news in all places
The Valencia Effect 
Is this a sign of things to come? As austerity measures dig in, are “los indignados” of Spain wondering about the money that fed a cultural building boom? Where complex buildings were designed by foreign architects, who didn’t seem to know that their hefty fees were being added to the country’s debt.
Santiago Calatrava is in a puddle of a muddle in his home town, Valencia. The fourth-ranked United Left party (Esquerra Unida) has found the architect to be a handy scapegoat as the region nears bankruptcy. On a dedicated website Esquerra Unida lists allegedly corrupt dealings with the Comunidad Valenciana concerning fees for the City of Arts and Sciences. Perhaps they have also targeted Calatrava as both major political parties had a hand in commissioning him, and because his work is monument to that very recent era when a government would happily extend its debt to secure prestigious buildings and events.
The [Popular Party] government denied for years the information on contracts and payments to Calatrava, but the work of the United Esquerra parliamentary group has managed to uncover all the secrets of business of the Swiss architect with the money of the Valencians. Esquerra Unida
Fairfax papers have passed some news along from the Guardian. It trumpets that:“contracts were given to [Calatrava] via an unpublicised negotiating system establishing his payments as a percentage of the final cost of each project, which doubled or tripled’”. Then they reveal that he was paid, “for designing projects that never came to fruition.” The horror.
Santiago Calatrava, architect born in Valencia star but residing in Switzerland, has claimed about 100 million euros from the Generalitat Valenciana, with no IVA or tax paid in Spain. Esquerra Unida
They neglect to mention that Calatrava moved to Switzerland to do his civil engineering degree in 1975, not to evade spanish tax. If Calatrava’s Swiss office had charged IVA (Spain’s GST equivalent), it would have been extra to the fee, and passed back to the government. [ Update: In 2008, Calatrava’s website did mention offices in New York and Valencia – it no longer does. ]
His most emblematic [project] is the City of Arts and Sciences, which has cost over 1,100 million euros and is still unfinished and has various operating problems. Esquerra Unida
Calatrava was signed on in 1991 to a 625M Euro project. The project was inaugurated in 1998, with the final building, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, being opened in 2005. According to The Guardian, the ‘city’ runs at a loss.
“…the costs of reproduction, models, photography, travel, travel and expenses … are billed separately and paid within one month from the filing of the bill.” exclaims El Mundo.
Apparently journalists haven’t heard of disbursements. Or percentage fees… Calatrava initially charged 4.5% of the budgeted cost for architecture and engineering, and 6.5% for “construction management”. In later buildings this was revised to “11% to 12%” of the final cost of construction, highly controversial to El Levante-EMV, which refers to the City of Arts and Sciences as “the crime scene”.
Calatrava is an easy target in a deep recession. His main faults? 1. He left Spain. His Spanish wikipedia page is… er rather negative compared to the English one. 2. He didn’t audit the government, and 3. His buildings don’t come cheap. They are expensive and distinctive, which is what the government of the day wanted, to attract major events and tourism, and build its own pyramids.
Over the last decade, surfing on a property boom, Valencia spent billions hosting the America’s Cup sailing competition and the European Grand Prix motor race, launching Hollywood-style movie studios, and building the biggest aquarium in Europe, a Sydney-style opera house and several museums. Reuters May 1st [ link ]
“The “big events” policy is responsible for 13% of the region’s current debt, which has been estimated at close to 20 billion euros. “Looking beyond the surface of wealth and excess, this superficial economic model made us poorer.” Vincent Soler, Professor of Applied Economics at the Univeristy of Valencia. [ link ]
One of the worrying things about this politically motivated kerfuffle is how it has been reported. Many news services have let these claims about dodgy contracts slip through, without noticing that a normal contract for architectural services looks around about the same. Maybe not for much longer?
14.05.12 in practice
Architect / protaganist: Santiago Calatrava
On "Eames: The Architect and The Painter"
On Tuesday I snuck in, as a “plus one”, to ACMI’s preview of the new Eames doco, “Eames: The Architect and The Painter”, not sure what to expect. It was long, but it was good. It must have been hard compressing an odd fifty years of career into 83 minutes, and it did feel as though some stretches of time were skipped over. There wasn’t too much of the Sixties, unless I dozed off, which I doubt.
The film seemed to have two main zones of investigation: the complicated creative partnership between Charles and Ray, and their cross-disciplinary practice. Interviews with stylishly ageing Angelinos who used to work in the office are intercut with rare footage and photos of life in the studio. The employees seemed a tolerant lot, mostly seeming quite happy to be ‘exploited’ by a charismatic and ‘proper’ master. This was a studio that apparently never closed, life and work being very much entwined for Mr and Mrs Eames.
Their work too was intertwined and complementary – the Eames’s output stemming (for the most part) from the fusing of two minds – a neglected aspect the film very much wants to promote. The studio’s output was not quite as cross-disciplinary as I had imagined, more a progression from furniture design to a dominant focus on film making and communications, with a famous dabble or two in architecture along the way.
I don’t want to spoil any surprises for those considering attending, so I will keep this short. Go, be surprised and amazed. What I will do is embed some of the footage that the film sampled, some of it newly released by the Eames Office. If you want to see these at the film, just don’t click play!
Possibly the most awkward TV interview I’ve ever seen. It starkly shows the difficulty people had accepting Ray as an equal design partner.
IBM at the Fair. The film of the Eames / Saarinen IBM pavilion at the 1964-5 New York World’s Fair. Hello Koyaanisqatsi?
Many of the following films show an unusual regard for scale, often zooming into macro for a slow pan with a limited depth of field, revealing the intricate detailing of.. a hand, a toy train, anything really. There is a fascination with contraptions and mechanics, the way things go together, and the way people use them. This perhaps even extends into the circus films and the off-the-shelf components of the Eames House.
Powers of Ten, from 1977. A film seeking to engage school children with maths and science, preempting Google Earth?
A leisurely paced eleven minute advertisement introducing the Polaroid SX-70 (1972).
The Coloring Toy
A Communications Primer – 1953
Something About Functions – 1961
Toccata for Toy Trains – 1957
Tops – 1969
The Information Machine – 1958
And, of course, the trailer.
ACMI Melbourne screening details
The film’s website
13.05.12 in film
MCA round table debate this Thursday 
This looks too good to miss. RSVP by tomorrow Tuesday if you are in Sydney.
When important new buildings don’t meet the expectations of others in the architectural community, there is usually a lot of grumbling in back street bars, then we try to avoid looking at them. Very rarely do architects break rank to publicly criticise a design. And when they do it too publicly, they can run foul of the institute’s code of conduct and the ‘defamed’ architect. So it is left to the poor reviewers to surreptitiously inject just the right amount of doubt – too much and their article may attract the dreaded “kill fee”.
But the MCA’s new “Mordant Wing”, named after philanthropist Simon Mordant, is a special case. Since 1997, the MCA has not once but twice held limited architectural competitions for extensions to the old museum. One comp was won by Kazuyo Sejima, the other, which Seijima boycotted, by Sauerbruch Hutton. Neither went ahead, much to the embarrassment of just about everyone except the MCA. So the eyes were on Sam Marshall when he eventually gained the commission a few years ago, having worked as the MCA’s master planner for several years. Talk about a poisoned chalice.
Marshall’s blockish design (which I have yet to visit) addresses the MCA’s concerns that the building not be too showy, the art is what it’s about. Coincidentally, the Venice Biennale pavilion proposal by DCM addresses similar concerns voiced by the Australia Council’s Simon Mordant, who is also part-funding that project.
Congratulations to Architect Marshall for fronting up at this debate. Elizabeth Farrelly is also on the panel, which will perhaps add some historic perspective, given her role at the council when the Seijima scheme was “moved to trash”.
Here’s Sam Marshall discussing the MCA’s environmental sustainability recently:
MCA Green Plan – Sam Marshall from GreenUps on Vimeo.
Lastly, a dated butterpaper forum discussion.
30.04.12 in forum
Gallery fatigue
I finally got to the William Kentridge exhibition at ACMI last weekend, with a friend. It closes at the end of May. It is worth every cent. Etchings and drawings of characters in his films take up most of the space. He has a particular way with blotchy skin that reminds me of the late Lucian Freud’s work. The self portraits – William as “Felix” and “Solo” – move about within ghost like bubbles that remind me a bit of one of Freud’s models, Sunshine boy Leigh Bowery.
So the traditional hung paintings sat well in the gallery, with lots of room to pace about and stand back without getting in anyone’s way. The film spaces were such a let down in contrast. My memory fails me as to whether it has always been like this. Perhaps it was just the volume of people highlighting the deficiencies.
[ACMI Flinders Street level – the main entrance has been relabelled Video Garden..? MORE PLANS]
Some suggestions we came up with afterwards, for those lucky enough to be designing such space, and their exhibitions.
- small theatres work for a few people, but they need to have a way to cope when a few more arrive. One seat holding at most five people doesn’t cut it when the viewing time is over half an hour. Elderly people were sitting on the floor. Why not an inconspicuous bench around the perimeter of the room?
- for some reason Kentridge’s work had been digitised. I guess it has to be to run on a loop. The rooms were so shallow though that it was too easy to see the pixels on the screen, and in one older video, an awful lot of colour artefacts (smudgy bits). We come to view video here rather than on Youtube for the quality, so it is disturbing when you can get a better result (and distance) on your home screen.
- the theatres have no doors on them. I suppose this has something to do with enticing people in and providing them enough light to sit down. Instead, gaggles of people just stood in the doorway.
- two of the theatres are adjacent. Sound travels, especially when there are no doors and a lack of acoustic insulation.
- show starting times and durations on the doors to the theatres. We entered half way through both films and had no idea how long the loop was. People can’t pace their visit if they don’t know how long things are. Some people like to watch films from the start too.
- having sat uncomfortably in the two theatres for over an hour, we were exhausted and had to leave. This meant we had to forfeit the rest of the exhibition. Gallery fatigue is real, so why not provide pass outs?
- ease off on the surveys. One at the bottom of the “out” escalator, and another at the top. I was identity-stripped. I was expecting to be asked about my visit, but they were more interested in my income level and postcode.
- The new and revised ACMI has no access from Flinders Street. Why shut the front door and force people to enter from the Square? The ACMI layout has been fiddled with since it opened. The organisation has grown significantly and has many separate functions on four levels. Why does it need to occupy a cul de sac? No one can just drift through as we could when it opened. That was great, it was surely useful to ACMI, and it was also an integral arm of Federation Square’s meandering circulation system.
[ Lucian Freud’s portraits are currently on exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London ]
10.04.12 in galleries
Black box
Denton Corker Marshall have won the limited competition for the Australian Venice Biennale Pavilion. There is a fair bit about that competition within these pages. Myself and about 750 architects protested against its conditions, which basically limited it to larger companies with overseas experience and experience in similar buildings. This wasn’t to be a pavilion that would take any risks.
In June, the commissioner for the Australian 2013 Venice Art Biennale, Simon Mordant, announced the competition and antagonised the nation’s architects by stating, “This is an art space. It’s not an architectural competition … We need a functional exhibition space that works for the artist and complies with the Venetian authorities’ requirements. And that’s going to be something that’s far more modest.” Mr Mordant is also donating $1M towards the $6M construction budget.
Denton Corker Marshall have read the writing on the wall, designing a stealthful black box that sucks in the light. It is not reflective, and doesn’t want to be anything other than the container Mordant asked for. This appears to be a building trying to disappear, in a terribly elegant way. Whether that’s the right thing to be doing in the canal-side backlot of a garden full of expressive national pavilions, is debatable.
Upon entry into the black box, one will enter a white box. The architects say that they have, “avoided imposing a mannered architectural ‘event’ on the artworks displayed within, rather creating a container on and in which ideas can be explored where the container in no way competes with those ideas.” It could be seen as the polar opposite of Sverre Fehn’s Scandanavian pavilion, also chosen at a limited competition. That building provides a platform to be filled, opening out in two directions to the gardens. That building is beautiful and very obvious, but, like Mies’ National Gallery in Berlin, it is a hard one to hang paintings in. DCM’s building borrows more from the numerous older pavilions decked out in generic neoclassical garb, and housing plain white rooms with four sides.
The DCM building can be read as a discrete and perfect box for the architecture-averse Australia Council. Even the architects say it was conceived as an object rather than a building. But it can also be read as a protest against the silencing of Australian architects, a darker and angrier statement about the state of things. Perhaps a black armband was just what we needed.
PS
Denton Corker Marshall is becoming quite adept at invisible buildings. In 2009 they designed the building that no one wanted, but everyone needed – The Stonehange Visitors Centre. At the time, London director Stephen Quinlan hoped that, “if a visitor can remember their visit to the stones but can’t remember the visitor centre they passed through, we will be happy.”
04.04.12 in competitions
Architect / protaganist: Denton Corker Marshall [DCM]
Congratulations to the boys at DCM. A development of their Di Stasio competition entry. Who needs a new idea every Monday morning. Good pencil graphics. Barrie Marshall is still the best delieator to have come out of Springvale. I particularly liked the barge view on the Bacino, an appropriate nod to Aldo Rossi. Not fast enough for my taste though.
by David White on 4 April 12 ·#
That should be “delineator”.
by David White on 4 April 12 ·#
That’s almost as interesting as Seans’s bar fridge. I suppose it’s a fair comment on Australia’s relevance… Heatherwick was lying through his teeth, but it doesn’t hurt.
by WOFTAM on 7 April 12 ·#
pg 480-481 Content. R. Koolhaas.
by info on 7 April 12 ·#
Shades of green
This morning’s Background Briefing on RN examined the flaws in home energy rating systems. The show was unsurprising: they found many houses with low ratings and high performance, and vice versa. No prizes for guessing that architect-designed green homes suffered in the ratings department for not under-glazing, and not air-conditioning. The software wasn’t designed to be used like this and it encourages a conformity of design that suits standard project homes. From my experience, it is a bit of a lottery what the software will think of a custom-designed house.
Paraphrasing Adelaide architect John Maitland in the documentary, the system isn’t good but it’s better than nothing – at least it is pushing the industry along. Maitland designed a house in the early 2000s at Aldinga. An outer skin shields the building fabric from western sun, and a small in-line fan shunts hot air from the mezzanine back downstairs. Both of these are apparently too much for the software to handle. Despite not needing any active heating or cooling (which the software assumes you will have), the house has been rated 4.3, so would be unbuildable today. Its real performance, gauged from energy spend, is closer to 8.0.
This fitting of square pegs into round holes been something architects have grumbled about for years. But now the federal government is planning to extend the rating system to old houses, penalising houses like the one at Aldinga, and thousands more. News is just in that the government has backed off setting dates for the roll-out.
01.04.12 in sustainability
A colourful evening
It was my first journey into the 26 year old Dulux colour awards. This is one of several industry awards in architecture, and this one now covers New Zealand also, so it was a big event. I have to admit the main reason I went along was that it was in the Regent Theatre, which I had never ventured into before, musicals not being my thing. The basement ballroom is a hidden Melbourne treasure, giant in scale, yet detailed to the umpteenth degree in 1920s exoticist splendour. Hundreds of ceiling panels, each individually painted. A late nod to the Marriner Group for bringing this beauty back from rat-infestedness.
The awards were dominated by the colour green. More of a lime green. It is everywhere, and is usually justified by the proximity of trees. Winners were chosen from an intensive six hour session held in the theatre yesterday where judges including Peter Maddison and Jeff Fearon argued over photographs.
The major winner of the night was the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, which picked up the major gong as well as a few smaller awards. They built a palette for the project which included hundreds of colours, many of them green, and it looks damn good for it. Colours were built into the project concept, as the lead architect at Billard Leece / Bates Smart said, colours were a, “strategy for getting through a massive and gruelling project”. Meaning that if the colours were governed by an overarching scheme, department heads couldn’t stymie colour selections because they didn’t like yellow/ green/ purple. The close runner up for appearances on stage went to MGS for their Drill Hall project, also in Melbourne, and also in green.
The audience favourite was possibly a bridge in an arts precinct on the Derwent River near Hobart. It is part of the Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park. The palette for the vertical slats stretched the full height of Room 11’s poster. It may be time for another trip down that way. Here are some phone pics snapped on the night:
And here are some slightly more professional shots..
28.03.12 in awards
Waking up!
[image by nkzs]
It’s been a slow start to the year at butterpaper.com. Sorry about that, if you’d noticed. There have been two main reasons.
1. The Butter Paper architecture and web office is about twice as busy as it was a year ago. Given the gloom forecast, I had taken on some enjoyable yet demanding tutoring work at Victoria University this semester. So time for this website has been in short supply.
2. OK this is a long one. The web has changed, again. I have taken a step back to work out what this site can be in the future. Back when this site began in 2000, the backbones were the directories, and its news coverage. It was one of about two websites reporting on Australasian architecture. I would type summaries of print publications, with links where available. This is now known as micro-blogging and there are several hundred others covering the same territory on twitter and facebook. Everyone is a micro-blogger.
I deleted the trade library in 2003 as by that time there were far better-resourced sites in competition. The forum, like many others, started to die off about three years ago as Facebook and Twitter encroached into that territory. I think the quality of online discussion has deteriorated since then, but there ain’t much I can do about it. The events section takes a lot of time to maintain, and there are now several commercial sites doing exactly the same thing, so I’m becoming weary of that too. The choice became: do I continue throwing time into elements and aspects of the site that are becoming obsolete, or do I concentrate on the things that can’t be copied?
I have decided to: – find ways for people to directly add items like events and notices, perhaps through a delicious tag or a login (which is rather tricky using the current software). – do something similar for the architects’ directory, which is way smaller than it should be. – spend the bulk of my time working on longer posts examining the back stories of some of the news items that fly past us at a rate of knots. I like doing that and it can’t be copied. But it does take time, I have had some in the works for months. These will be promoted via twitter and facebook when they go online.
As always, thoughts are most welcome. So they we are… welcome back to Butterpaper v.2012.
[image source stanford.edu]
25.03.12 in random-debris
Accent e-book
Hyundai Australia has just published an e-book covering their six blogger-lead tours around Sydney and Melbourne in August last year. I was one of them, and get a double page spread, thankfully with no mugshot. They seemed to like the Ashton Raggat McDougall buildings I showed them the most. Click the image below to view the book.
Hyundai have launched an associated competition only being promoted through these six blogs – so your chances are quite high to snaffle $5k to put towards your “design dream”.
Find out more about the competition here, or read about my August drive-about here.
[ NOTE Hyundai Australia has been a butterpaper.com sponsor ]
25.03.12 in books
The Accent is about Universal design and beating the competition.
by Competitions on 8 April 12 ·#
Life Architecturally on telly
Life Architecturally (trailer) from Britt Arthur on Vimeo.
Coming up on the telly on the 28th at 10pm – an ABC documentary about the work and ways of McBride Charles Ryan.
“This intimate documentary observes the pressures of building a multi-story, twin-tower development and a revolutionary new school, in the shape of an infinity symbol, alongside the construction and design of their new family home. It follows Rob and Debbie as they prepare their pitch to win the contract to design and construct a prestigious new billion-dollar building that will be the biggest cancer care centre in the Southern Hemisphere. “
22.02.12 in films
Architect / protaganist: McBride Charles Ryan
Awesome Peter, thanks for the tip !
by Sean on 27 February 12 ·#
Panel drop
The National Mutual tower in Collins Street (Godfrey & Spowers, Hughes, Mewton and Lobb) lost a marble facade tile today, clearing the plaza 10 storeys below. The Age has more, mistakenly referring to a fallen ‘concrete slab’, a scary thought.
30.01.12 in buildings
Yes marble a little friendlier than conc. but same effect. Funny how no-one recognises marble unless its a counter top. Not popular for building facades for a long time (except perhaps for despotic regimes). This has revealed to me (by rumours and net sleuthing) that the owners have a permit to fill in the plaza with a ten storey block, lower on the edges, thus eliminating the open space ! Lots of cafes / shops at ground level though. Buchans. Shocked that powers that be think losing the open space is ok, though admittedly its never been very user friendly – but it could easily be done over without an actual new office block.
by rohan on 1 February 12 ·#
What an amazing facade.
by crazy over skyscrapers on 3 February 12 ·#
This is a significant modernist building that continues to hold historic resonance: See listing: http://bit.ly/xVVwo3
by nevillek on 12 February 12 ·#
Just went past – some scaffolding up on west side and marble being removed. Guess photo now or never !
by rohan on 20 February 12 ·#
Urban Troppo in Weddell
On Tuesday night an ABC article popped up announcing that Troppo and another unnamed firm have completed their new town design in the Northern Territory. To house 50,000, Weddell is to be built about 40 kilometres from Darwin.
The population of Greater Darwin and Palmerston is currently 133,000, and this is expected to increase to 171,000 by 2030. They intend for most of this growth to happen in Palmerston (built in the 1980s) and in the new city of Weddell. Due to the expansion of Southern satellite cities and suburbs, they calculate that the population centre of Greater Darwin will in fact be 12km out of Darwin by 2030. Weddell will be as close to this point as Darwin.
A Troppo-designed house for Weddell
Weddell is being branded heavily by the Territory government as a Sustainable City. They have a document [ PDF ] explaining what they hope to achieve. Emphasis being on ‘hope’ as all the sustainability initiatives have question marks next to them. Given the sprawling nature of the new Greater Darwin, and the lack of commuter rail, you’d have to raise your eyebrows at the hope of having 20% of the population getting around on bicycles and public transport by 2030. Maybe they’ll all become triathletes. The long distance railway station is a 20km drive from the CBD – but at least it runs through Weddell.
In this document, they cite, “reducing car dependency by creating a compact city” as being the first in the list of trait that define a sustainable city. They have taken the liberty of applying this condition to Weddell itself, rather than to Greater Darwin.
“In Weddell, the following practices will be important to drive transport decisions: creating a self-contained, compact city that avoids the need for commuting to work and provides local services and facilities…”
Their hopes are that (with a question marks next to them): “80% of trips by Weddell residents are within Weddell by 2030… [and] a minimum of one person per household is employed locally in Weddell”. To get this rolling they are thinking of establishing a “hub of excellence for sustainability training”, local business clusters based on the horticultural industry, and a virtual office hub. And yet there are only eight small blocks labelled commercial along the “Village Square”.
It will be interesting to see the plans develop, if the government is serious about all its aspirations, and if Troppo really do get to design all the buildings. If it comes to pass that these aspirations vaporise once the town is built, and the project home builders have their way, then Weddell will be yet another dormitory suburb in eco city clothing.
Darwin’s Mayor Graeme Sawyer is pessimistic about the plans, saying in 2010 that, “Weddell is an absolute nightmare and shouldn’t happen… If you look at all of those criteria around public transport, around energy efficiency, around travel time, around all of those sorts of things, probably if you set up a matrix and ticked off those things against Weddell you probably wouldn’t build it.”
Just for interests sake, here are same-scaled Google maps of Greater Darwin (133,000), Melbourne (4M), and Auckland (1.5M). Despite being destined to sprawl, Darwin can at least take heart that it is Australia’s most Sustainable City, according to the ACF. This appears largely due to high rankings for air quality, employment, and biodiversity.
Weddell is on the lower right.
An exhibition of the proposed design is currently on at the Art Gallery, Chancellery Building, Charles Darwin University, Brinkin until December 16th (10am to 3pm).
More at ABC Darwin
Weddell home page
01.12.11 in urban-planning sustainability
Trapped in an elevator documentary
“Trapped in an Elevator” is possibly one of the dullest documentaries I’ve ever endured, but it may be of interest to lift buffs out there. I guess it proves that lifts are about as boring as they look. The doco scoots quickly over the much more dramatic elevator stories of the 19th Century, preferring to focus on an office worker’s worrying weekend stuck in a lift in Manhattan. There is a sneak peak at the up and coming magnetic elevators, which are starting to become necessary as cables are just getting too long in the new super tall skyscrapers.
“So what’s up with elevators?” Narrator
To add to the excitement, the TV edit is a mess, with black spots and six minutes repeated. The video expires December 7th, Australia only.
30.11.11 in video-clips
Venice pavilion shortlist yawner
The Australia Council yesterday announced its shortlist for the Venice pavilion competition. As expected, they are playing it safe, with just a couple of smallish practices. Given the level of discontent surrounding the competition, it’s surprising and provocative of them to play it this safe. It’s the competition you have when you’re not having a competition. All blokes who graduated before 1986, so a total lack of Gen X, Y or Z, or XX chromosomes. Of the 67 expressions of interest, the jury of five chose:
- Bud Brannigan Architects
- Denton Corker Marshall
- John Wardle Architects
- Johnson Pilton Walker
- Peter Stutchbury Architecture
- Sean Godsell Architects
I’m sure any of them would do a fine job, but so would many lesser knowns, if given the chance. Rose Hiscock of the Australia Council describes the conservative assessment of the first round entries:
We received 67 Expressions of Interest (EOI) as part of the first stage of the selection process – an open call to all Australian architects for credentials. From this, a panel selected six practices on their demonstrated capability, suitability, experience and skills to undertake this project,”
The big firms with capability coming out their ears, and the architects with decades of experience naturally float to the top. Brian Zulaikha, the sole architect on a jury of arts administrators, discussed the weeding down process:
“There was an incredibly diverse range of interest, from sole practitioners to large Australian architectural organisations, and the selection of a shortlist was difficult. We believe we have chosen a truly talented group of firms which represents a breadth of architectural excellence.”
Perhaps more revealing is a response to a question from the first round.
Q: We have not undertaken a project off-shore. Would this eliminate us from consideration at this stage?
A: Respondents are requested to demonstrate their experience in areas such as projects in an off-shore location as one of the criteria that will help demonstrate suitability and capability for this project. It is envisaged that the EOI stage will be a very competitive selection process, so whilst this is not the only criteria in assessment of suitability and capability ( see Part A Section 1.4) it will be included in the panel’s decision making process.
When I put that through Google Translate it says, “You can try, but you’d be lucky.”
24.11.11 in buildings
as usual your missing the real story.
by info on 24 November 11 ·#
At least I can spell. I did hear a rumour, but I try to keep closer to fact.
by peter on 24 November 11 ·#
looks like a who’s who of the pensioners club.
some of them are even too old to drive anymore.
by cabbie on 25 November 11 ·#
Why anyone would bother to enter this without being one of the ‘top’ established architects at the moment I have no idea – it was always going to be a waste of time for everyone else. Wonder what the Flinders St Comp holds in store for us…?
by STARCHITECT on 25 November 11 ·#
great! venice pavilion yawner to gen x whinger.
i ‘d take the borarchitect list over the up and coming gen y tossers like super colostomy et al any day. playing safe just avoids a demonstration of how threadbare and overated local design is – then again it would have been good to see how crap you neutered deadbeats are if you were given a chance.
by sod on 26 November 11 ·#
Gen y love going on the bottom for a bit of the old nepotist in out.
by japanese cricket tragic on 26 November 11 ·#
Are denton corker or marshall still alive?
by shorn on 30 November 11 ·#
Last word from s. mordant’s missus on mexico’s X Y & Zs.
…. she’s got a point?
.
http://www.whyallanewsonline.com.au/news/national/national/general/giving-till-its-gone/2371475.aspx
by info on 30 November 11 ·#
Ted's top ten
Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu let the Herald Sun in on his top ten Melbourne buildings last weekend. While it’s hard to argue with any of the individual choices, it is more interesting to look at the list as a whole. What an elderly bunch of edifices it is, all built before World War II. Even Burley Griffin misses out on a nod. His favourite is Marcus Barlow’s 1932 Manchester Unity building. He apparently hates a lot of buildings too, but we aren’t told which ones they might be.
Putting down the tabloid down and digging through the web for something more substantial, a lecture turns up [ PDF ] from Baillieu’s time as Shadow Minister for Planning. Here are a few excerpts. Possibly he’s had an architectural blood transfusion since then.
I was educated architecturally thirty years ago. My education started at Melbourne University in 1971, where I studied European and American architectural history. At that time, of course, the credo was ‘less is more’. That credo certainly got into my architectural blood…
In my final year at university, I did a thesis piece on art deco architecture in Melbourne, which in many respects is quite contrary because it’s about ornamentation — architecture as entertainment — and that, for me, is the other side of things when it comes to materialism and architecture: there is a role for entertainment. The role of the architect is to be the provider of joy in the architectural sense. To balance the two is not always easy, but it’s part of that role…
I just love the Manchester Union Building on the corner of Swanston and Collins streets. Most people walk by and don’t really look. For me, it’s amazing. Federation Square was something that didn’t move me, I’m not quite sure why. Lots of people thought it was extravagant. But they use it.
Manchester Unity at Walking Melbourne
Photo: P.Johns 2011
22.11.11 in buildings
What a lovley showcase of Australian Architecture. Love thay style
by Creative Dragon on 15 February 12 ·#
The architect & the photographer
John Gollings, Philip Goad, Vanessa Bird, and Alan Saunders spoke at a forum at the State Library of Victoria in July 2011. The transcript and audio are now available. Here’s a snippet.
“I think there’s actually no connection between the photograph and the building. What I would like to think at best is that the photograph does describe to the viewer the architect’s intent and the architect’s creative philosophy, but beyond that I sometimes wish the building would just burn down and just leave the photograph because the comparison is odious.”
John Gollings, photographer
17.11.11 in photographers audio-clips
Good services for those who want to become a architecture and photographer.
by job in new zealand on 17 November 11 ·#
Asbestos lives
Just saw a jaw-dropper on iView – last week’s Foreign Correspondent in India ( here for a while ). Old asbestos mountains that kids were playing in, shop assistants unaware that the asbestos roof sheeting they were selling was dangerous, company directors saying that white asbestos wasn’t dangerous if handled properly by the unskilled people cutting it. Blah.
It appears that after developed countries more or less banned asbestos, manufacturers turned to the developing world. India isn’t alone in being flooded by the deathly dust, most of South East Asia also continues to sell asbestos sheet for low cost cladding. India is one of Quebec’s main importers of asbestos. The potential for growth is so great that there are plans to reopen an old asbestos mine, despite the anger of many Canadians.
More at BBC/ICIJ’s Dangers in the Dust website.
The above image is taken from this PDF.
16.11.11 in product-library
Curutchet on film
Le Corbusier’s Casa Curutchet in La Plata, Argentina is the star of a recent film showing on SBS On Demand until the 23rd. A well to do furniture designer lives and works peacefully in the house with his family until Mr Victor next door starts breaking down a boundary wall. Things start to slide rapidly, and it’s master manipulator versus the wimp.
As the architect tells the poor guy, “codes are one thing. Real life is something else”.
SBS ON DEMAND. EXPIRES NOV 23. AU ONLY.
Tip: BM
Trivia: the first photo above is from the wikipedia article about the house. This article is referenced in the film.
Hey great tip! This is brill.
by kmcf on 18 November 11 ·#
Sustainability - Your laws do not apply to me
Readings sale table, 2011
The Fifth Estate reported in late August that the AIA Sustainability Awards were on their way out, having done their dash. A photo caption summed it up: “It’s over: green bling gongs all gone.” Unable to verify the article, and unable to tell whether it only applied to New South Wales, I didn’t post about it. The AIA was quick to clarify the changes.
The Institute issued a media release on August 31st, penned by CEO David Parken. A similar post by Parken appeared around the same time on The Fifth Estate and EDG websites. Awards criteria are now being amended to adopt the following recommendations:
- That the Sustainable Architecture award should be elevated to a Named Award at a National, Chapter and, where relevant, regional level.
- That the award should be discontinued as a separate entry category, and be selected by the jury from all awards entries (this may need to be by the chairs of juries for those Chapters with multiple juries).
- That the award criteria should be open ended and recognise exemplary contribution to sustainable architecture through design.
- That a preamble should be provided to guide entrants and the jury outlining the intent of the award.
- That all award entries in all categories should be required to include a brief description of the value the project has generated in each of the environmental, social and economic domains. While no detailed performance data would be required the jury could call for additional information from entrants, if required.
- That consideration should be given to changing the composition of juries to ensure one member has detailed understanding of or experience with sustainable design.
This is consistent with its Environmental Policy, which states that the AIA will, “maintain ESD and Energy awards as separate categories until sustainable criteria become a prerequisite of all awards” [ PDF ]. This policy has its roots in the UIA policy of 1993, and has as its main commitment that we, “place sustainability at the core of our practices and professional responsibilities.”
If the sustainability category was a stepping stone to achieving this aim, presumably there is some sort of milestone at which we can step on past it. Have we reached that point yet? The action to remove the category sounds more as if it was motivated by problems within the category, than with us reaching a point that we don’t need it any more.
The participants… were keen to ensure a shift from a preoccupation with technical performance “green bling” to one emphasising the value of creative and intelligent thinking to deliver enduring and meaningful environments through design. [ AIA press release ]
We appear to be losing the category because of its reliance on star ratings and applied “bling”, and to be replacing it with something a lot fuzzier and qualitative.
American architects KieranTimberlake admit to having coined the phrase “green bling” in an architectural context about five ago.
“KieranTimberlake coined the term “green bling” to describe the current trend of applying elements to a building just to meet LEED requirements. Instead KieranTimberlake is working on a comprehensive approach to meeting environmental
challenges: full system integration. This continued exploration allows for the connected process of design, technology, and research to coexist as a way of doing business for the firm.” James Timberlake 2006 [ PDF ]
KieranTimberlake reinvests 3% of its gross revenues back into research, with the help of tax incentives not commonly taken up by our discipline. Timberlake admitted in a 2009 interview that this integrated approach, connecting design, technology, and research, was not available to low-profit firms, especially during a recession. Still he was forceful about the need for research within other practices: “With only half a brain, they’ll go for low-cost, low-tech; if they’re smart, they’ll do the research.”
KieranTimberlake Cellophane house
Despite KieranTimberlake’s talk about setting off on their own tack via their research, they still see a role for institutionalised measuring sticks, in their case LEED. Richard Maimon told Metropolis after their work in New Orleans that, “LEED, for all its pros and cons, is widely recognised as a measure, which is important – having that credibility helped give the project mileage in terms of sustainability and replicability.”
At the same time as Parken issued his press release, Tone Wheeler’s article “Wither the Green Awards?” was published at ADR. Wheeler wrote that the changes picked up on a 2006 review, with some modifications…
…much of the emphasis on metrics and formulaic criteria has been replaced with an appeal to, “broader measures of long-term value, including adaptability, endurance and the significance of beauty … the need to ensure an understanding of sustainability more holistically, including environmental, social and cultural dimensions … the need to recognise the importance of integrated thinking not only at the individual building scale, but at the locality … and urban scale.”
This broader definition of sustainability is trying to cover an awful lot of ground. Incorporating triple bottom line economic and social aspects, it may be more than a single award can cope with. And it may be more than your typical architect, operating within tight client constraints, is able to address – at least without guidance.
Guidance is available all over the place. The AIA and RIBA both have literature freely available online, and The AIA has a subscriber only service (EDG), but these focus on environmental sustainability and rarely extend into economic and social aspects. And according to Wheeler, they are not getting read.
The 2007 ESD design guide of public buildings { PDF ] does touch on how social sustainability might be designed in, suggesting that its key attributes might be accessibility, usability, and street context. The justification for addressing social sustainability within the document is that without it the building will, “either be removed or significantly renovated, which is not sustainable.” So social sustainability is desirable in its own right, but more importantly it is an indirect way to address global warming.
Cameron Tonkinwise, writes in the current issue of Design Philosophy Papers (available for a wee while) that this switch in perception of sustainability is the way to go. Citing cognitive psychology, he says desirable things are more motivating than necessary things. Wants win out over needs. Sustainability needs to be made desirable and affirmative, rather than than negative and necessary.
“The way in which sustainability places strictures on what designers can do, limiting their sovereignty, seems repellant. Without wanting to concede to anachronistic reassertions of the free spirits of designer geniuses, it is worth noting that if sustainability is not a necessity, then sustainable design becomes an affirmation rather than a constraint on the designer’s liberty.” [DPP]
Sustainability – Your laws do not apply to me
Sustainability – Don’t threaten me with misery
[ with apologies to Billy Bragg ]
Whichever way we become more motivated, it sounds reasonable that an award-winning sustainable building be beautiful, but will it apply the other way – can the knock out building of the year win an award if it exhibits only tick box sustainability? Can it still be beautiful?
Ecological sustainability and award-winning design have been uncomfortable bedfellows for years. Officially merging the former into the latter sounds good but the tension will remain. Sometimes it may boil over… looks like ARM have designed an eco-desal plant [ PDF ].
Wheeler writes that the switch is a return to a more subjective view of architecture, an escape from the limitations of the star rating system, and might cause some people to say, “how very architectural”, a return to “internal values”. Or are we prematurely redefining sustainability into something so ‘holistic’ and integral to design that it will lose any distinct meaning for bulk of the profession, and its clients? As was evident from last year’s Sustainable Futures: New Modes of Practice forum, we are still some time from figuring out how our professional values and roles should adapt.
I hope that removing the category and the stars will force the issue rather than sideline it. Can’t wait for the jury presentations.
08.11.11 in sustainability awards
Unbuilt awards close Friday
Architecture Australia’s Unbuilt award nominations close tomorrow, so see if you haven’t built anything, and enter it. UNBUILT
06.10.11 in competitions
