Resilience, health, and equity
Architecture has the potential to contribute positively over the next few decades as humanity adapts to the changing world we have co-created. While the resilience of our current building stock is poor, we have an opportunity to improve it and create new buildings that are appropriately resilient to the future we face.
Leave no-one behind in 2023
With its Leave No One Behind sustainable futures theme and the aim “to make architecture a central tool in achieving the UN17 Sustainable Development Goals”, the July 2-6 Union of International Architects Congress (UIA23) in Copenhagen brought the importance, and the potential of the goals to the attention of practitioners, educators and students from around the world.
Sydney Metro Northwest: Hassell, McGregor Westlake Architecture and Turpin + Crawford Studio
Colour – saturated, translucent and diaphanous – was a founding framework for the Sydney Metro Northwest artwork.
The Nicholson Galleries: Studio plus three
Located at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, the Nicholson Galleries are home to the university’s collection of antiquities from three ancient cultures: Egypt, Greece and Rome. When our studio was commissioned to design these galleries, the conceptual starting point was materiality; specifically, the way that material and tectonic culture helps to locate us in time and place.
The materiality of Jonathan Jones
As with many of Jonathan Jones’ works, untitled (maraong manaóuwi) in the forecourt of the Hyde Park Barracks draws upon layers of deep research, symbolism and culture to speak to the history of this place. This artwork particularly teaches us to have reverence and thoughtfulness in the way we use materials.
Off-cut kitchen
Held to the whim of rapidly changing trends, it is not uncommon to find kitchens barely five years old discarded or stripped from homes. In 2018, 78% of home improvements were for kitchen renovations, (according to the Home Builders Association). Off-cut kitchen is a physical manifestation of our local deconstruction and reuse network. While there are endless examples of aesthetic experimentation within the architectural interior, the materials are almost always the same, melamine, MDF, veneer and natural stone. Our question became, how can we construct a kitchen using only materials destined for landfill?
Opportunities for practice
The last three years have seen architectural practice grapple with internal and external issues that we’ve not faced in several generations, if ever. However, a recent roundtable discussion with a number of practices suggests the dark days of the pandemic may have been the prelude to a period of positivity for the profession.
Dangerously under-represented: the absence of sustainability in fitout
Crises are powerful agents for change. The worldwide pandemic and recent natural disasters have highlighted the fragility of human health, along with the importance of taking care of our planet. Like many industries, architecture and construction has responded with efforts to evolve practices in sustainable ways.
The ethics of everything
An appeal to consider the ethics of everything is overwhelming but remains urgent. The Ethics Centre identifies an ethics framework as a useful tool to consider purpose and values. Beyond design excellence, an ethics framework can help studios operate with intention, recruit the right people and reduce the risks of poor decisions being made.
The power of reciprocity – starting with Country
The disciplines of architecture and town planning are intrinsically interrelated yet in practice are often considered separately from one another. My understanding is that there are intersections between these disciplines but rarely do the systems behind these professions collaborate through sharing knowledge and project outcomes in meaningful ways.
