SHAC booted

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

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Hamer hammered

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.

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obits

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

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Utzon

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.

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Squat eviction

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

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The Horizontal Eiffel

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.

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Tolerance or not

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.

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caravan

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.

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arkatekcha

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.

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Demall, remall

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.”

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Tempelhof closes

Berlin’s Tempelhof airport, designed by Nazi-era architect Ernst Sagebiel, has just closed to flights. The 1.4km long multi-storey building was, according to the Rescue Tempelhof group, the largest on earth when built in the ’30s, and is still the 3rd largest. An attempt to register the site with Unesco has failed, and Berliners have yet to decide what to do with the site, only 10km from downtown.

PHOTOS

I notice the name at least will live on in Gunter Schwarzmaier’s quite nice sans-serif font , designed in 2003.

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Architecture of the century

It might be a little early, but Phaidon have released an atlas of 21st Century architecture. Japan impressed the editors the most, with 65 pages dedicated to the country. Switzerland and The Netherlands are deemed next sexiest. South East Asia and Australasia apparently don’t get a showing, the only south hemisphere contenders being from South America.

This Times review then looks at architects per 100,000 people in each country. Japan scores 240.4, Germany 144.7, Greece 143.5, Britain 56, France 47.7, Russia 8.3, Bangladesh 0.8. Australia, by my own calculation, has 52.5 (registered architects).

THE TIMES 01.11.08

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Awards time

Melbourne architects gathered the lion’s share at the ®AIA national awards. The Melbourne Age gives a straightforward listing of the winning projects, Elizabeth Farrelly at the Sydney Morning Herald is not taking it as easily . To condense some fruity prose, fashionable Melburnians do things pointy and angled and are rewarded while Sydneysiders wear sensible shoes and keep things sober and orthogonal and lose. Explaining NSW’s low ranking this year, head judge Alex Tannes said that Sydney might suffer, “a cultural issue in terms of the commissioning of the buildings”.

As for two expensive private schools winning in the public architecture category, judge and DJ Simon Knott thought the category, “probably had the wrong name.”

So to the medal tally (excluding commendations)… Wardle (2 gongs), McBride Charles Ryan (2 – the Robin Boyd for the Klein Bottle House & Monaco House), Phooey, Lyons in Hume, ARM in Albury, Adrian FitzGerald, DCM, Fender Katsalidis, NHArchitecture, Peter Crone, and Robert Simeoni.

The non-Melburnian winners were Stanisic Associates, Tonkin Zulaikha Greer, James Stockwell, Robertson & Hindmarsh, Rice Daubney + Allen Jack+Cottier + Group GSA, M3, Vivian Fraser, Heffernan Button Voss, Simon Pendal and Rebecca Angus, PTW + CCDI, and WOHA in Singapore.

THE LIST

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Lotsa buildings

Wow, free internet. I’ve lost my bearings wandering about a huge room at the WAF filled with A2 panels describing many of the hundreds of entries to the awards. The good folk here have just launched a web site which shows the full 722 entrants online, at worldbuildingdirectory.com . The winner will be announced in an hour or so, from the two shortlists, here and here

There’s a blandness about these convention centres that just wears you out. They are a lot like airports: massive square spaces, guards everywhere, detached from their surrounds, miles from town. Just no planes or duty free. Not exactly condusive to thought. The sea is close but I haven’t found a way to get there yet.

First impressions of the World Architecture Festival? Fascinating, risky, and very English. Maybe because the Brits organised it and it is immediately followed by the RIBA conference? The language has been a problem as so much relies on the architects´verbal presentations to the english-speaking juries. Maybe we can go Spanish next time… and I think there will definitely be a next time.

The pic is Final Wooden House , Japan by Sou Fujimoto Architects , fashioned just like a japanese wood puzzle I used to have that never got solved.

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gone fishing

Bit quiet in this column as getting stressed in train stations in Europe. Have just been to the biennale and will be at the world archifest in Spain soon. Till later..

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Venetian Ouch

Occasional forum participant, Hairdresser, thinks Dulux made the only architectural contribution to the bright yellow Australian pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice. S/he points us to Elizabeth Farrelly’s review in the SMH . She attended the glittering opening with a “litigation” of architects, and bumped into Jeffrey Kipnis, who suggested that the Australians need to, “drop the naïve act.” Whereas other pavilions have an angle, something to say about architecture’s role in the state and fate of things, the RAIA-funded pavilion is less controversial. Farrelly quotes RAIA president Howard Tanner as saying that, “the Biennale is about the need to publicise.”

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Venetian Yellow

Along with the rest of the Venice Architecture Biennale , the Australian pavilion opened on Sunday. It’s exhibiting 300 architectural models from Australia, each on their own 270mm diameter yellow aluminium podium. The exhibition is labelled Abundant , but could just as well be called “Tall” or “Squeezed” : the height of the models is limited to 1200mm, more than four times the width. Maybe dispelling notions that things are wide down here? Or perhaps there will be a lot of models precariously rotated 90 degrees.

Everyville, the online competition accompanying the Biennale is now judged and the entries are available to view .

Pics in November I hope.

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No need to go! Super Colossal found the official pics on Flickr .

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Hamer Hall

Roy Ground’s 1982 Hamer Hall (Melbourne), glittering gold mixing it with rough aggregate, is about to get an update. Apparently the Arts Centre is not facing the right way. Sturt Street and Southgate aren’t getting enough attention. So the Black Box will move, and from the looks of the sketch above ( FJMT ?), the award-winning EQ restaurant (by NMBW ) will disappear too. According to Premier Brumby the changes will, “bring the arts closer to the people and the people closer to the arts.” The centre will close in 2010 for its $128.5M renovations. The gaudy but beautiful interiors may be stripped and refashioned into something a little less flamboyant – the Premier talks about “new and expanded foyer spaces”. I hope they are careful – Hamer Hall has some heritage protection so it could be a battle.

The Age 09.09.08
Interior shot at Flickr
The Oz 06.09.08

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TMAG

JPW and Terroir’s concept plans for the redevelopment of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery were released recently. Neighbouring Dunn Place has much urban potential, as was identified in the Hobart Waterfront competition a couple of years back (whatever came from that?). That competition was interested in strengthening North-South links from the waterfront through Dunn Place to City Hall and beyond.

The new plans show a glazed roof to an archaeological exhibition taking up the Eastern half of Dunn Place, with a “Crow’s Nest” tower at the Southern end. Filling in the Northern edge are a wet weather drop off, cafe, and a linkway from the new gallery. It is easy to see how all this assists TMAG but harder to tell what it will mean for the surroundings – though anything has to be better than the current car park. The bounding one way traffic sewers, and pedestrian connections across them don’t seem to have been addressed as part of this exercise.

Project Page

Proposed plan:

View from the South East:

Existing:

Back on that competition, its website is still there, untouched for over a year. The last news was of a report published in mid 2007, based on the competition results. It refers on to the Sullivans Cove Waterfront Authority if you want a copy. But the SCWA , who ran the competition, appear to have forgotten about it – I cannot find mention of the competition or its report on their site . The three winners had rather different suggestions for Dunn Place. Preston Lane built over most of it, Jeppe Aagaard Andersen flooded it, and Tony Caro turned it into a park.

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Feeling the pinch

Squatting seemed to have disappeared from the public view in Melbourne, but now it’s back. With rentals almost impossible to find, and not cheap when you do , students have taken over vacant Faraday Street housing owned by Melbourne University. They are hoping to twist Unimelb’s arm till they agree to a housing co-op on the site.

SHAC

Having a quick look at available rentals in Carlton (working out to a minimum of about $170 per week) then at the youth allowance for students (about $177 per week for a young student living away from home), I would say we have a problem. Brunswick is barely any cheaper.

The Slackbastard blog expects the Melbourne University Council , meeting today at 4pm, will support the co-op. But Slackbastard also says that the Council members are all homeless, which I suspect not to be the case. So who knows.

Wikipedia:Squatting

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