Architectural Flash Mob (sold separately)

HOME OPEN SATURDAY 6TH FEB 3:15PM - 4:00PM

465 CANNING HWY, MELVILLE

"An inspired design by one of Perth's most acclaimed architects, Geoff Warn, of Donaldson and Warn (Geoff was appointed WA Government Architect in November 2013), this stunning house was created around 25 tonnes of massive steel beams recovered from the demolition of a huge 1950's warehouse. The beams have been allowed to rust to an amazing natural red colour. The beams form the skeleton of the building and are exposed inside and outside the house..."

See you all there.

http://www.realtyone.com.au/for-sale/melville/465-canning-highway/299894

Peter Wilson (Bolles+Wilson) 2013 RAIA Gold Medal Presentation.

Fragments from Libraries / Small Buildings / Zombies.

07.10.2013  State Library of Western Australia.

"It seems that to receive an RAIA Gold Medal one must leave Australia and stay away for 40 years."

"I am nervous of belonging. I am required to be able to continually step into new cultures which develops skills of assessing what is actually at work."

"I have 40 minutes to present this talk. In Sydney I recall Buckmiester Fuller once spoke for 4 hours. The students left to get pizza and when they got back he was still talking." 

"I am a product of the AA (Architectural Association): Dealing with an Architecture of incident, complexity and urban context...

…a sensibility developed within a generation of contextualism - the study of the city - contextual but with a language of the time."

"We don't have a style."

"An architecture that gets up the nose of German Architects who ask, "What is your rule system?", our reply," It depends what day of the week it is!"

"Muenster Library is somewhat our signature…and a dangerous yardstick"

"A building of many small narratives…a long story but one which is a joy to tell."

"We were given 3 years to plan…in the end we detailed, detailed and detailed. The fees ran out after 1 year. Other competition wins paid to keep us going. In the end it was built under budget…which surprised everyone. For the last 20 years it has been ranked 1 or 2 in the list of best public libraries -  a validation of some sorts. It suggests that good architecture is not about money but a the amount of time willing to be given to it."

"I advise students to visit a site at night. To not be distracted by detail and to see only the morphology."

"There is precedent in our work. But architecture of a different time and building method prevents direct references. One must think on your feet for a project specific strategy."

Dutch Competitions: "To get around strict EU competition rules the Dutch process sometimes asks for a 'vision'. The vision could be 'purple'…or a sketch. A german Architect once submitted a written statement. He proposed for a participatory scheme whereby he would engage and work with the local Dutch community. He won…but he then had to learn how to speak Dutch."

Dutch Language. "We called our scheme a 'blob'. This was before the word was degraded by parametric geometry. The Dutch however didnt call it a blob. They kept calling it a bloop! (We which also liked)."

Dutch Context: "Having being designed to a context a fire then burnt down the adjoining building and the context disappeared" 

21mins 15seconds: "I apologise for racing through this but I must get to the zombies."

Suzuki House: "We recently met the daughter who grew up in the house. We wanted to know if she had psychological damage."

"How did she describe the black blob to her Japanese school girl friends?"
"Oh thats easy: the house is a Panda!"

"We can't actually describe where this building is…it is floating somewhere in the Tokyo soup."

"There appears to be no need for proximity in a modern city anymore. Germany is like Tokyo…but spread out over 100's of kilometres."

Sustainability Regulations: "Typically one is required to make a building airtight…it is almost a crime to open a window in Germany."

Luxor Theatre: "Theatre is about the event. Its not about the Architecture. The building should work best when the lights go out and everyone focuses on the stage…but moments before the lights go out when the theatre is buzzing architecture has a foreground role."

A showroom to test jacuzzis: "An interesting sociological experiment. People go into a public building and take their clothes off…this is not something we do everyday. A discovery was made that Germans required freshwater to be refilled into each bath tested however if a busload of Belgians arrived…"

"I think our architecture is made up of solving these sorts of pragmatic problems. We don't sit there everyday discussing formal, theoretical or compositional problems. We basically discuss how do we solve each problem (as the brief and project limits shift in time)."

"In this building it is possible to put on your gumboots and wander out to the end of the lake. A surreal moment like a flat-earth view (looking off the edge of the world). What one actually sees though is German suburbia."

"If you designed the building below ground you killed all the trees. We designed the building to sail between the trees - the judges didn't share the same 'sublime' logic - we are sensitive architects."

"A german fundamentalist thinks our architecture is irresponsible. As a jury member he pushed our building from first to second place. I found a eucalyptus tree last time I visited London. I collected its seeds and now I have my own gorilla gardening campaign throwing eucalyptus seeds over his fence."

"A sketch which looks naive can get past every committee. A trick: Stay childlike!"

"It can be a very painful process. I think one doesn't do architecture to make money. A friend always laughs at the amount of unpaid work we as architects do. But there is a pleasure in doing a scheme….and finally seeing it get built and occupied by people." 

Zombies: "Lost competitions and the unbuilt. The undead that never reach closure."

Unbuilt Milan: "It took 10 years to complete the design process…it now sits on a shelf somewhere. It is the story of an Architect's life: So much effort and the project can still become a zombie."

"A mobile showroom. An inflatable skin. A building so light it needed 40 tonne of ballast just to hold it down. The transport costs of the ballast made it uneconomical. Sometimes you can do your job to well…Zombie."


"Theoretical projects are an exploration of the poetics of architecture. An engineer once told me (regarding The Waterhouse Project) that you wouldn't have the head of water required to get the fountains to do that…but thats not the point of narrative architecture…its a statement."

Peter Wilson. http://bolles-wilson.com

A Spatial Biography: Seven Extra(Ordinary) Office Buildings Exhibition

An exemplar selection of work by students from the Curtin Fourth Year Master of Architecture program. 

The studio was dedicated to two facets of architectural practice - the development of a complex building on an urban site and the development of the designers own spatial intelligence as someone who is engaged in spatial research for the benefit of society.

Exhibition open from 13th December - 22nd December at Moana Chambers, 7am - 4pm Mon-Fri, 10am - 5pm sat.

Link: A Spatial Biography: Seven Extra(Ordinary) Office Buildings Exhibition

Photo: Jonathon 'Mcfly' Yeo

Sustainable House Open Day 2013

Don't get creepy...get access!

Sustainable House Open Day is on for another year. This years event continues to showcase the country's most environmentally sustainable and innovative homes that invest in renewable energy, recycling and other practices designed to reduce their carbon footprint.


Houses are open ONLY on Sunday 8th September from 10am - 4pm.
Entry to houses is FREE. No need to register, simply turn up and enjoy!
Download the house address list for WA: WA-open-House-List.pdf

Pictured: www.wisionhouse.blogspot.com.au

Iwanoff House-Open: 53 Shannon Road Dianella (Not Marsala House)

UPDATE: 53 Shannon Road Dianella (Not Marsala House)

Open 11am -7pm. Thursday till Sunday.

The Iwanoff Project will celebrate the residential architecture of an Iwan Iwanoff home and showcase a collection of contemporary and vintage Australian design from March 7-10 in Dianella, Perth W.A. The property will be open to the public to view a unique "open for inspection" event over 4 days. aestheticalliance* will fit-out the interior of this signature Iwan Iwanoff brutalist/modernist home with a curated collection of contemporary & vintage furnishings. The property itself goes under the hammer from the 16th of March. 

For further details:

http://www.facebook.com/TheIwanoffProject

or

http://weloveperth.net.au/the-iwanoff-project/

'La Petite Chambre' makes the Archiflick shortlist!

We have been rather quiet, but we have been busy...making a short film!  And now that it's been made public, we're allowed to tell you about it!

Our film has been shortlisted for Archiflick - the 2012 National Architecture Awards short film competition - hurray!

The brief was to make a 30-60 second film that focused on or further explored any aspect of a project shortlisted for the 2012 National Architecture Awards.  One of the provocations was to showcase a project in a way it hasn't been seen before.

Out of the four WA projects shortlisted for the National Architecture Awards, we decided to do a film on the Cultural Centre Amenities by Coniglio Ainsworth Architects.  The other WA shortlisted projects were VENN by Matthews Architecture, 58 Stevens St by Officer Woods, and Hilton Community Centre by Bernard Seeber.  The Cultural Centre Amenities seemed the most publicly accessible project and stimulated the most ideas amongst the group (including some spontaneous script-writing by BM), so life got set aside and we went off to do some filming in a public toilet...!

"I would put solar panels on it…if I was stupid."

If there was only one talk about Architecture which I could afford to attend each year  - I would choose a 'Klopper Talk'. 

My first attendance at a Klopper gig was in 2008 or 2009!? The timing doesn't really matter because what is said often stretches between the far past and the ponderings of the present (...timeless perhaps). I remember it as physically image-less presentation and would also allege, slightly inebriated, spoken word performance. It was a cryptic but cutting Bob Dylan like rambling in front of a typical black clad archi-crowd for which I am yet to have witnessed an equal.

So it was with much excitement that I ditched work commitments and attended the Brownbag Talk No.8: 

Brian Klopper - Culture of Culture. 

"What is an architect to do? For that matter - a poor student…Do you give the client or the lecturer exactly what they want because they are paying for it with their money and their marks - not their marks - but they've got control of them? Or do you work for some higher authority like prosperity or as the muse of God? And is it alright to deceive people to get the right solution? Is it ok to use any material or structure or finish to achieve the end you seek? If it looks like a marble column is it alright that is not a marble column? Is it  your role to educate the public to appreciate good architecture (and anyway what is good architecture)? Is it something in the latest European style? Are the practical matters of organisation and environmental modifications necessary evils attached to the more mystical matters of art, beauty or message? And the answer to all this? Well for all complex human problems, as you know, there is one single answer - and its wrong. 

…of course Im not going to give you the answer. You must decide for yourselves."

Image: http://perthsbest.wordpress.com

A Library on Fire.

Ever wondered how a library accommodates all the new books without ever having to under go physical expansion?

The spatial resolution exists in the form of a metal skip bin. 

Recently an exhaustive process of 'weeding' has  been undertaken to accommodate the introduction of new literature for a future school of medicine. Items of low usage were recently targeted and removed in a blitz of up to 8000 casualties. This perpetual process does not account for the fact that many of the items removed were in formats of slide film and videotape - that are only accessible on equipment available in the library itself - and therefore not typically borrowed out nor registered as in demand. Extra shelf space does express the complete waste of children's books potentially gifted to community services or the loss of one-off architectural editions which have now all gone to ground without being offered to the respective resource centres for use in their own collections.

Was there any way that these items of knowledge could have be saved?
The heavy pad locks used to secure shut the bin lid suggests not. 

So for now we can all visit the skeletal metal monument to lost recordings currently erected on Level 5, search the catalogue for what will never be known or simply wonder aloud just what the '10 Favourite Buildings' of Ignasi Solà-Morales might have been from the few ghost catalogue entries which remain. At least when we are all done and disappointed we can still self-loan the 'Invasion of the Space Lobsters'  - 813.54 INV.

Image: www.dtravelsround.com

Sustainable House Day

If you can find the energy between Interior: A State of Becoming events then some of Australia's greenest homes will open their doors to the public for the eleventh annual Sustainable House Day on Sunday 9 September - showcasing the country's most environmentally sustainable and innovative homes that invest in renewable energy, recycling and other practices designed to reduce their carbon footprint.

When: Sunday 9 September, 10 to 6pm

Where: Australia-wide

Web: http://www.sustainablehouseday.com/western-australia.php

Image: Naked hippies frolic in a Gay Head meadow, summer 1970. Photography by Peter Simon.

CASA Reverse Critique

Amidst the current media debate of 'Architecture and Criticism' the second Reverse Critique was recently held on the Blue Carpet Level of Building 201. Organised by Curtin Student Architecture Association (CASA) this ongoing event aims to reverse the typical positions of student and staff in their roles as presenters and reviewers of work pinned up for critique. The understated styling of the poster advertising the event concealed the secret longing of the student body for some form of 'get even' with staff. Those to be lined up in the theoretical crossfire of pinup board and student firing squad were Simon Pendal and Stephen Neille who were discussing their recent exploration of transportable housing types, Dr Elizabeth Karol championing her own home's good intentions of sustainability, Sambit Datta highlighting the conundrum that is servicing an architecture of learning, and Leonie Matthews and Paul McDonald expelling the pleasures and pitfalls of pro-bono work for various sporting communities up in the hills.

Read more >>

Notes from the Inaugural BCC Salon...

Ingredients:
2 x 35cm cheap baguettes
150g butter, softened
4 garlic cloves, crushed
2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh chives

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 220°C/200°C fan-forced. Cut bread into 2.5cm-thick slices (don’t cut all the way through).
2. Combine butter, garlic, parsley and chives in a bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Spread over cut sides of bread. Wrap each baguette in foil.
3. Bake for ___ minutes or until butter is melted and bread crisp. Ventilate room. Serve.

Photography: John Paul Urizar
Recipe Sourced: http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/24786/garlic+bread

Point of Submission

It's called submission for a reason.

It begins with one's head starting to go numb from thinking to hard about everything all at once.

It ends at an indeterminate point in the middle of the night where good intentions stop hurting and the mind and body just gives in.

It's at this point of giving up that the good ideas begin to flow - free from preconceived expectation - unconscious trains of thought begin to choo choo along like bird calls starting up in the dark.

***

Unfortunately this train's already a wreck and the only 'good thought' was to waste more time photoshopping Mies falling out of his chair...

But it's not to late for you.

(Good luck to all the thesis students out there)

Portraits of Success

To be a successful, well published Architect one needs to first master the art of being photogenic.

Architectural Travel Rules

Architectural Travel Rule 1.

Check the opening times of the buildings before you ride out into the cold, grey countryside.

Architectural Travel Rule 2.

Learn a bit of the local language. geöffnet: ausser montags = open except mondays.

Image: Bruder Klaus Field Chapel 11:45am Monday, 31st of May, 2010.