Blue Archive: Early Release Material

The Blue Archive is under development. Early release material includes a talk David Weir, of David Weir Architects, at the 2014 edition of MERGE Emerging Architects 'On Impact', and a 'project portrait' of Jonathan Lake's North Perth House, which was a popular site at Open House 2014.

The archive project has seen speakers and event organisers including MERGE, Curtin University, CODA, the Office of the Government Architect, CODA, the DIA and Gresley Abas generously allow us to film their talks, and video documentation of a number of exhibitions, installations, and built projects. We hope this will contribute to the strengthening of architectural culture in Perth through the availability of quality, engaging, primary source information delivered with high production values. The intent is to assist with the discovery and sharing of good ideas through the cataloging and of the work, thoughts and personalities of architects and allied practitioners, to allow well informed conversations and creative works.

In due course a website will be launched, with fully catalogued metadata on the speakers and events. Material will be progressively added as editing is completed and permissions received.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy these first two videos:

David Weir (David Weir Architects) - 'On Impact'

Project Portrait: Jonathan Lake Architects - 'North Perth House' 

PS14.02 Design for Learning #3

Notes on the Perth Samplings held by the Office of the Government Architect, in this case in collaboration with CEFPI.

Governor Stirling High School by Donaldson + Warn
High school for 1000 students on a small (aprox half size of usual) site. Replaced multistory buildings built in the 50's, key design drivers were responding to geographical context of river and historical (both indigenous and European) Guildford, build programming (proposed staged construction was challenged by design team) and accommodating an existing school community with established teaching programs and social contexts. The buildings have a strong civic character (as you can expect from D+W), sharply lined forms and appear generous in spatial diversity and finessed forms at the level of interaction - i.e. building elements forming seating, operable walls being deployed in carefully thought through scenarios. Materials included reduction fired bricks, which I knew about but was unsure why this firing process is employed - now I know it brings more variety of colouring with blues and purples. Brad Day presented in detail, and talked about difficulties as well as successes, which is important.

JSR Kindergarten
Innovative timber building techniques, efficient 18 x 18m square plan, simple structure. Resourceful and clear approach, without complication appears to have delivered a fun and successful outcome which was not an obvious solution but performs well (by Tom Brooking's account, and it sounds as though post-consultation has been worthwhile). Interior of building appears a great place to inhabit, particularly for young children.

HG and FJE were there documenting for the video archive.

Go Away and Come Back Exhibition

Go Away and Come Back: an exhibition of architecture, travel, research, experience is currently open upstairs at the Moores Building Contemporary Gallery on Henry Street in Fremantle.

The closing party is this coming Sunday 4-7pm. There will be snacks, drinks, and thought provoking, engaging works to interact with.

Sneak previews and more info: www.facebook.com/GoAwayandComeBack  

CALL OUT FOR PROPOSALS Go Away and Come Back: an exhibition of architecture, travel, research, experience.

 

Image: Detail Opportunistic,

2012. R. Creagh.

Go Away and Come Back:

an exhibition of architecture, travel, research, experience.

What does it mean to return home after focused travels? What meaningful contribution can be made when returning with understandings found elsewhere or between places? Go Away and Come Back: an exhibition of architecture, travel, research, experience spirals around these questions proposing an investigation through the work and travels of established and emerging architects.

Architectural pilgrimages, study trips and grand tours have a significant place in the historical understanding of architectural education. Now, the internet grants access to the other side of the world from a home interior. Is the value of study trips questioned by the proliferation of online architectural media? With the increasing convenience of travel has the status of the grand tour shifted within the education of architects? Has inexpensive digital photography diminished the way experiences are recorded? Given the change in global economics, and a shifting emphasis away from old colonial centres, is there still relevance to the overseas internship?

Go Away and Come Back is a proposed peer reviewed exhibition of research works. The visual enquiries  are invited that draw on exhibitors’ travel documentation and reflection to further understandings of the nexus of architecture, experience, research and travel. In a contemporary world of globalisation and mobility, submissions are invited that challenge assumptions about both travel experiences and architectural research through grounded enquiry and engaging mediums.

 Call for proposals now open.

A maximum single A4 page written expression of interest, including a brief biographic statement, should be received before Monday 24 June, 2013. An additional reference image may be included at the applicants’ discretion. Please email to Robyn Creagh r.creagh@curtin.edu.au or Shannon Lyons  s.lyons@curtin.edu.au

Successful applicants will be invited to attend a series of optional workshops in Perth. As part of the curatorial review and development of the research works, at key points in the lead up to exhibition an interdisciplinary selection of creative practitioners and scholars will provide mentoring and critique. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue of works and scholarly essays.

Upgoer5: Architect

I wrote about the work of an architect, using only the most common thousand words.

To make up and draw pictures of building; houses and other place things so that people can make them. Talk to the people who will use the place, work out how big it should be, how people will use the spaces, what it will be made of and how the bits will go together and show this in the drawn pictures. Work with the building people to get the thing which was thought of in the first place, and will be right for those who will live and work in it.

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Talk Notes: PS12.03: design and community; creative outcomes in Fremantle

transcribed from my notebook; a few brief notes

Fremantle Bike Trees
buttress roots [link to MO, fairy lights, tree socks].

Bernard Seeber
Fremantle Train Station, Hilton Community Centre. Using existing fabric, putting things together the wat they were designed in the first place (because it's cheaper, easier to maintain and helps with continuity of community - but mainly cheaper). Adding to existing value.

Michael Patroni
Knutsford Consortium, development of a Knutsford (Brownfield development inland from Fremantle) lot. Managed to deliver sophisticated material outcomes and a 4.5M wide back lane (hard to convince State Planning), which would achieve a proper second order realm. Fremantle successful because of pre-car streetscape (among other factors).

As ever, thanks to the team at the Office of the Government Architect for all their hard work organising and curating this talk series, and the speakers.

Talk on a Practice: Formworks

Kelly Rattigan and team from Formworks gave a great Talk on a Practice for MERGE- here is a summary.

After meeting in the Formworks offices, in a blended old/new building on a back lane in North Fremantle, the talk proceeded at nearby Mojo's, the slide show given a slight crazed edge by being projected onto an artwork of a slavering naked man holding a rose. Kelly Rattigan presented, but invited all her staff, from students through to senior project architects to present their responses to questions she had asked them earlier in the day - a nice touch which included the practice as a group, not just Kelly Rattigan and Co.

Anyway, Kelly began with the origins of the firm, as a small residential practice (Kelly Rattigan Architects) which grew from an initial residential commission (which displayed some great use of blockwork) to become a small firm of 4-5 people with close teaching links to UWA. She described the breakthrough project for the firm moving to large scale architecture proper after some small commercial works; a speculative university studio project, St Bart's Lime Street, which captured the imagination of Allanah MacTiernan and went on to become reality with land and money grants from the government. The practice then merged with the practice of a retiring architect to become Formworks, a larger proposition focusing on commercial work, with a strong regional bent.

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Fiction architecture & a popcorn article

I just wanted to share my latest crushes (architectural of course).  It was either trying to articulate my rage at the many failings of this profession or posting about my new inspirations, I have chosen the later.

The title is borrowed from a theory pioneered or borrowed and at the very least propagated by Thornton Architecture.  The title is pretty apt for these whimsical projects.

Firstly Andrew Maynard Architects.  I recently spent a while looking through this practice's website after ADR published 'Hill House'.  Not my favourite as published on their website but the humour and sleek detailing does appeal and nicely shown in other works;

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Architecture and Zines

This may be relevant to your interests. Architecture and Zines, from around the world, on one webpage. http://www.archizines.com/

And other, arguably more serious, titles. 

LOW CARBON, LOW COST HOUSING: IS IT POSSIBLE? a Dutch answer from the field.

Presenter: Rein Buur
Date: Thrusday, May 31
Time: 11:30-12:30pm. Please join us for morning tea at 11.00am
Venue: CUSP Shed, CUSP Office, 3 Pakenhan Street, Fremantle

The financial crisis is hitting hard in Europe, especially affecting the building sector. Consumer confidence is low and lending criteria for home loans have become very strict. The economy is stagnating while the ambitions for sustainability are still high. One of the biggest challenges in the Netherlands is thus to make sustainable houses affordable.

Solutions are not only to be found through technological innovation, since most of the technology is already available. It is important to incorporate green technology into the design from the start. In addition, supply chain integration and applying Lean principles contribute to a more efficient building process. This can be achieved by offsite production, using BIM to reduce failure costs, and the willingness of companies to share knowledge and profit.  These ingredients are the key to create a budget for sustainable houses.

An example from the field is a residential project in Amsterdam (460 houses), called ‘Co-Green, Stadstuin Overtoom’. The focus of this project is more than low carbon low cost housing alone. Another aspect is closed-loop design, meaning that demolition material is re-used. Finally, the transition of a post-World War II suburb with social problems brings the challenge to create a better living environment.

All in all an interesting answer from the field to make cities more resilient.

About the presenter:

Rein Buur

Rein is an architect from the Netherlands. He has over 12 years experience in designing residential projects. First at KOW Architecture in The Hague, as senior architect responsible for the business unit residential buildings, and now working at Groosman Partners in Rotterdam. He is currently visiting Western Australia with his family, having a sabbatical leave.

Response to FJE’s review of Duckworth-Smith’s PS12

FJE invited me to respond to his commentary as (while stuffing our faces at lunch last week) we disagreed over both his reading of Anthony Duckworth-Smith's presentation at the last PS12 and Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5. Our views on that seminal novel we shall keep for elsewhere. FJE’s comments addressed by this post are here: FJE's Comments.

FJE's main critique of Duckworth-Smith seems to be that his project is both too narrow and too broad in focus. My impression of FJE's criticism was the following: Firstly as an architect D-S should be presenting a resolved building design as a 'solution' to his site of investigation - that is that his project is too broad. Secondly, that as a resolved building design this should deal fulsomely with all aspects of design quality - that is that his project is too narrow. (I note that FJE levels neither of these criticisms at Weller.)

This broad-narrow criticism does not seem to engage with Duckworth-Smith's work on the grounds it was presented. D-S's presentation of his work did not claim to ‘solve’ these potential sites, but to engage with them, and address one of the perceived (or actual) resistances to their development. Contrary to FJE I find D-S's acoustic-based enquiry of these sites timely in direction and focus. I view this as one of the many possible routes of enquiry into the question "How can Perth become more dense?" Which to my mind is the question immediately raised by Weller’s (amongst others’) assertions that it must. There are a plethora of possible answers to this question and some have geographic locations and building forms that would have more spatial and lived quality than others.

D-S starts a move in one such direction of quality from a review of amenity by mobility in Perth's suburbs. He has located a typology – the East-West bus corridor – that to my knowledge has not yet been addressed in this context. (Our old highways and suburban railway stations have for example received much more attention. Perhaps they are more glamorous.) D-S draws on his specific skills and interests to address one significant constraint to this site – acoustics – while acknowledging the work of others who have worked in similar sites with different focuses.

Where FJE's criticism fails is in not being able to locate D-S's work within a developing field of enquiry. Within this context D-S’s work opens up more specific questions and possibilities for exploration. To my mind this 'opening up' is a research success, rather than failing.

WA Architecture Awards: Presentation to Juries - Live blog

We 'live blogged' the event on our Facebook page.
Here it is, as it happened:
  
9:06 Interior 9am - starting the Presentation to Juries liveblog.

9:19 Interior LM "what are you two vegemites doing here?"

9:21 Interior Bollig Design Group - Augusta Margaret River Shire civic administration (interior category). Smooth presentation to start the day, building had strong regional elements.

9:24 Interior PDFs need ctrl+L-ing.

9:27 Interior DMG - Crown Mansions: Opulence is the theme.

9:28 Interior presenting 'the shots'.

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Crown Hall

 

Today Google is celebrating Mies van der Rohe's would-be-126th birthday.  I thought I would celebrate it by posting some photos from my recent visit to Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, also pictured in Google's doodle above.  It was great to see this building bustling with activity, although I also wondered if these were all architecture students staying back late for a crit, or to work in studio on their models and drawings.  Then again, who wouldn't want to hang out after hours in a Mies building... It was all very strangely familiar and yet I couldn't bring myself to step inside

Crown Hall is visible from the elevated train line, those lucky Chicago people

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WA Architecture Awards - Presentation Day

 

Architecture and Timelessness

Tutoring in design today made me remember a conversation I had with SP regarding the role of architecture and the timelessness of a building. From memory (which is very shaky on the details so I hope I have the essence of his argument right) in his opinion it is to do with the ability of a space to capture a sense of greater being, or a person's core self. By doing so it neglected cultural background, ideological persuasion or fads as all occupants connect to space in through the use of our senses. He put forth a very convincing argument.

Now what made me think of this discussion is that the students are being asked to explore Leon van Schiak's three schools of thought: 'Civic Narrative', 'Technic' and 'Poetic' - for those of you have are not sure what these are, I have tried to give a synopsis of each school below. Be wary though: I have been very reductionist. When considering the timelessness of architecture ideas, I pose these questions to start some discussion:

Do you think that only buildings designed intentionally in a poetic manner will become timeless? 

And if buildings were to designed to other design intents ie. Civic Narrative or Technic, to become timeless do they need to have a poetic quality?

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A visit to Krakow Part I - After WWII

HG's recent post on the Architecture and Culture 302 projects inspired me to write a follow up post. One of the projects every year focuses on Auschwitz, and I see that this year has been no exception. I recently visited Auschwitz, but I'm not going to write about that. I'm sure Auschwitz has been enough discussed. I think instead, I shall write about Krakow, the nearest major city to Auschwitz, and a city which has been very much impacted by recent history. World War II, and then the the subsequent communist period both took a toll on the city both socially and in terms of the urban fabric. I found Krakow a fascinating place to visit, because it is a city undergoing a lot of change. It really feels like it has just found itself again. However, as it undergoes so much change and renewal, it is also in danger of losing its old self as its people attempt to erase the painful history.

When I visited Krakow, I stayed with a friend of mine. She was born in Krakow and she studied in Krakow. She has an interest in political science, and she can rattle off several centuries of Polish history including dates and details. Essentially she was an ideal tour guide, because she knew why things were like that.

Before WWII Krakow had a large Jewish population; it now has a large number of buildings with no known owner. Many of these buildings are crumbling after more than half a century without maintenance. Many of these crumbling buildings, surprisingly, had people living in parts of them. As we walked along a street past buildings in varied states of repair one day, my friend walked in through what to me looked like a front door, a private space I would never have thought to enter. We walked across an entrance hall which had a large crack running the length of the tiled floor, one side of the crack being several centimetres higher than the other. We passed though this bizarre urine scented place ignoring the staircase and walking straight into the garden courtyard beyond. From the garden we could see the windows of the various apartments in the building. Some were obviously vacant, with broken or boarded up windows; but then, just next to, just above or just below windows like this there were windows which looked lived in and looked after, with clean curtains and neat flowers growing over the sills. It was quite remarkable. The city as a whole was like that: abandoned buildings grey and cracked were right next to ones which had been carefully repaired and painted in bold clean pastel colours.

an abandoned building

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Design Process: MP and the Bridgetown House

After a conversation between AJH, FJE and MP about dissertations, and MP's Bridgetown House Project on a Wednesday afternoon.

With roots in his dissertation on non-proffessional builders, MP has been engaged for design services by a musician couple planning to build a small house on a rural lot outside Bridgetown.

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Sir John Soane's House Museum

John Soane had an amazing personal collection of antiquities, books and drawings, and intended to 'allow free access for students and the public to "consult, inspect and benefit" from the collections', so much so that he negotiated an Act of Parliament so that upon his death, the house and its collection would be preserved and still accessible to the public. The museum also includes his own various sketchbooks, drawings and models (including experiments in his own ceilings).  The result is a fascinating look into this man's mind - I came away with a sense of awe and fear, that he must have either been a genius or a madman, or both.

Seeing as I keep going on about this house museum to various people, but don't have any images of the interior/wasn't allowed to take any, I have been doing some internet scouring in attempt to find something to show!

the (jam-packed) Sepulchral Chamber

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Postcard: Berlin

This is the postcard I bought from the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum of Design in Berlin.

Herbert Bayer
design for a newspaper stand, 1924

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AJH: Thesis in its current form

As I prepare my Dissertation Preparation, Research Context Assignment (3), it seemed like a good idea to actually post up how the Thesis process is going this semester and reflect on where am I...

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