Six innovative FORMATIONS to challenge international views of architectural practice at Venice
Six of Australia's most innovative architecture practices have been selected to exhibit within the Formations exhibition at theAustralian Pavilion during the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2012.
Presented by the Australian Institute of Architects and devised by Anthony Burke, Gerard Reinmuth and TOKO Concept Design, Formations: New Practices in Australian Architecture aims to provoke debate about the changing role of architects and the 'formations' in which they practice.
Formations will showcase Australian architectural practices that are challenging conventional perceptions and definitions of what it is to be an architect and the possibilities for the profession to make significant contributions to new domains of work through innovative 'practice formations'. The exhibition participates in the current global discussion about the evolution and future of practice, placing Australia's most forward-thinking architects at the heart of this conversation.
In October 2011, the Institute issued an open call for expressions of interest from architects and architectural practices across the country. A total of 124 submissions were received, varying from practices working in architecture and city making to small strategic projects, objects, installations and media. Six innovative 'practice formations' have been selected:
- Healthabitat (Paul Pholeros, Stephan Rainow, Paul Torzillo)
- supermanoeuvre (Dave Pigram, Iain Maxwell, Chris Duffield)
- Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd (Richard Goodwin)
- 2112 Ai (100YR City) (Tom Kovac, Fleur Watson)
- The Architects Radio Show (Stuart Harrison, Simon Knott, Christine Phillips, Rory Hyde)
- Archrival (Claire McCaughan, Lucy Humphrey)
The Exhibitors
Healthabitat
Paul Pholeros, Stephan Rainow and Paul Torzillo
This exemplary formation improves the health of Australian Indigenous people by improving the living environment using good design.
Paul Torzillo, Stephan Rainow and Paul Pholeros founded Healthabitat in 1991 to improve the health of Indigenous Australians. The Housing for Health program, designed and implemented by Healthabitat, improves the living environments of Indigenous communities and ensures access to safe and well functioning housing that can deliver health benefits. The model has been so successful that Healthabitat has now extended its work to places as diverse as Nepal and Brooklyn, New York City.
The agency of Healthabitat goes beyond the specific projects, with its core principles, the Nine Healthy Living Practices, endorsed as part of federal and state government policy in the National Indigenous Housing Design Guide since 1999. The Guide enshrines knowledge gained through the program that is used to improve new house design and specification and make living environments that better sustain people.
supermanoeuvre
Dave Pigram, Iain Maxwell and Chris Duffield
supermanoeuvre thinks computationally and acts materially to widen the physical and conceptual boundaries of the discipline.
An international award-winning architecture and innovation practice operating out of Sydney and London, supermanoeuvrewas co-founded in 2006 by Iain Maxwell and Dave Pigram. Chris Duffield joined as business director in 2010. The firms projects have been exhibited in the UK, US, China, France, Portugal, Italy, Colombia and Australia, and they represented Australia and New Zealand at the 2008 and 2010 Beijing Architecture Biennales. supermanoeuvre is an international leader in the fields of computational design and advanced fabrication, creating innovative projects; expanded modes of practice; enhanced design methodologies; and novel fabrication techniques through experimentation, collaboration, teaching and research.
The practice's work spans a wide range of production modes and media, including founding specialist technical and education networks that sit outside of regular institutional frames. From structural form-finding software and interactive urban models to cutting-edge robotic design and high-density housing reverse-engineered through Corbusier's skip-stop diagram, their work is characterised by a consistent exploration of non-linear design processes and self-organisation across material, social and ecological substrates.
Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd
Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd is a multi-disciplinary practice committed to advancing the power of urban planning and rethinking our cities via public art and 'parasitic' architectural interventions.
Artist and architect Richard Goodwin established Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd in 1993 to explore how his work as an artist could be widened to the spheres of architecture and urban planning. Richard Goodwin Pty Ltd has evolved from an individual art practice to a multi-disciplinary architectural practice. Fundamental to his work and philosophy is the notion of adaptive reuse and radical transformations.
Richard Goodwin is a professor at the University of NSW, where he has established an Australian Research Council-funded centre called the Porosity Studio to examine and look into questions of public space and its relationship to politics and the radical transformation of architecture. The studio views the city as a laboratory for art, architecture and theory and continues to play with the boundaries of art and architectural practice. It has worked in transport and infrastructure, on international art exhibitions and an enormous range of non-usual collaborations.
2112 Ai (100YR City)
Tom Kovac and Fleur Watson
A group of international thinkers and educators think about the future of Maribor and show how multi-disciplinary and collaboration are essential conditions for future innovation.
Every year the European Union awards the title of European Capital of Culture (ECOC) to one or more cities. The city holding this prestigious title hosts a series of important cultural events. In 2012, the European Capital of Culture is Maribor in Slovenia. As part of the ECOC festivities, 2112 Ai (100YR City) will investigate and identify disruptive patterns of global change and envisage impacts on architecture, urbanism and life in the extreme future. 2112 Ai represents cultural and city engagement at the highest level and communicates how new forms of practice are responding to external demands on architecture.
Director and curator Tom Kovac and Fleur Watson will be leading a huge group of thinkers and educators. Tom Kovac is a professor of Architecture at RMIT University, and visiting professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture and the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Fleur Watson is a PhD research candidate within RMIT's architecture program, an architecture and design curator, author and former editor-in-chief of MONUMENT magazine. Together they offer high-level experience in the areas of practice-led research and the curation of large-scale events, and are proficient at ensuring industry engagement, trans-disciplinary collaboration and public dissemination.
The Architects Radio Show
Stuart Harrison, Simon Knott, Rory Hyde and Christine Phillips
This is a very unique situation where a number of practice directors come together in a not-for-profit vehicle to promote architecture.
In late 2004 practicing architects Stuart Harrison and Simon Knott created The Architects, a weekly radio programme dedicated to discussing architecture, taking it into a broader realm. RMIT lecturer and architect Christine Phillips joined the team in 2008, with Rory Hyde being involved from the early days as a producer and then international correspondent.
The show is broadcast weekly on Melbourne based community radio station 3RRR, on both FM and via the web. Each show covers current issues in architecture both locally and internationally, with guests coming into to discuss their work and approaches to architecture, urban design and sustainability. The show is informal and conversation-based, and neither 'dumbs it down' nor makes the discussion inaccessible.
The four members of the show each run separate practices, in building, education and through other media. Their broad local and international engagement is formed around the radio show, which has for seven years taken architecture to the wider world.
Archrival
Claire McCaughan and Lucy Humphrey
Architects from rival firms come together in a non-corporate space to produce work that would be impossible to create within the confines of a standard practice.
Archrival is a not-for-profit Sydney-based organisation founded in 2011 by architects Claire McCaughan and Lucy Humphrey. The organisation formed as a reaction to financial, social, political and environmental forces that are making architectural practice more complex and constrained. As a result, Archrival operates in parallel with everyday practice, allowing a collection of individuals to respond with more creative freedom to the forces reshaping the industry.
By bringing together rival firms of architects, Archrival increases the research capacity and diversity of ideas possible within any given project. This practice also calls into question the obsession with individual authorship. Archrival's projects are made by many, and are possible only due to the combined efforts of a united project team. Due to the formation's 'extracurricular' nature, the focus shifts from architecture for profit, to architecture for architecture's sake. By stepping outside of the boundaries of practice Archrival side-steps the conventional competitive market, and creates a new market, where the client is well educated in the value of the architectural product.
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To do so, ‘Formations’ will highlight “the unconventional and world-leading innovative range of architectural practice types being developed across Australia”.
Opening in second-half 2012, the exhibition will feature architects working in non-traditional ways and domains - bringing their skills and expertise to areas as diverse as robotic fabrication, government policy, and indigenous housing. More details regarding the opportunity for the Australian profession to be involved in the exhibition will be revealed in the coming weeks.
The Australian Pavilion will be transformed into a “soft landscape of connections and possibilities”, featuring a series of installations or ‘formations’ responding to the light-filled, sculpted pavilion interior. Each installation will be designed as “spaces of real world innovation”.
Focusing on actual projects and their impact, the pavilion will be a “space of engagement” in which viewers can interact and “participate in architectural conversation at close quarters”. Complementing this, will be a series of “flash formations” - free informal and intimate public events around Venice, “allowing viewers to get up close and personal with some of Australia’s most innovative architectural practices and commentators and their work”.
Describing the exhibition, Gerard said: “By exploring innovative practice types and their design output, the exhibition will provoke discussion around issues of the future of the profession and the kind of problems architects are becoming involved with.”
Outlining the exhibition focus, Anthony said: “It’s very exciting to see where architectural work is heading, the new domain areas that are being explored and the vitality and variety of innovative architectural types that Australia seems to foster.”
They added: “‘Formations’ tackles questions such as: What are the influences shaping the built environment and how are architects creatively responding? How are architects thinking more broadly about their role and having a positive influence on the built environment? Is it possible to think of the architect as just ‘one thing’ any more?”
Announcing the Creative Directors’ appointment, Venice Biennale Commissioner Mrs Janet Holmes à Court said: “As countries around the world continue to struggle with economic uncertainty and instability, it is vital that Australia maximises every opportunity to reinforce the nation’s competitive strengths and standing on the world stage.
“The Venice Architecture Biennale, now widely regarded as the most important event on the international architecture calendar, is one of these un-missable opportunities. I have every confidence that the appointment of our 2012 Creative Director team affords us a great head-start in the promotion of the nation’s incredibly rich and diverse architectural talent.”
A total of 27 submissions were received for the role of Creative Director, with five proposals shortlisted in a rigorous selection process ahead of today’s announcement.
Australia's attendance at the Venice Architecture Biennale is an initiative of the Australian Institute of Architects. The Institute is committed to ensuring the nation’s representation at the 2012, 2014, and 2016 events - after successfully representing Australia in Venice since 2006. The nation’s most recent exhibition, the 2010 NOW and WHEN: Australian Urbanism exhibition, attracted a record 93,000-plus visitors, including the world’s leading architects, artists, media, city planners and decision-makers.
Anthony Burke
Associate Professor and Head of the School of Architecture at UTS, Anthony Burke specialises in contemporary design and theory in relation to technology and its implications for Architecture the built environment. A graduate of the MS AAD from Columbia University (2000) and a B.Arch from UNSW (Hons 1, 1996) Anthony is an international curator, writer, and architectural designer, and a director of the architectural practice Offshore Studio.
Gerard Reinmuth
Gerard Reinmuth is a Director of TERROIR, the practice he founded with Richard Blythe and Scott Balmforth in 1999. The practice emerged from conversations between the Directors around the potential for architecture to open up questions of cultural consequence. Research and practice on these questions led to his appointment as Visiting Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture in 2010 and Professor in Practice at the University of Technology (UTS) Sydney in 2011.
TOKO Concept Design
TOKO is a multifaceted creative practice committed and driven by passion, operating out of Sydney. It's creative output can be appreciated through their extensive portfolio of work realised for both national and international clients in a diverse range of fields. TOKO's founding members, Dutch designers Eva Dijkstra and Michael Lugmayr, were brought up in the rich Dutch-European culture of design and art. In line with those traditions TOKO's philosophy and creative process follows a distinctive conceptual approach in which critical thought, experimentation, and potential collaborations are key. Concepts are derived from extensive research to develop contemporary, distinctive and coherent design solutions often challenging it’s visual application, playful, unexpected and minimalist.
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