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03.12.08 in architects

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22.11.08 in architects

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16.11.08 in architects

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15.11.08 in other-blogs

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15.11.08 in architects

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02.11.08 in guides

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29.09.08 in buildings

The modern day student squat in Faraday Street, Carlton is to end after the Supreme Court ordered them to leave by January 7th.
So ends five months of a lively Faraday Street, and an earnest discussion about the right to squat. The students had occupied four empty and run-down terrace houses owned by Melbourne University to protest against the state of student housing in an inflated rental market. The students rejected an offer by the university of places in the existing subsidised housing scheme as this would have meant they were displacing other needy students. SHAC has reportedly backed away from further legal action as they might need to cover UniMelb’s legal costs if they lose.

The Age 06.01.08
SHAC
Union Solidarity 07.01.08

06.01.09 in housing 

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As previously mentioned, Hamer Hall is to be renovated to address its surroundings. I’ve just found this video with a glamorous fly-through countered by a monotonous voiceover by the Victorian Premier. In this future vision, the drum of the hall is punctured all over so we can see flashing disco lights inside, the perimeter and roof is given over to hospitality, EQ is trashed, a glass meteor lands on the roof, and Melbourne is invaded by threshold people.

10.12.08 in architecture 

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I wasn’t sure what to expect.. how would the world respond to Utzon’s death? Seeing a full-on Utzon death poster outside a newsagency today, I thought I would have a look around. Journos have painted Utzon as a one-trick pony, albeit with a brilliant Australian trick. Elizabeth Farrelly at the Sydney Morning Herald has done a quick 6 page condensation of Philip Drew’s biography, and it it is quite worth the read. Though it isn’t so much an obit for Utzon as it is for the original Opera house, before it as consigned to a “conspiracy of nobodies” (Drew’s words).

High Noon at Bennelong Point

Jack Marx, writing a blog for the Murdoch Empire, plots the course of the Opera House too, dredging up morsels like this, a quote from Bob Carr: “[Premier] Joe Cahill, knowing, I think, he didn’t have long to live, said, ‘I want you to go down to Bennelong Point and make such progress that no-one who succeeds me can stop this going through to completion’.” Point being that they started building it before they knew what it was. Marx says that when Askin became NSW premier in 1965, things immediately went pear-shaped: “the history of the Sydney Opera House does not smile upon Askin and the late Davis Hughes…, who could think of little else to do but withhold the wanker’s cash.” The cost blow out and resignation changed Sydney, he says: No structure even approaching the daring, beauty and originality of Utzon’s Opera House has been attempted again – certainly not in Sydney, where development values efficiency over charm Shame

Worth a flick through the comments too, Isaac of Bondi thinks now is the time to make th eOpera House a little more.. Sydney .

Fresh out of court, Norman Day at The Age kept it brief: “Utzon is dead. His work lives.”

Designer of a national icon bids farewell

Christopher Hawthorne at the L.A. Times does touch on some of the other buildings, but ends up back at the Opera House and its difficulties: “With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that as the leading symbol for modern Australia the building was a bargain at nearly any price.”

L.A. Times

We have to go to The Australian to find an obituary that is more about the man than the building. Philip Drew: “The architect radiated charisma from every pore and possessed great charm that was combined with a beguiling naturalness. He appeared to utterly lack artifice.”

The Australian

01.12.08 in architects 

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At the age of 90, Jørn Utzon has died of a heart attack in his sleep. In 2005 he said , “I will not see it now, which makes me sad. Every day I wake up and think of the Opera House. It gives me such pleasure that the building means so much to the people of Sydney and Australia – that makes me very happy.” Thanks Jørn, that building does mean so much to us. The lights on the Opera House’s sails will be dimmed tonight and a memorial service will be held there in early 2009.

30.11.08 in architects 

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Now that the student year is done, Melbourne University is evicting squatters from its Faraday street terrace houses – this Friday. The four terrace houses had been empty for three years amidst a student housing crisis. The Student Housing Action Co-operative are going to resist the eviction and ask for your support this Friday at their rally (12-2pm) and dinner, from 5pm. 272-8 Faraday Street Carlton. Trade Hall has threatened industrial action on university projects should the students be forcibly evicted.

The Age 27.11.08
Arch-peace article
SHAC

27.11.08 in  

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Gustave Eiffel’s 2.5km Long Bien Bridge (1903) in Hanoi has suffered many indiginities in the last 40 years. Half of the cantilever bridge was wiped out by bombing in the Vietnam War. More recent flooding and a truck that was a little bit too tall have further damaged the bridge spans, so much so that a festival that was to celebrate it has been pushed back to next January. The French Government is currently negotiating a project to return the bridge to its original state.

15.11.08 in structural-engineers 

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Charles Jencks, Beatriz Maturana, and 30 or so other members of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, have today sent a letter to the UK Guardian protesting an Israeli court’s recent approval for a Wiesenthal Centre Museum of Tolerance on a Muslim burial site, designed with great swoops and gushes by Frank Gehry – think worst-dressed at the 1985 Oscars. They call it an “architectural time bomb” that can only set back efforts for peace in the region.

Guardian Letters 15.11.08
Wiesenthal Centre

The Wiesenthal Centre counters that Jerusalem is an old place and every patch of land there has a history. The site is currently a four storey car park.

79 year old Gehry is celebrating this win as he commiserates over the canning of another project. His giant scheme for the Hove leisure park in Britain, based on the flowing dresses of Edwardian Ladies, has been ditched having received relentless bad press. A Save Hove spokeswoman says,“The whole thing was puffery. I’d like to see [it] refurbished, with no hoity-toity numbers, no iconic, landmark crap.”

Frank’s blistering response? “Through history, public buildings are iconic and if we want less we have no self-esteem. We might as well go back to the caves. If you add up how many iconic buildings have been built recently, how many are there? 50? 100? It’s nothing. So people can fuck off.”

UK Independent 15.11.08

All up, 2008 was a bit of an annus horribilis for Frank – Nancy MacDonald summarises it here . Gehry can at least take heart that his Art Gallery of Ontario has been mostly well-received , though fellow LA architect Ken Myers is a tad unhappy that his 1992 extensions were demolished for this one. The AGO reopened yesterday. A family medical emergency may prevent Gehry from attending the opening.

15.11.08 in architects cities

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A modest caravan won the Bizarre award at the recent Ho Chi Minh Architecture Awards. Seems that mobile homes are a new thing in Vietnam. Architect and builder Ho Van Tho aims to have these on the market soon for US$3K to US$6K to help alleviate urban overcrowding – the small caravans can apparently sleep four to eight people.

15.11.08 in housing 

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This local blog seems to have disappeared off the net, anyone know where it has gone? Will be sadly missed, but for those who missed it it is still cached at google.

05.11.08 in other-blogs 

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Poor old Jonathan Glancey at the Guardian UK isn’t terribly happy about “Australia-owned” Westfield’s new megacentre at London’s White City. Comparing it to an ’80s airline terminal, he thinks it, “is just a tiny step towards our collective desire to undermine the life and culture of the traditional city”. Westfield, no doubt delighted by the opening day surge of consumers into its new palace, suggest that, “once you’re here, you’ll never want to leave…”

Which reminds me of the pioneering Victor Gruen and his ‘ transfer ‘, a measurement of the time it takes between leaving your car and becoming a glazey-eyed impulse buyer in a shopping centre. Gruen was an emigre architect of Austrian extraction who designed a mountain of mid-century shopping centres in the U.S., before deciding he didn’t like the format and returning to Europe.

One of Gruen’s better efforts, the Randhurst (1962) in Illinois, does great things with triangles in order to accommodate three anchor tenants. It also had a nuclear fallout shelter – how’s that for safe shopping. The good bits were stuffed up and now everything is being demolished (except for the anchor tenants). The complex will be turned inside out and is being rebranded: over to the Mall Hall of Fame (!) blog: “[Randhurst] is to be demalled into a mixed-use, lifestyle-type venue. The basement/fallout shelter level will become an underground parking garage.”

05.11.08 in urban-design 

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