More and more city-dwellers choose to live in apartments so they can live in more accessible locations. In the order of three and a half million Australians now live in multi unit housing. Living at density with shared ownership of common property provides many benefits, but it also presents big challenges. The strata title system [...]
Once upon a time buildings, clothes, kettles and the layout of newspapers were things that were ‘designed’. We could even refer to ‘the design professions’ and be very confident everybody understood we were talking about visual disciplines. Designers used to be people who worked out optimal ways things could be configured – things like buildings, [...]
Here’s another building I’m listing on my No Street Cred Register – it’s a recently completed museum and housing development at 1280 Park Ave, Manhattan (Hat tip to Market Urbanism). Designed by Robert Stern, One Museum Mile is notable for its almost complete failure to offer anything to the street. It joins some of my [...]
I don’t know why the proposed Gehry-designed Dr Chau Chak Wing building at UTS looks like a microwaved chocolate castle, but it certainly does “bizarre” to a T. It’s unusual, unconventional, strange, odd, extraordinary……it’s everything you’d expect to get when you buy Gehry. I’ve been an admirer of Frank Gehry ever since I first saw [...]
I think it’s time to stop treating sustainability in architecture like it’s the precocious child that needs to be singled out and lavished with constant attention for fear it will shrivel up and die. We don’t single out many other performance attributes of buildings for special consideration – for example, structural integrity, economic efficiency, or [...]
By Alan Davies
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Tagged Australian Institute of Architects, awards, Barangaroo, Barangaroo Delivery Authority, Kenzo Tange, NSW, Opera House, RMIT Design Hub, sustainability, Sydney, Sydney Harbour
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February 29, 2012 – 7:17 pm
Increasing density in Australia’s cities is a good and necessary thing, but it’s not going to go well if regulators, investors and residents don’t understand that living cheek by jowl brings problems as well as opportunities. A new 32 storey building proposed by developer Highbury Focus has lessons for all Australian cities – if approved [...]
February 13, 2012 – 7:14 pm
The first exhibit shows a rendering of the joint Cornell University-Technion-Israel Institute of Technology graduate school of applied sciences proposed to replace a hospital on New York’s Roosevelt Island (click on the image and it’ll take you to a video). This tiny island is administratively part of Manhattan and situated in the East River opposite Queens. It [...]
By Alan Davies
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Also posted in Housing, Planning
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Tagged Chiogga, Cornell, development, Griffith, Ile Saint-Louis, La Trobe, Murdoch, Rhoda Island, Roosevelt Island, Technion, university
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February 9, 2012 – 7:48 pm
It seems I was right to raise concerns about the green credentials of RMIT’s new Design Hub. Following publication of my article on Tuesday, Are all green buildings really that green?, RMIT amended the description of the building on its web site earlier today. In the earlier post, I queried two major claims the University [...]
February 7, 2012 – 6:08 pm
Every new public building, it seems, is a wonder of green efficiency, driving the bar of ecological innovation ever higher. Green buildings usually cost more up-front, but the pay-off is lower operating costs and lower emissions over the lifecycle of the building. That’s the theory anyway. The public sector is particularly susceptible to hype and [...]
February 4, 2012 – 3:34 pm
Religion for atheists sounds like an oxymoron to me, but that’s the title of Alain de Botton’s new book. Now he’s promoting a “temple for atheists” in London. According to Thursday’s issue of The Guardian: The philosopher and writer Alain de Botton is proposing to build a 46-metre (151ft) tower to celebrate a “new atheism” as an antidote to [...]
