Menu
Reading Architecture brings together articles from our suite of publications. Articles that you may or may not have seen before along with newly curated material, launching from April 2021. With a long-established history of more than 80 years documenting architecture as critical practice, new projects and design, our content is authored by people from the built environment sector with subject expertise spanning academic, professional and popular, written, not in the continuum of infinite change and flow, but at a particular moment in time.
This is not my Country, and because it’s not my Country, I cannot speak on its behalf. This statement is true for me, and almost every built environment professional in Australia, so how can we work on and with the Countries that we are responsible for fundamentally modifying?
Working with Passivhaus principles and cost-effective and sustainable construction, architect Michelle Blakeley explains her My Home project. Architect Peter Lee discusses Foundation Housing and the importance of quality design on people’s wellbeing. Part of The Architect WA Homes Edition’s focus on affordable housing.
Samantha Rich and Danièle Hromek on First Nations women working in spatial disciplines.
For Klopper and Davis Architects director Sam Klopper, the orientation and topography of the North Street Swanbourne block made it the perfect site for a family home.
A visual essay of contemporary social housing projects in Melbourne and regional Victoria from some of the architects and providers working in this important space.
What role can architects have in this space? How do we leverage our skills? Advocating for an effective housing system that is culturally responsive and suited to climate.
Interview with Nick Harding, Principal of Ha Architecture.
Jeremy McLeod and Madeline Sewall of Breathe Architecture on sustainability, right-sized housing and building more with less.
Can we improve the responsiveness of our architecture through our own experience?
While the inner Perth suburb of Mount Lawley might be better known for its prevalence of Federation style homes, Filter House by Andrew Hagemann Architecture is located within a small pocket of post-war Mediterranean influenced architecture. Putting aside stylistic elements, it was the climatic advantages of the latter, with characteristically high ceilings, light coloured external walls and shaded frontages, that the clients were keen to see in their new house.
I could quote the statistics – 18,600,000 hectares burned, 5,900 buildings destroyed, 34 lives lost, 1,000,000,000 animals killed. I could tell you about better building practices – strengthened BAL40 guidelines, a revised National Construction Code, new and improved fire attenuation materials.
CO-architecture is a web-based platform for Architects, Engineers and Consultants (AEC) to help people find work or talent – building a reliable network and community of on-demand talent, without geographical boundaries.
We first drafted this ‘rather portentous call for contributions’ in July 2020, when the world was beset with pessimism. Our call was not an invitation to even bleaker pessimism, but rather for positive assertions of where and how architects can break out of this habit of building the wrong thing in the wrong place out of the wrong materials.
Let’s consider that precursory to the NSW Architects Code of Professional Conduct, an architect could carry a duty of care to place; an obligation to be in tune with the long-term impacts of our profession, practice and production.