim ideological significance in the contemporary metropolis. FJMT’s St Barnabas Anglican Church could well be the barometer in which to judge both.
05. The cross-shaped fenestration at the entrance 06. Smooth finishes allow for light to bleed in from clerestory windows 07. The curvilinear geometry is notable throughout, tying interior and exterior spaces together 08. Generous congregational spaces are filled with diffuse light 09. Detailed section through the curved roof at the entrance a. Frameless glass louvres b. Frameless glass door c. Framleless glass door d. Curved fibre cement cladding. 8mm thick non-compressed fibre cement sheet with concealed fixings e. Compressed fibre-cement sheet rain screen, concealed screw fixed to secondary framing
f. Rain screen cladding, adhesive fixed to support framing g. Custom folded metail sheet with ply underlay, Colourbond finish h. Gypsum plasterboard and fibre reinforced Gypsum lining i. 50 Dis CHS glavanised mild steel balustrade j. Birrus cocamat recess mounted entry mat. Frame and tread: standard natural anodised aluminium k. Handrail: 50mm nominal dia., GMS tube l. Natural granite paving m. La farge curveshield plasterboard. Concealed steel suspension system n. Plasterboard. Concealed steel suspension system o. Blockwork, rendered paint finish.
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Project Details ARCHITECT: Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp / PROJECT TEAM: Richard Francis-Jones, Johnathan Redman, Annie Hensley, Susanne Pollmann, Lina Francis-Jones, Janine Deshon / LANDSCAPE: Matthew Todd, Zuzana Semelak / STRUCTURAL & FAÇADE ENGINEER: Taylor Thomson Whitting / MECHANICAL, HYDRAULIC, ELECTRICAL, LIFT: Aecom (formerly Bassetts) / QUANTITY SURVEYOR: Page Kirkland Group / ACCESS: Accessibility Solutions / BUILDING SURVEYOR: The Hendry Group / Fire: Arup Fire, PRIMARY CERTIFYING AUTHORITY: Davis Langdon / TRAFFIC: MWT Transport Planning / ACOUSTIC: Acoustic Studio / WIND: Windtech / PLANNER: JBA Urban Planning Consultants / KITCHEN: Cini Little / HERITAGE: GBA Heritage / PROJECT MANAGER: Winton Associates / CONTRACTOR: Buildcorp / SITE AREA: 1,650sqm / GROSS FLOOR AREA: 3,845.18sqm, 3,254.75sqm (without Open Space), 1,909.98 (Lower Ground Floor + Ground Floor).
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03 171 COLLINS STREET Location Architect Review Photography
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Melbourne, Australia Bates Smart Tania Davidge Peter Clarke
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