The Australian Institute of Architects Awards program offers an opportunity for public and peer recognition of the innovative work of our Queensland architects. The program also provides the Institute with a valuable mechanism to promote architects and architecture within Queensland, across Australia and internationally.
The Queensland Architecture Medallion is the highest honour in the awards program and is selected from all the named Awards. The award, now in its second year, is bestowed upon a project of an exemplary standard.
The 2021 Medallion is presented to CA Architects and Cox Architecture in collaboration for the Cairns Performing Arts Centre (CPAC).
Together with the Munro Martin Parklands, CPAC creates a new arts precinct for both the city and the Far North Queensland region. The building has a quintessential Queensland character, celebrating its tropical location as well as the region’s cultural diversity. The complex and highly technical building is beautifully detailed and delivers unprecedented and functional flexibility for a regional performing arts centre.
The building benefits from the collaboration between the two architectural practices, who have a strong working relationship, bringing both expertise and local knowledge to the project.
CPAC is a significant cultural asset for the city enabling a diversity of cultural experiences and stimulating economic growth. It is already a building that has become part of the city fabric and of the community. The client, Cairns Regional Council should be commended on its foresight, courage and commitment to delivering a building of excellence for its residents and the broader region.
The architects, the broader team and the client, (Queensland Government) should be congratulated on a shared commitment to excellence.
Tamarind engages, educates, and advocates as an expert in the promotion of heritage architecture to the broader public whilst contributing to the architectural profession through research, thought leadership and as a mentor for emerging architects.
This is exemplified by her nuanced heritage-focused work across multiple institutions and disciplines; providing valuable accessible research and raising public awareness in an area of growing cultural importance.
Tamarind’s commitment to excellence in practice and her leadership qualities are also evident. This is seen through her position as an associate and heritage project lead at Conrad Gargett, her volunteer work in Myanmar with the Yangon Heritage Trust, and as a researcher with contribution to international heritage journals. She is also currently working on the documentation of modern heritage buildings for the DOCOMOMO Queensland Register, and as has been a consistent mentor in both practice and teaching, through her involvement with EmAGN.
Congratulations Tamarind!
Situated at the gateway of Brisbane’s Golden Triangle business precinct, The Annex exemplifies Brisbane City Centre Master Plan’s vision of an open, vibrant city. The buildings form, façade treatments, landscape, and spatial structure celebrates the adjacent historical fig grove and Brisbane’s wonderful sub-tropical climate.
The tower form is grounded on a highly permeable public domain with plinths and seating arrangements that are 24/7 accessible providing areas to eat, meet, and connect under the fig-tree-canopy inspired soffit. The fig tree’s shape and underlying textures inspire the detailing throughout, lending a richness to the building’s form and materiality.
An interconnecting egress stair rising from the street level to an exclusive landscape roof terrace, links 12 boutique levels to form a contemporary connected workplace. The Side core configuration maximises natural light and views, within the tenancy, to the Brisbane river and surrounding context. The landscape roof terrace provides a high-value amenity for users as well as enhanced outlook for neighbouring buildings.
The Land 121 Facilities Project skilfully transcends tightly regulated financial, functional and governmental design requirements to create a well-balanced and humanised facilities to support, maintain, and sustain the new vehicle fleet for the Australian Defence Force.
A Strict palette of low maintenance materials and a consistent suite of robust detailing is carefully deployed across nine individual buildings with varied functions. The environmental performance of the buildings is commendable, emphasising mixed mode cross flow, natural lighting and responsive sun shading strategies to reduce reliance on air conditioning in the dry tropical climate. Covered interstitial spaces between regular functional areas offers flexibility and adaptability for casual interaction and informal activities.
A successful exercise of restraint and skilled delivery with potential for rollout on other sites.
Positioned on the fringe of the Toowoomba CBD, 111 Campbell Street is inspired by regional vernacular architecture and the city’s rich heritage. An exemplar development for urban renewal the project provides a high level of amenity and mixed use, is an transitioning suburb, that is appealing for residents, visitors, businesses and investors. The building design and siting is responsive to Toowoomba’s distinctive temperate climate. Natural ventilation creates a comfortable environment all year round with minimum heating or cooling required. An active ground plane ensure synergies are maximised with regards to retail, circulation, and street activation.
Fortitude Valley State Secondary College is the first vertical school in Queensland. Teaching spaces stretch over eight storeys that embrace the central multi-storey void. This space includes lushly landscaped external learning and socialising spaces. The notion of the playful, imaginative treehouse is strongly evident in the massing and the individual pods to each floor. The abundance of the soft landscaping assists in blurring the boundaries between inside and out, while providing an opportunity for quiet, private space within the central, open public spine.
Outdoor teaching and learning spaces are created throughout the tight urban campus. They provide a variety of contemporary learning environments that allow for great flexibility as the school embraces new and experimental teaching models, meeting the changing educational needs of its students.
The material palate is mature and playful, elegant, and fun aiming to increase student comfort within this large vertical knowledge precinct and encouraging curiosity, innovation, and collaboration.
The new campus design includes the reuse of the former school building on Brooke Street allowing the new high school to be connected to the original primary school. It is refreshing to see the strong connection the campus is making with its urban context, celebrating its location in the Valley, and utilising the wider city for educational opportunities.
Despite its very prominent presence on the Brisbane skyline, BGGS Science Learning Centre has a quiet presence within the heritage context. On entering the building, the design ideas of science and cosmology become evident within the circular atrium, open to the sky. The funnel like vertical void is naturally ventilated and its curvature offers a wonderfully surprising contrast to the square external form. Within the atrium and under the oculus, the trio of stairs rotate from grid north to solar north to magnetic north robust stairs offering a practical learning opportunity as well as a sculptural piece.
Below the four science floors there is a floor of general classrooms and a flexible function space that continue a science theme but this time through the celestial realm. On the lowest level, undercroft space has been cleverly utilised to expand the campus’s HPE offering by opening onto Victoria Park.
The building offers a striking façade to the surrounding neighbourhood while creating an intimate and inspiring space within the school that does what all good education buildings should do- it invites enquiry and curiosity from students.
St Rita’s College’s Trinity Centre is a five-storey building submerged into the southern side of the site with genuine consideration of its neighbours.
The building successfully manages a number of levels on the hilltop campus improving accessibility across the site. The lower two floors include classrooms with a triple-height foyer above connecting the flexible auditorium and a range of performing arts spaces. The lower-level classrooms opened to the south and include clever slab cutouts that allow for natural ventilation and beautiful southern light. The wide circulation zones allow for flexible student learning and well-loved break out spaces.
The performing arts component of the building includes a state-of-the-art auditorium with a flat stage and natural light that enhance the multi-purpose nature of this room. The music practice and performance spaces are the envy of any school music programme with sizes and an acoustic requirement finely designed to suit different musical ensembles.
With its comfortable, mature but playful interiors, the building meet the College’s brief to celebrate and inspire its students.
JCU Ideas Lab is a dramatic addition to the series of iconic building on the Cairns Campus. The building is wrapped in a ‘folded’ Teflon fabric that speaks to the innovation encouraged within the building. As its name suggests the Lab is a space for start-up companies to work with community partners to translate ideas and research into commercial products and processes. All design decisions have been made around improving connectivity and transparency and to create real maker spaces.
The focus of the building is to bring people from a range of backgrounds and industries together and this is encouraged through a welcoming open plan ground floor. Interactive activities take place in the impressive three storey room with its spectacular wall of tropical tendril hanging plants that are planted both inside and outside and provide a genuine sense being in the tropics. The external screen reduces both heat and glare into the workspaces and the building has achieved. The colour palate throughout the building is bold and brings life and legibility to the spaces that can have quick turnover or occupants.
The JCU Ideas Lab is still in its infancy, yet it has already become a beacon for innovative collaboration in the region and is making a significant contribution to economic growth.
The new Senior Learning Centre at Springfield Anglican College sits within the beautiful bushland campus. The building, designed to create a learning environment to assist the transition of years 11 and 12 to life at university, is the next stage in the College’s master plan. The planning is deceptively simple and allows for a variety of teaching and learning modes as well as unobtrusive supervision. Kurrajong is beautifully detailed with a tranquillity to the spaces that is achieved through the mature finishes and colour selections.
Indooroopilly State High School has a long history of a school of excellence and the new learning centre delivers on the promise to be innovative and inclusive. The new building sits comfortably within the site of magnificent gumtrees, is cognisant of its neighbours and provides extraordinary views and connection to the significant asset of the school ovals. The hero is the courtyard and bridge that bring together students in a playful and nurturing space but also allows for a variety of formal and informal learning areas.
Elongated and cellular, the existing 1980s building has been cleverly opened up and transformed into series of friendly and welcoming early learning spaces. The interior pallet is neutral, simple, sustainable, and engaging, while the scale and thoughtful detailing is clearly appropriated for little children. The journey of first five years of life is mapped out along the meandering axis through the building with contiguous and strong connection to the generous landscaped outdoor spaces.
St Patrick’s College was founded in 1878 and is located on the prominent site on the Townsville foreshore. The new building makes a significant contribution, not only to the College in terms of new facilities for the library, classrooms and specialist spaces for music, drama and dance, but also to the wider community. In practical terms it provides a new auditorium that can have a wider community use, but it also creates a façade that while subtly telling the story of the Sisters of Mercy through the beautifully designed screen of lace, the Mercy cross and the rose, invites enquiry and intrigue.
The restoration and addition to the 1975 Rodney Chambers heritage-listed house, seeks to ensure that this significant architectural gem continues to delight its residents. While the modest addition and the reconfiguration of spaces meets the requirements of the clients, they do not compete with or overwhelm the original experimental design. A number of small insertions integrated and concealed services and attention to the original material pallet celebrate and reinforce the design ideas. The house is a prominent landmark on Teneriffe Hill and the new work ensures that this rare exemplar of modernism remains relevant and liveable well into the future.
The Mary Rice Early Learning Centre is a successful adaptive re-use of an underutilized site and building. The project ‘rescued’ an unremarkable building from demolition by addressing planning and structural constraints with thoughtful spatial rearrangement and creative removal of fabric, to open opportunities to repurposing. The result delivers a comfortable and stimulating early learning environment for the children to learn through experience.
The architects used the metaphor of city place making as a planning framework to support the social, physical development, and behaviour patterns of the children. Corridors become streets, being places to display artworks, adding vibrancy to the circulation spaces. Activity rooms are conceived as a collection of public spaces where planned interaction occurs. All activity rooms are connected to the large outdoor landscape which offers further nature play opportunities and connection to the gardens.
The careful and playful assemblies of materials and pattern making, referenced from the existing site, adds a layer of wayfinding and fun to an interior setting that inspires the imagination for children and parents alike.
Transurban’s biophilic Brisbane office is a successful collaboration between the architect, designers and client. The result is a workplace reflective of Transurban’s global presence and culture, imbue in a sub-tropical setting.
Graceful curves in the plan form, orchestrates a series of meeting pods and interstitial spaces catering for collaboration and contemplation. The resolved materials pallet and landscape design, complemented by panoramic views of the city skyline, amplifies the connection with nature and place.
An interconnecting atrium and internal stairs create an open focal point for the interior, promotes connectively between different spaces across the three floors and bring daylight into the deep plan. Unlike typical workplace design, the workstation density is low, and a high proportion of space has been dedicated to share spaces that promote interaction and collaboration.
This is a case study of contemporary workplace design, that emphases biophilic design and sustainability, provide choice to support a variety of activities, enable and connect with seamless technology, inspire creatively and innovation, and foster a sense of community.
Cairns has a proud history of delivering a high-quality performing arts programmes to its community and visitors. However, its existing facilities could not attract many touring shows. CPAC delivers a state-of-the-art building that reflects the city’s commitment to delivering the best for the Cairns and FNQ community. The complex and highly technical building creates unprecedented and functional flexibility to support not only more performances but more variety in the type of performances.
The building is undeniably of it’s place reflecting the colours, filtered light, lush vegetation and lifestyle of the wet tropics. The external screen and concrete soffits create a generous outdoor room extending the volumetrically complex foyer space. With a servery that opens up both internally and externally, this space feels welcoming to the wide range of patrons that CPAC attracts. The building and its landscape generously contribute to the street both in performance mode and on ‘dark days’.
CPAC is a significant cultural asset for a city- a public building that will enable more cultural experiences and as well as economic growth.
The fire that destroyed the old Waltzing Matilda Centre in 2015 was an enormous loss for the town of Winton-a loss of artifacts, of history and a loss of visitors. The new building not only delivers a purpose-built museum to celebrate Banjo Paterson’s bush ballad, but through its unique architectural expression has created much curiosity and excitement for both locals and travellers.
The Centre embraces its important location on the main street with its dramatic form and subtly introduces the Waltzing Matilda musical score in the battened screen. The raw, earthy expression through both materials and form reflects the harsh and dramatic landscape that inspired Paterson and continues to amaze all those who visit. The story of water and geological formations is represented through the architecture by sophisticated abstraction and rich interiors.
The Waltzing Matilda Centre has surpassed the client’s expectations and again put Winton firmly on the traveller’s map.
The new Surgical, Treatment and Rehabilitation Service (STARS) is the first stage of the Herston Quarter, an ambitious project to deliver a mixed-use community which will cater for health, residential, commercial, and retail development. The building has a formal and ordered expression that creates a sense of permanence with a scale that doesn’t overwhelm.
The lower acute facility creates an environment more conducive to healing and recovery through the use of less clinical materials and access to light and landscape. Despite the complexity of the programme, clever planning allows visitors to orientate themselves throughout the building through external views. The interior therapy and recovery spaces take advantage of full height windows and spectacular views. Warm tones, natural materials and careful detailing sets the facility apart from most hospital environments.
While the full benefit of the landscape on the broader site it yet to be realised, the known health benefits of providing opportunities for patients to both engage with and look into the landscape has been achieved with the lush internal courtyard.
STARS seeks to improve the patient and visitor hospital experience and establishes a strong precedent for welcoming people into the new precinct.
In the rugby league obsessed city of Townsville, the new Queensland Country Bank Stadium has been embraced by the community. The new location has given the venue a much-improved relationship to the CBD and the architecture reflects this with a horseshoe shaped bowl that generously opens its magnificent roof structure towards the city.
This 25 000-seat stadium is a catalyst for change and growth in the city. It has been designed with the patron at its core while ensuring economic sustainability through the flexibility to host games, large concerts, and multiple functions. The mix of spaces and venues throughout the stadium provides unique experiences for the general public, corporate visitors and enthusiastic members.
As the visitor moves through the multiple levels, views of the field, the important local landmarks of Castle Hill, Magnetic Island and Mt Stuart ranges are skilfully framed to orientate the visitor and create a sense of place. The striking roof is impressive in its simplicity despite the cyclonic conditions and the extraordinary spans. It has been designed to be reduced to its most simple and logical form creating great value for the publicly funded project.
This is an international stadium that beautifully reflects its tropical regional setting.
The Beck Street residence makes an intriguing delight of the building’s location in a flood prone area, while enhancing the qualities of an existing 1960s brick and hardwood framed home. The concrete and brick base of the refurbishment, constrained by an overland flow path and sewer that run through the site, enables the lower level of the house to be permeable to flood waters. Defined with a palette of red and terracotta, the base is cool and robust, moderating the light and temperature in an inventive and very effective response to Brisbane’s sub-tropical weather and hydrology.
In retaining the existing garden walls and house, the design manages an enhanced connection to the ground and beautifully landscaped gardens that is unexpected on a site constrained by minimum habitable floor levels. Beyond the sophisticated strategy in managing the site’s ground plane, the home is anchored about the verticality of established gum trees, giving form to rooms, and developing an upper-level palette of silvers and greens. The orientation of rooms, screening walls, and openings in the walls and roof carefully moderate the light, breezes, and outlook. Details are striking in their simplicity and nuance, enhancing the functional needs of a home that is a delight to reside in.
The Clayfield Fern House reconceptualises the ubiquitous strategy of adding a back-deck to a traditional Queenslander. Existing car garages and sheds are removed and accommodated within the undercroft of the house, freeing up the north-east area of the site for play spaces and gardens. The existing kitchen is repositioned, enabling the rear wall of the house to be opened-up, providing a greater connection between the existing living spaces and the backyard. A voluminous two-storey, timber-battened, room is added to the rear of the existing house. The materials and proportions of the new work complement the existing timber house and reinvigorate the adjacent rooms with improved daylight, access to breezes and outlook. The refurbishment makes simple adjustments to the planning of the house that provide significant improvements to accommodate contemporary amenity within the scale of the existing structure.
A unique entry experience is created for the residents with the arrival into the protected outdoor enclosure that is both landscape and a room within the home. There is a delightful play of light and shadow in the addition that is reminiscent of traditional fern houses, familiar in sub-tropical gardens, that is celebrated here in an inventive and unique outdoor living room.
The Terrace refurbishes a 1930s heritage-listed home, designed by Charles H. T. Griffin, and constructs a new wing to accommodate contemporary living spaces. The design embraces the forms and materials of the existing building, providing an addition that is both distinctive and complimentary to the pairing of historical and contemporary architectural styles. An airy and light-filled connection is made to the garden and north-east aspect of the site. An enjoyable juxtaposition between the old and new roof forms reorientates the adjacent existing, interior-focused, rooms towards the social spaces of the house and garden.
The Poinciana House creates a series of landscape rooms, formed by the edges of the refurbished and newly constructed built forms, that delightfully embed this home into the site. The new elements of the house – the carport, fireplace, kitchen, and pool, are pulled apart to form a series of outdoor spaces, each with a distinctive characteristic for favoured orientation, sociability, and use by adjacent interior spaces. The existing timber house is enhanced through simple yet ingenious details that improve security and ventilation while also constructing protected views towards Mt Coot-Tha to the west.
Positioned high on the edge of the St Lucia Reach of the Brisbane River, the Riverbank House is orchestrated between the steep landscape of the river edge and a private courtyard for a family in a suburban setting. The design connects the living areas of the new home, through the restored landscape of the riverbank, to the water’s edge. The maintenance of remnant stairs and garden walls, along with the integration of native plantings, firmly imbed the new building into the historically layered landscape.
Large, parallel, concrete walls define a cavernous territory through the site that gives a distinctive form to the house and to the courtyard orientated towards the north. Cool, protected, and with a direct connection to the landscape, the lower level of the home is reminiscent of the understorey of highset Queenslander. The pond to the edge of the courtyard reflects northern light onto the ceiling of the living space as a playful doubling of the river beyond. A timber brise-soleil wraps the elevated bedrooms, modulating daylight and privacy, making a distinct presentation of the family home to the street.
Set on a steep bushland block of a dry, gum, eucalypt forest, the Mt Coot-tha House is imbedded with ideas of connection and refuge within its immediate environment. A central staircase, largely in parallel with the slope of the site, is delightfully expressed as a bold blockwork axis at the scale of the adjacent gum trees. High level windows afford a variety of well-positioned views towards tree canopies and far-off views of the broader landscape, while carefully crafting a diffused daylight that softly illuminates the limited number of materials that have been used.
By stepping the plan of the home with the site, a lush green courtyard is formed between living spaces that is consistent with the volumes of the interior spaces. Climatically and visibly distinct to the adjacent bushland this verdant landscape, held within the plan of the building, offers a welcome contrast to the adjacent dry and steep bushland. The relatively prosaic materials of concrete-block and galvanised steel are employed in an economical construction method that eschews bespoke details in favour of crafted volumes, the control of daylight, and integration of landscape in the design.
The Long Road House is situated at the southern edge of Tamborine Mountain, bordering a subtropical rainforest and creek. The delight of this dwelling is the composition of a set of spaces that are more veranda-like, in their method of enclosure, screening, and occupation, than conventional rooms. The materials and form of the house is reminiscent of a farmhouse or rural shed that has been adapted with camping techniques that improve the mediation of the environment while being economically constructed and simply connected to the site.
The arrangement of the house forms a large courtyard that is wrapped by shade cloth, providing protection from the sun and insects. The protected courtyard is a focal point for the life of the home, accommodating outdoor cooking and gatherings along the edges of the building. The upper level of the house is elevated to the canopy of the adjacent trees affording an opportunity for prospect and refuge. The lower-level bunkrooms and bathroom open out towards the creek providing a close connection between the more intimate areas of the home and the activities of the rainforest.
Perched on a hillside of Minjerribah, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Baker Boys Beach House provides a platform for multiple families to gather and share holidays together. Taking its form from the arrangement of local campsites, supporting generous communal areas and deconstructed washrooms, the house accommodates a variety of gathering spaces to enjoy and illuminate the benign environment of the island. Living areas promote an unencumbered view towards the ocean, while also being nestled into the bushland of the hillside.
As a pair of elevated houses on a sub-divided site, Twin Houses is an elegant example of infill development in a middle-ring suburb of Brisbane. Through the employment of modular and economic construction techniques the project prioritises the integration of landscape, access to light and breezes, and social connectivity from within the home and to the street. The design allows for simple future adaptability to create additional enclosed spaces, as may be required, and employs landscaping to mediate light, dust, and privacy.
Overlooking the Noosa River, Las Palmas is inspired by the style of Palm Springs mid-century modernism and the employment of this style’s qualities in a sub-tropical environment. The central living area, conceived of as a lanai, makes an exceptional connection between the courtyard, sheltered by concrete walls and horizontally banded roofs, and the garden that steps to the river’s edge. The home is remarkable in providing a careful balance between the client’s desire for a private refuge that also affords a prospect towards the river and a generous connection between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Designed for outdoor living and inspired by nature, the Alondra Residences aim to foster a sense of community living and active lifestyle for seniors within a visually connected garden setting.
Lush gardens extend vertically on every level through the central green spine offering interstitial spaces for social interaction and retreat. A range of social uses including library, BBQ, and resident function area are nested within this vertical verdant landscape that is elevated with a prominent outlook to the neighbourhood. the eight-story building’s bulk and composition are appropriately scaled and aggregated, providing a sensitive contribution to the surrounding low to medium–density neighbouring buildings.
Alondra Residence is a good example of the vertical small house model targeted at the new consumers in retirement living who are accustomed to a higher standard of living compared with generations past. These sub-tropical homes are bright, airy, and built for residents to age in place with all apartments designed to exceed Liveable Housing Design Guidelines Gold standard.
Cornwall Street Affordable Housing sets the standard for high density sub–tropical affordable housing. It is an exemplar development model of government and community housing sector partnerships delivering good quality, affordable, housing for the state. Situated in an emerging neighbourhood renewal area of Buranda, the project delivers a suitable contextual response to the constrained site. The naturally ventilated building provides a sanctuary of comfortable private living spaces for residents, enhanced with small scale common areas at each level that promote social interaction and neighbourly connection.
Door42 is a successful social housing demonstration project delivered by the Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy in partnership with the Office of the Queensland Government Architect. This project provides a well-designed, homely, and secure environment for at-risk youth seeking refuge. Within a landscape orientated environment, the design successfully manages the different functional requirements of consultation and living spaces that necessitate different levels of privacy. A supportive community–living place has been established with freedom and opportunities for residents to develop social cohesion. The site planning arrangement maximizes passive solar design and cross ventilation for rooms orientated around a central, shared, outdoor activity space.
JCU’s Central Plaza is a charismatic addition to the Townsville campus that provides a pivotal public space within the University’s master plan. Located at a nexus of the University’s cross campus links, as part of a larger connected walkway system, the plaza makes a welcome engagement with the adjacent creek riparian and a nearby water feature, improving the thermal comfort of this gathering space. The plaza contains a pavilion with a dramatically shaped canopy, offering shade, shelter, and a form of campus identity. The pavilion has a modest footprint, accommodating small gatherings, and carefully extends its program into the adjacent landscape to operate as a stage for large events and performances.
The roof canopy of the pavilion, developed from two connected but opposing tapering vaults, was conceived by the architects as a means to reflect the history of the University and its engagement with the community. The compelling geometry and cultural intent of the canopy is amplified by the integration of the artwork “After the Flood” by Quandamooka artist, Megan Cope. The artwork illustrates how environment, identity, and geomorphology are interwoven over time, and reinforces the design attributes of this memorable gathering space within the centre of the campus.
Located on a busy corner block in a light industrial area, Doggett St Showroom is a beautifully composed building that contributes significantly to both streetscapes. The corner block offers two separate entries which have been cleverly handled so the upper and lower levels can be connected or separated.
The existing timber cottage was lifted and renovated to create a charming workspace that could be returned to a living space. The undercroft delivers a light filled flexible space that can be additional living space for the upper floor or can be occupied independently for commercial use.
Key to this project is the integration of landscape that in various locations adds surprise, connection, and liveability to this compact project. The architects’ desire to retain the outcrop of Brisbane tuff firmly grounds the project in its place.
The permeable brick screen to the west not only provides sun protection and privacy for the ground floor space but brings the landscape into the internal space creating an extraordinary tranquillity it what could be a harsh and noisy environment. The restrained material pallet adds to both the serenity and focus on the landscape elements.
This project has transformed an unremarkable cottage that had little relationship to its two frontages, to a beautifully detailed and spatially sophisticated building that engages architecturally and socially with both streets.
Ulster Lane offers surprise and delight for those who discover it. The lane has been cleverly transformed from essentially a driveway and service court into a vibrant and intimate space for gathering, eating, and drinking. The laneway also provides access to the upper floor tenancies creating an address for these spaces and ensuring movement and activity through the space.
Layers of the building fabric are peeled back allowing visitors to experience the grittiness of the brickwork juxtaposed with the fine detailing of the lights, the new stairway, and amenities.
Ulster Lane will invigorate this part of the city both during the day and night and give visitors a much-loved glimpse into our heritage.
Campus to Country is a strategy to help the Queensland University of Technology’s decision making when developing its two campus to reflect, acknowledge and celebrate the relationship between the university’s built environment, Aboriginal people and place.
Campus to Country is an overlay for QUT’s master plan. It is intended to have a practical application to demonstrate how future built form can give staff, students, and visitors a spatial experience of Country. The spatial framework developed outlines four elements- prompts, tracks, typologies, and pallets. The work beautifully maps the tracks and sites of cultural significance across both campuses showing how these areas were occupied prior to colonisation. Framework plans were then developed for each campus based on the stories, journeys, and history of the Turrbal and Yugara people. The diagrams and carefully chosen exemplars, describe each of the spatial interventions which align with significant cultural features.
QUT has one of the largest cohorts of Indigenous Australian students and this work goes a long way to ensuring that the university’s built environment is one that is inclusive and welcoming. It seeks to reflect the culture and history of Indigenous Australians and particularly to understand the land which QUT inhabits.
CU Ideas Lab is innovative three storey building with good interconnection between the three storey collaborative spaces. The engaged sustainability principles target LEED BD+C v4 Gold rating evident through the provision of well insulated cladding materials, extensive screening, and the use of greenery throughout. The building strongly responds to the tropics and in addition incorporates significant energy saving systems and water efficiency features. Sustainable and delightful, JCU Ideas Lab building is a great example of the architectural outcome respectful of its context, occupants and tropical environment.
The Big Small house embraces the principles of “The Least House Necessary”, delivering a modestly sized home designed for sustainable tropical living. The house is orientated and sited to maximise passive cooling, capture breezes, and connect to the lush tropical landscape. The narrow plan, generous openings, central void and clerestory windows allows the light filled house to naturally ventilate keeping occupants comfortable year-round.
Integral solar screening to the building’s facade articulates and celebrates the curation of sun, reducing solar gains while allowing daylight to illuminate deep into the floor plate.
The building design incorporates a commendable commitment to modelling and reporting on predicted and reduced energy and emissions targets. Servicing is designed with sustainability at its core with considered investment in a substantial solar array, water harvesting, and bioretention.
ModWest is one of the most recent addition on University of Queensland’s St Lucia Campus. This contemporary teaching and learning facility have been designed and built within a year to respond to the immediate demand for collaborative student spaces on the campus. There is a five-year plan to disassemble the entire structure and reuse at UQ’s Gatton campus.
This sizable demountable and modular building is manufactured in Australia from largely local materials and is highly functional, cost effective solution. It responds to the University’s demand for collaborative, large and flexible teaching and learning flat floor spaces arranged in the V-shaped plan that encapsulates private outdoor deck area. The colour and texture of the proprietary cladding façade panels was carefully selected to allow the building to nestle into the site which sits in close proximity to the historically significant Forgan Smith forecourt.
Delivered under the LAND 121 program, the new precinct for the 3rd Combat Services Support Battalion comprises a total of nine buildings. The collections of buildings accommodate a variety of functions which are consolidated into larger multi-use buildings.
Building forms are simple and economical, with sophisticated manipulation of a restrained palette of materials to achieve well resolved detailing, applied in a well-considered, standardised approach throughout the precinct.
Materials and finishes are contextual with recent projects at Lavarack Barracks, reinforcing a cohesive visual quality to all elements of the Barracks. Profiled zincalume cladding and steel is integral to the architectural expression, and meet sustainable design objectives, including natural ventilation and enhanced daylighting.
ModWest at the University of Queensland is a great example of fast, smart build that was designed and delivered within a year in response to the immediate demand for collaborative teaching and learning spaces. The building uses Colorbond insulated sandwich panel that is a locally manufactured and readily available material that enabled efficient, cost effective and rapid installation. The versatility of the Colorbond product, careful selection of the finish, colour and micro V-Rib texture have given this temporary demountable building the appearance worthy of the historically significant site.
Completed in 1995, the Church Street Public Housing project set a new standard in the delivery of social housing in Queensland. Up until the early 1990s public housing in Queensland was largely low density single detached dwellings, in the middle and outer ring suburbs, built for families. The 42-apartment building, located in a largely commercial and rundown suburb on the fringe of the CBD, was a catalyst for residential buildings and regeneration of the area.
The site has three street frontages: two very busy, noisy, roads and a third quieter street facing a heritage-listed church. In an innovative move for a small Government project, three architectural practices were commissioned for the project; Parish O’Neil, Cox Rayner and Bligh Voller. The approach created genuine diversity in the architecture, with each practice designing two of the six buildings, demonstrating the value of good design through the delivery of a thoughtful urban response. A new laneway was created to bring all cars into a common courtyard, giving priority to pedestrian access from the streets and addressing noise with bedrooms facing onto this protected space. Outdoor living spaces are provided to each dwelling, mediating weather to the internal spaces and, allowing for a habitable street edge. A new park was also developed as part of the project, encompassing the mature fig trees that flank the site and heritage listed WWII air-raid shelters, showing that a modest city park could greatly improve the amenity of the neighbourhood.
The project continues to showcase exceptional design through its response to ideas of territory and privacy, creating community through ‘eyes of the street’, and the use of materials and detailing in a subtropical climate. As rental affordability plumets throughout Australia, it is important to be reminded of the fundamental need for well-designed publicly funded housing and the importance of leadership, risk taking and innovation.
The Australian Institute of Architects acknowledges First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and skies of the continent now called Australia.
We express our gratitude to their Elders and Knowledge Holders whose wisdom, actions and knowledge have kept culture alive.
We recognise First Nations peoples as the first architects and builders. We appreciate their continuing work on Country from pre-invasion times to contemporary First Nations architects, and respect their rights to continue to care for Country.
