After months of brainstorming, discussion, sketches and mock-ups, it's almost time for the much-anticipated installations for The Project as part of Brisbane Indesign to be unveiled.

Our exhibitors and designers have been busy getting creative about the idea of Common Thread, what it means to them and how they can interpret it spatially and visually.

The Project is always a major drawcard at Saturday Indesign events as designers let their imaginations run wild and exhibitors showcase their products in ways they've never been seen before.

This year at Brisbane Indesign looks set to be no different, with an impressive lineup of collaborations.

Argent + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Students - interpreting luxury in an open bathroom design creating a relaxing, soothing environment in an unconventional manner.

Café Culture + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Students - a concept based around nature as a powerful energy uniting design and manufacturing.

Chairbiz + Various Artists - 10 artists will interpret the Common Thread theme in a live painting session at the Chairbiz showroom.

Coco Republic + Smeg + HASSELL - The Gallery Project, exploring art in design with the Smeg and Oly San Francisco collections.

Cosh Living + Bosanquet Foley Architects + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Projects - (see image at top) transforming paper into three different resolutions, using traditional craft forms to reflect hero pieces of furniture throughout the showroom.

Indesign Group + Fireworks Gallery + PDT + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Students - finding a Common Thread of inspiration between magazines and the output of design professionals; blurring the boundaries between the two.

Inspiration Office + Woodhead + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Students - exploring the notion of an interconnected and interdependent Brisbane design community, supported by Quadric. The elements of Fortitude Valley will be represented in a unique structure that will appear to grow throughout the day.

King Furniture + David Hicks - 'Work, Rest and Play' is the theme, each word interpreted in a different way and letting visitors engage with the furniture in the showroom.

Living Edge + Bolon for TAG + Woods Bagot + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Students - creating a 'choose your own adventure'-style journey through the showroom, encouraging interactivity and literally bringing the theme to life.

Luxxbox/OBJX + Geyer + QUT 3rd Year Interior Design Students - merging design with graffit, transforming the showroom into an interactive tunnel complete with photo opportunities!

Mafi + HASSELL + QUT Students - an ever-evolving installation that combines repetition, balance and harmony for a unique visual experience.

Space Furniture + BVN - a weaver's loom of vectors will create an immersive environment across all levels of the showroom.

Zenith + Various Designers - a large scale concept puzzle called SPWY will challenge teams to see how quickly teams of 3 can assemble the SPWY into a star-shape.

Live it up Hollywood style, less than two hours out of Sydney.

Moments after you arrive at Mending Wall, an eerie calm descends. This magnificent contemporary house is a rare commodity in the Blue Mountains: it has stunning views of the distant lights of Sydney punctuated only by the occasional chirp of birdsong.

The birdsong comes with responsibility and you need to arrive fully stocked with supplies. The closest shop is a 45-minute drive away – admittedly a drive through the lush valleys of Mount Wilson and Mount Irvine.

The owners of the property, Peter Cudlipp and Barbara Schmidt, have their roots in the television and design industries and it’s mark of the building’s success that such a modern space fits in such an isolated location. It was designed by BVN Architecture and was shortlisted in the 2009 World Architecture Festival.

Cudlipp and Schmidt say they wanted a house that allowed in the maximum natural light. And that they have achieved. When you lie back in this secluded retreat, you are treated to a sweeping vista across beautiful cold climate gardens filled with ferns and eucalypts. Some visitors may choose to go for long rambling walks, but we preferred to plunder the well-resourced library before settling in front of a majestic fire. We couldn’t immediately find the Robert Frost poetry collection after which the property was names, but I devoured a stack of New Yorker magazines while my partner flicked through an impressive catalogue of film screenplays including Annie Hall and Chinatown. A bottle of Moet – here on our arrival – helped us stir the baby grand into action.

And there’s plenty to admire from the piano stool too: Louis Poulsen lights, Thomas Jacobsen tables and the classic Eames lounge chair and ottoman.

Undoubtedly the focal point is the kitchen, which is a joy to cook in with its Smeg appliances, Global knives, de Buyer pans and every kind of cup, bowl, knife, blender and coffee maker available. One evening we sparked up the enormous Weber BBQ and dined at the foot of the garden as the sun set.

The owner’s art collection is also an unexpected highlight. Six lithographs from New Zealand artist Shane Cotton five real warmth o the hallway linking the entertaining area with two guest bedrooms. A bold series of paintings by Minnie Pwerle is eye-catching above the fireplace, as are several sculptures scattered through the garden.

A mud room filled with gumboots of all sizes and colours is a nod to the rain that is part of the mix. An outdoor spa is a nice place to sit back and admire the stars before retreating to a king-sized bed on the first floor with stunning views over the valley.

The name Ninotschka Titchkosky suggests a countess out of Anna Jarenina or some bored provincial from the pages of Chekhov. But the strawberry-blonde Victorian director of architects Bligh Voller Nield is earthy and unaffectedly Australian. Sassy yet casual, she wears faded jeans and a blouse on the day we meet for a chat at a Flinders Lane café. She grew up in Sydney’s northern suburbs and her accents, with its expressive Aussie diphthongs, still bears their stamp.

Titchkosky is one of an increasing number of women taking on leadership roles in a profession hitherto dominated by a pantheon of male gods. In Australia, Seidler, Murcutt and Leplastrier have ruled the architectural roost for decades.

Years after graduating from a class at the University of Sydney, Titchkosky is one of three female principals at BVN. At the same time, she has benefitted enormously from the guidance of three of the men who taught her at university and employed her soon afterwards: Alex Popov, Richard Francis-Jones and BVN’s Lawrence Nield. “Lawrence was always a bit of a mentor and still likes to think of me as his student in an endearing way,” she says.

The professional landscape, she believes, has changed for women but, given her experiences – the influence of “nurturing” men some years her senior and her surefooted rise to the position of principal – she is disinclined to put too much weight on the gender question. “Being a woman does pose unique challenges,” she says. “But then architecture as a profession is not without its challenges.”

There is nothing conventionally feminine about her values or work practices. She’s fond of “big, fluid, expressive, robust buildings”, enjoys the problem solving side of architecture and the hard work of resolving complex geometries. She shows a marked preference for warm finished in wood; for materials that take their colours from the landscape. “I’m not one for over decoration,” she admits. “I like a natural palette of materials. They have a timeless quality and a tactility that’s important.”

When not running BVN’s Melbourne operations she is at home on the Mornington Peninsula, where she rises early most morning to take one of her horses for a ride.

Titchkosky’s father was a pilot who flew commercial planes for Qantas; her mother imported European fashion labels such as Givenchy and Yves Saint Laurent.  Dad was away a lot and her mother led the family of four girls and one boy. “It was a family of strong females,” she recalls. Her mother “believed we could do anything.”

Looking back on her time at Ravenswood School for Girls, in Gordon, she feels that she was “reasonably balanced”: a good student though not school captain material. Things came full circle when she designed a new leaning centre for the school, completed by BVN late last year. That project was born of a process of thorough consultation with the school community about its needs, which included a mixture of quiet and public spaces and plenty of green features.

She recently orchestrated a significant pro bono work – a community hall for the bushfire ravaged Victorian town of Narbethong – and there, too, she spent a good 12 months deep in conversation with residents. The result is a beautifully modeled fire-proof timber hall with some of the meditative qualities of a memorial. A structure of polished rusticity orientated around communal needs, its interior is finished almost entirely of timber. An undulating pier of 4.2m-high timber slats evokes both forest and chapel. The community hall’s warmth and humanity is of apiece with much of her work, all of which begins in the old-fashioned way – as sketch on paper.

A Monash University student housing project, opened this year, also reflects her values. Unlike so much modern work of this mass type, the 600 apartment building is no monolith. Split into two facing blocks, it is graced with an articulated exterior finished in spotted gum and a cleverly designed interior situated around a fulcrum of spacious, well-appointed double story common rooms. Students in the common rooms enjoy a clear view of those circulating around the stairs and linking corridors, and vice versa: a humane innovation designed to guard against the introversion and atomization that has plagued student housing in the past. It’s large scale design with a heart.

In her own student days she was drawn, she says, to architects “pushing boundaries” and was fascinated by Zaha Hadid and Enric Miralled. She remembers challenging some of her university teachers: “You always want us to design boxes, but I don’t want to design boxes.”

It’s when real world problems lend themselves to creative solutions through architecture that Titchkosky finds her chosen profession not only satisfying by “thrilling” too. There is vague disappointment that she hasn’t fulfilled the youthful promise of firebrand who wanted to “push the boundaries” but what has emerged instead is an approach to design that fuses humanity , warmth and intellectual agility, and a recognition, when reflecting on her own career trajectory, that “you don’t have to rock the world every time you do something.”

The Black Saturday bushfires in 2009 burned over 4,500 km² (450,000 hectares, 1.1 million acres), resulted in the lost of 173 people’s lives and injured over 400 people. The damage to the areas surrounding Melbourne was extensive and disastrous and included the loss of the Narbethong Community Hall, the only public space for residents of the area. Even before, the timber building lacked in adequate facilities for the community and was defenseless bushfires. BVN Architecture, with the help of ARUP, donated their services to design a new hall with improved facilities, one that would have a more direct connection with the surrounding landscape and most importantly, would meet new fireproof building codes. According to Ninotschka Titchkosky, Principal of BVN, “As Narbethong’s only public venue, the hall is the heart of the community. It is a space where local people can come together for meetings, recreation, celebrations and commiserations. In a small country community, a building like this holds great importance.”

The structure was built to meet Bushfire attack levels BAL 29, be low maintenance, and survive on its own in case of fire so the community could focus on their homes and businesses. A fireproof bronze mesh encases the building and eliminates the chance of embers passing through and catching the building on fire. The inner structure is formed from floor to ceiling double-paned glass supported by fire-retardant Blackbutt timber mullions. Roof penetrations were limited to minimize the chance of embers falling into the building. Tilt up screens on the north and south raise up to increase light penetration inside the building and can be shut when the building is not in use. Inside, curvy, moveable timber walls separate the main room from the bathrooms, kitchen and flexible meeting rooms.

Eco-friendly $132.1m harbour-side structure waiting for ventilation funnel

The funnel topping off the new $132.1 million ASB North Wharf building rising in the Wynyard Quarter will be barged to the site this month.

Derek Shortt, ASB property manager, said the structure was conceived by the bank working with Australian architect James Gross of BVN. It was being built by NZ Yachting Developments at Hobsonville and would be brought to the site by sea.

Pure Design & Engineering, a consultancy specialising in advanced composite structures with a focus on the marine industry, designed the funnel, he said.

"It's a funnel because it's like a chimney. It allows air to come into the centre. It's round, like a boat. We thought we could never build it in-situ so we designed it and Yachting Developments tendered for it and got it," he said.

The funnel is a natural ventilation system, the first of its kind in New Zealand. It is designed to bring cool air into the building, operating about a third of the year, during the hottest months and the shoulder seasons, Shortt said.

The side of the funnel facing away from the prevailing wind will be kept open while the funnel facing the direction of the wind will be kept shut.

The building, which faces the new Wynyard Quarter restaurants and the tram line, has other passive eco-friendly systems.

The carpark on level one of the building on reclaimed land will be naturally ventilated. Shops and the primary plant room will be on ground level.

The electricity supply is unusual.

"Power comes from the floor up, not the roof down," Shortt said, referring to elimination of what he referred to as umbilical cords, the dangling unsightly roof-to-desk cables so common in offices.

"Energy costs will be lower," he predicted, from an existing average $145/sq m operating costs which he expects to be closer to $85/sq m at the new building although these charges include insurance, air conditioning and electricity so is not just a measure of energy consumption, he said.

Shortt referred to the interlinked structures as building 22 and 23, standing either side of Te Whero Lane.

Takapuna's Sovereign House was also designed by Gross working with Shortt.

One institutional investor with units in the building, owner Kiwi Income Property Trust, had a few qualms.

"It's going to be really unique which is due to the current tenant who has signed a lease sufficiently long term that it makes sense to do it financially.

"It will be 20 years time before that's tested. Commercial development folk might have done things a little differently.

"The facilities are what the tenant wanted but if you were doing it as a spec building, you might do it differently.

"The design, externally, is going to be interesting. Kiwi have made provision that if they had to, they could bring in another tenant."

Fletcher Construction's team, led by project director Alan Gray, is working for Kiwi whose chief executive, Chris Gudgeon, said the block would be the country's most advanced from a sustainability, service and environmental point of view.

NORTH WHARF
* Owner: Kiwi Income Property Trust.
* Tenant: ASB Bank.
* Location: Corner Jellicoe St/Halsey St, Wynyard Quarter.
* Builder: Fletcher Construction.
* Bank staff: To move around June, 2013.
* Project book: Released around July, 2013.

Landscape, light and colour used to support a salutogenic approach to hospital design

Robina Hospital forms part of the infrastructure of Queensland’s Gold Coast Health Service District, delivering public health services to the region. The Robina Hospital Expansion project has transformed a small local hospital into a major regional health facility. The design promotes the modern healthcare environment as a place of wellness, and also a workplace for highly skilled staff.

Two key architectural design concepts evident throughout the project are the use of landscaped courtyards to provide a framework for the design along with the selective application of colour. Existing courtyards were a key factor in the development of the design concept as these were considered strong, positive features of the hospital. The combination of existing and new courtyards afford pleasant outlooks from internal spaces, enhance wayfinding, introduce natural light, create a sub-tropical landscaped ambience and provide visual amenity.

The controlled application of colour to building elements across the project, provides visual interest, energy and creates a non-institutional feel. The use of colour assists with wayfinding and is intended to give the expanded hospital a strong identity.

At the urban scale, the new building provides a landmark for motorists entering Robina, using a simple material palette and clean architectural forms to offer legibility to the hospital plan. At the scale of the hospital, the design reveals a further level of complexity and delight by using the predominant façade textures and forms with hints of added colour against a backdrop of simple silver cladding to lead the visitor into the vibrant courtyard spaces.

The calm greens of the Southern Courtyard, the bright orange of the Education Courtyard, or the vibrant Linear Courtyard with its yellows, oranges and reds, all offer positive distraction, providing relief and warmth as a counterpoint to a user experience which often coincides with difficult, stressful or uncertain times.

Technology and a younger workforce are reshaping the office, writes Catherine Armitage.

Here's something new for the ''prairie dog'' office workers with their heads up over the partition, sniffing the workplace wind.

The open plan office is on the way out, falling victim to dramatic shifts in the way people work and better understanding of the relationship between built environments and behaviour.

''I think the so-called open plan office has seen its heyday,'' says James Grose, national director of BVN Architecture. ''As a generic applique it is very simplistic and that is now being exposed.''

The mantra is "work is a thing you do, not a place you go".

Frank Lloyd Wright dreamed up the open plan prototype for the Larkin Soap Company in Buffalo, Texas, in 1902, then refined it with his ''Great Workroom'' for Johnson Wax in Wisconsin 30 years later. Ever since, it has been the layout of choice for employers. It is cost effective, supposedly egalitarian, conducive to worker collaboration and makes it easy to keep an eye on employees.

But workers assailed by the constant racket of their colleagues have had less reason to like it than bosses content in their quiet perimeter offices. Despite partitions and cubicles, open plan has never resolved the conflicting requirements of chatty collaboration versus concentrated quiet work.

Now, mobile work technologies have done away with the need for fixed work stations. Health studies have conclusively shown the inadvisability of sitting for a long time in one place. Up and coming Gen Y workers have made clear their disdain for traditional work environments. So it's farewell, open plan and hello, activity-based workplace, or ABW.

Forget allocated desks and offices. In its purest expression, the new ''workplace philosophy'' pioneered by Dutch consultancy Veldhoen + Company does away with territorial work spaces so people can ''work independently of time and place''. The mantra, as adopted by Microsoft, is that ''work is a thing you do, not a place you go''.

Microsoft, Macquarie Bank, the Commonwealth Bank, GPT Group and Jones Lang LaSalle are among the large corporates to have adopted ABW for their Sydney offices. In practice, it means creating diverse work environments so people can choose where and how they work at any given time, whether at a workstation, in a lounge area, a cafe, a quiet area or a meeting space, according to what they are doing and how they are feeling.

''People are increasingly conscious about the quality of the space they work in and don't want to be locked away in the same area,'' says Simon Swaney, a joint managing director of leading interior design firm Bates Smart.

At the same time, the social movement for work-life balance is encouraging employers to judge workers on the basis of performance not attendance. The limitations of communicating by electronic means alone are well recognised, and management is realising ''the benefit that arises out of knowledge sharing and collaboration''. It all adds up to more flexible working environments, says Swaney.

With wireless technology, a laptop and a mobile phone, ''everyone can move from space to space and hardware isn't an inhibitor'', says Amanda Stanaway, a senior associate with Woods Bagot, who did the ABW fitout for Macquarie Banking and Finance at 1 Shelley Street, near King Street Wharf on the western fringe of the Sydney central business district.

The spaces place greater emphasis than open plan layouts on collective or collaborative work, but not at the expense of quiet solo time.

''The key to these environments is bringing people together [with their laptops] to do things together and get an outcome. Instead of a meeting ending with 25 things on the to-do list it is … actually doing the work,'' Stanaway says.

A ''pretty compelling cost advantage'' is propelling companies towards ABW, according to Grose. With studies showing about 40 per cent of the workforce are out of the office at any given time, companies are loath to pay for redundant space. By trading off individual territory for shared areas, their floor space requirements can be reduced by 20 to 40 per cent. Macquarie estimates its space-saving through ABW at 20 per cent.

Technology companies with their Gen Y workforces have been early adopters of the activity-based workplace. But designers caution that it doesn't suit all kinds of work. Says Niall Durney, senior design architect of PTW Architects, ''Software industries tend to have a huge amount of playful stuff where staff can disconnect from their work, like Google playing table tennis as a meeting to discuss ideas.''

''The software industry, because it is such a younger generation, they are comfortable having a skateboard going around the place, whereas you're not likely to have that in a bank where they are all suited and booted.''

The worry, Grose says, is ABW becoming ''just another excuse to roll out product''. Add lounges, bean bags, cafe furniture, libraries and interactive whiteboards to your standard workstation order. But the companies that get great results are those that ''engage very deeply into the organisation, talk with everyone, and importantly, everyone participates''.

''If you want potential out of people, you don't foist something on them but engage with them and let them … craft the solution which is appropriate,'' Grose says.

The law firm Clayton Utz spent four years ''getting our culture right for the move'' before shifting to 1 Bligh Street in the Sydney CBD less than a year ago, says Julie Levis, who oversaw the shift as managing partner and is now a real estate partner. Staff focus groups worked to identify the firm's culture and vision for 20 years hence, with the fitout designed to match by Bates Smart.

Levis says the legal staff, accustomed to individual offices sized according to status and seniority, had ''zero appetite'' for open plan. But a solution to retaining acoustic privacy while gaining a greater sense of connection with colleagues was achieved with glass offices, all of standard size, radiating 270 degrees around a central ''village'' of secretarial support staff.

Glass offices, glass lifts, a central atrium allowing views to other floors, all means ''you really do feel part of a bigger whole, you can see everybody''.

But does it make for a more productive workplace? Levis acknowledges she has no numbers to prove that the new workplace has led to improved work. But the staff are ''very happy'', there has been ''enormous positive feedback from staff and clients'', and ''it certainly feels like we are all working together really well in this building''.

The assumption that a desirable workspace leads to higher productivity lacks an evidence base, Stanaway explains. ''It is actually a really grey area'', she says. The difficulty is separating the effect of changes in work practices - such as using less paper, collaborating more, moving around the office - from the effect of changes in the spaces themselves.

''A lot of the work we are all doing at the moment is to actually find a way of really strongly attributing it to workplace, because obviously lots of different factors go into major productivity change,'' Stanaway says.

''Architects are not the ones that say productivity increases,'' Grose says. ''Architects say that if people are in respectful environments, creative environments, human environments … with humanly appropriate materials, people will automatically feel more centred or comfortable or at ease. Therefore you can say on a very, very broad level, space can affect behaviour.''

''But space will not affect productivity,'' he says. It's the human factors - ''how people are treated and what their intellectual satisfaction is'' - that count.

The Mabel Fidler Building forms a new entry and centre for learning at Ravenswood School for Girls and functions as the central hub within the school environment. The design of this building was initiated through a master planning process focused on creating an attractive, imaginative and stimulating learning environment.

The Mabel Fidler Building is designed to be in scale with the existing school buildings and be seen as a modern insertion into a campus of varied buildings. Site accessibility due to level changes and difficulty of way finding has always been an issue for the school, along with the useability of external areas. The Mabel Fidler Building project is designed to address these issues.

A new main entry to Henry Street will aid site security; currently numerous entries do not allow ease of monitoring school visitors. The new entry courtyard at the heart of the proposal provides an external space for the school community, partially covered while providing maximum usability. Administration and the new Junior and Senior libraries address the courtyard along with the new café that links the courtyard to the oval.

The lower levels are designed to provide a solid base to the building, reminiscent of the masonry materials used in the existing campus. The upper levels are designed in steel with a translucent cladding and significant cantilevers which appear to hover over the base, providing weather protection and covered outdoor areas. A large canopy roof floats over the buildings that front the oval, creating a new urban scaled verandah to the major public space of the school and allowing the building to be read from the Pacific Highway across the oval.

The building aims to bring together both passive and active design solutions to sustainability and allow the initiatives to be utilised in the education program for the girls. The building has been designed as a mixed-mode building that is able to operate completely with natural ventilation. Conversely, on extreme weather condition days, the space can be air conditioned. In order to achieve this, the building features a double-skin façade that creates a cavity that in winter is kept closed to retain heat and in summer opens automatically to release heat.

The scheme provides much needed vertical and horizontal connectivity for the school. The proposal unifies both landscape and environmentally sustainable design principals. The facilities allow for best practice and ensure the school’s philosophy of flexibility and an individual approach to teaching and learning.

A new $180 million office tower by Donovan Hill and BVN Architecture in Brisbane has been given development approval in Brisbane.

The 20 storey office building in Brisbane’s city centre is being developed  by  Marquette Properties and according to the website Brisbane Development.

Located on the corner of Albert and Margaret Streets, the tower is set to accommodate office space, a ground level supermarket, ground level cafe and bicycle facilities.

In 1901 Miss Mabel Fidler opened a day school in the Sydney suburb of Gordon on land adjacent to ‘Ravenswood’, the home she and her sisters built two years prior. In those days it was common for young women to establish small independent schools; Ravenswood School for Girls is one of the few still operating on its original site.
 
The Mabel Fidler Building, opened in July 2011, is the first outcome of a masterplan that seeks to unify a campus that has grown from a handful of students to an enrolment of over 1100. The new building forms a hub for both staff and students and heralds a new direction for the school.

As well as supplying Bowral® Blue bricks for the base walling, Austral Bricks™ worked with BVN (formerly Bligh Voller Nield) and ESD Landscape Contractors to develop a new clay paver format, essentially a half-brick laid on its edge, that allows the base walling and adjacent paving to “form a continuous landscape out of the same material,” explains project architect Knut Menden.
 
The BVN team, led by principal Bill Dowzer, consulted with staff and students to define the school’s needs. “There was a particular site that the school had in mind for the new building but the students had other ideas,” Menden recalls. The students prevailed. The chosen site was restricted due to its proximity to the school oval and the adjacent Centenary Centre which prompted the building’s shallow-vee plan.
The Mabel Fidler Building is at the heart of the school. Senior school classrooms are grouped around the lower courtyard, with the main reception, administration, cafeteria, senior student lounge and staff areas on level one, within the base structure.
 
The lower level walling comprises an inner skin of 200 mm thick reinforced concrete, 45 mm polystyrene foam  insulation, a 45 mm cavity and an outer skin of Bowral® Blue dry-pressed bricks. This in turn supports the upper level steel framing and roof structure.
The cantilevered top level, which houses the Learning Resource Centre, a series of flexible learning spaces, meeting and assembly rooms, and multimedia areas, is clad in hollow, translucent polycarbonate panels. Translucent glass on the inner face further diffuses the light and can be used as a whiteboard.
 
Although the site dates back over a century, much of the campus was built in brick in the second half of the last century. The Mabel Fidler Building base brickwork acknowledges this heritage. “It is saying this is a new time for Ravenswood, this is a modern building which has a link to the existing buildings by the brick base but is different to the rest of the campus,” Menden contends.
 
The brickwork theme was also continued with the use of clay pavers, which flow from the exterior into the cafeteria and through to the senior student lounge and staff area.
The designers wanted the walling and paving to be unified in colour and form, requiring the bricks and pavers to be the same colour, length and set-out to align across both planes.

BVN Architects and ESD Landscape Contractors approached Austral Bricks™. “We didn’t want a standard paver because the size was different and the look would be different,” says Knut Menden. “Our first thought was to use standard bricks laid on edge so essentially it looks exactly like the wall.” This proved unviable as it increased slab thickness. Austral Bricks™ offered to cut bricks in half at the factory and then decided to manufacture a special unit 230 mm long by 76 mm high and 55 mm wide.
 
The pavers are laid on a base of cement-stabilised sand and the 10 mm gaps slurry-filled with a grout matched to the mortar colour of the walling. The set-out was controlled by a stringline grid, assisted by the six metre grid used throughout the building. “We had minor problems when trying to align with other architectural features such as columns,” says Jeremy Winer, managing director of ESD Landscape Contractors.
 
Austral Bricks™ has developed the half-brick paver format into a standard product range called the Bowral® Bricks Hamlet Collection™ comprising three standard colours: Blue (used in the Ravenswood project), Sepia (brown) and Ash (grey). Custom colours are available for larger projects.
 
“Overall, the detail of the pavers ensures a high quality finish suitable for very high pedestrian traffic areas that will absorb a lot of wear and tear,” says Jeremy Winer. Knut Menden was pleased with the execution of BVN’s design paving concept. “The idea was that it doesn’t really matter whether it’s inside or outside. And that turned out really well.”
 
The Mabel Fidler Building has set a new benchmark for the school in both architecture and educational design. As a Ravenswood parent said recently “It is a building that just keeps on giving.”

55 Elizabeth Street, Brisbane

The 15-level Australian Tax Office tower in central Brisbane will house more than 1300 employees, and will be completed by mid-2013. There will also be ground level retail and an activated laneway down the side of the building.

This is Grocon’s first development project in Brisbane. 55 Elizabeth Street will target a 5 Star Green Star design and as built ratings, and a 5 Star NABERS energy rating.

Project team

Owner: Credit Suisse

Developer: Grocon

Builder and project manager: Grocon

Architect: BVN Architecture

Structural engineer: Bonnaci

Mechanical & electrical engineer: EMF Griffiths

Hydraulic engineer: H-Design

Value: $170 million

Completion: May 2013

Architects: BVN Architecture
Location: Narbethong, Australia

The rebuilding of the Narbethong Community Hall, destroyed in the Black Saturday fires of 2009, presented an opportunity to create an improved public space for the Community and a new typology for Community buildings. The previous hall was a basic timber structure built more than 50 years ago, it lacked adequate facilities and was not designed to capture the beautiful landscape aspects of the site. The new Narbethong Community Hall is a highly transparent building that allows the residents and passing traffic to see the liveliness of the community whilst allowing the occupants of the Hall to have a strong connection with the surrounding landscape.

Due to the proximity of the Bush Reserve, the new Hall is required to meet a high Bush Fire Attack level. The outside of the building is made up of floor to ceiling double glazing wrapped in a bronze mesh fire resistant screen while internally, the primary material is local timber.

All of the professional services including architecture, engineering and surveying have been provided pro-bono and most of the building and materials were delivered at a reduced cost. In addition, many other suppliers have either donated or provided (at reduced costs), a range of top quality furniture and fittings.

The Narbethong Community Hall is a pro bono collaboration between the Narbethong Public Hall Committee, Emergency Architects Australia, BVN Architecture, Arup, Edwards Moore, Rodney Vapp& Associates, Rodney Aujard& Associates, BSGM, Contour Consultants Australia, Douglas Partners, Fitzgerald Frisby Landscape Architecture and Hedger Constructions.

Monash University Student Housing, Clayton, comprises two 5 storey buildings, each containing 300 student studios, flanking a central, common courtyard. Fundamental to the project was the need to create a community whilst supporting the individual; therefore, the courtyard is the meeting point and entry to each building. It refers to traditional college accommodation where students interact from private spaces to the common.

Shared spaces and vertical circulation are located at the centre of each building encouraging interaction. The main communal spaces are double storey volumes playing an important role in connecting all levels and defining the architectural composition. Each wing of the building has a cohort of 30 studios per level. Studios contain a kitchenette, ensuite and living/sleeping space. At 20m2 the studio module was refined to create a sense of spaciousness, incorporating extensive operable floor to ceiling windows and exposed ceilings 2.7 metres in height, with services contained at central risers.

This project has achieved a 5 star Green Star As Designed rating and is in the process of assessment for an As Built 5 Star rating. It has been identified as the new benchmark for the National and State Government for Affordable Housing.

The Advaita Way home at Natural Bridge was dubbed House of the Year

A HINTERLAND home, which blends into its natural surroundings, and Robina Hospital have won the Gold Coast's biggest architecture awards.

The Advaita Way home at Natural Bridge was dubbed House of the Year at last night's Australian Institute of Architects' 2012 Gold Coast and Northern Rivers Regional Architecture Awards at the Hilton Surfers Paradise.

Judges said the home blended into the cliff-face surrounding it, but stood out up close.

It was one of 23 of the best entries seen in a decade, according to judges.

Australian Institute of Architecture Gold Coast chair Finn Jones said the multi-million dollar home was like nothing he had seen on the Gold Coast before and expected the design from a sophisticated, high-density urban city such as Melbourne.

Eight regional commendations were awarded to:
Robina Hospital Expansion - BVN Architects (building of the year)
Advaita Way - Paul Robertson Architect (house of the year)
The Oracle - DBI Design Pty Ltd
Metricon Stadium - Populous
Park Lake State School - Suters Architects
Surf Residence - Paul Uhlmann Architects
Sunbrite Residence - BGD Architects
Gold Coast Rapid Transit Corridor Study - HASSELL

Advaita Way by Paul Robertson Architect and Robina Hospital expansion by BVN Architecture have won the top awards at the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2012 Gold Coast and Northern Rivers Architecture Awards.

Advaita Way received the House of the Year Award and Robina Hospital expansion received the Building of the Year Award.

Advaita Way is a rural property that enjoys the benefits of both a beautiful, natural environment and a subtropical climate zone. The clients requested a simple, minimalist design that created an understated dwelling resting harmoniously in the landscape, and which incorporated extensive sustainability principles.

The jury noted that “this house achieves sustainable design in ways that are not only particular to residential design but adaptable to other building typologies. The key element is a composition of dual skins – one glass and one a semi-permeable layer of mesh screening. With no airconditioning and several specific ESD initiatives, the house exhibits sound sustainability principles.”

The Robina Hospital expansion project has transformed a small local hospital into a major regional health facility that forms part of the infrastructure of the Gold Coast Health Services District. Within the new design, abundant natural light and views to near or far landscape give the spaces a non-institutional feel, while courtyard spaces and rooftop gardens offer patients and visitors places to rest and recover outside of the normal clinical realm.

The jury commented that “a major redevelopment for the Gold Coast Health Services District, the expansion strikes an appropriate balance between operational efficiency and healthcare environment for patients and staff. The architecture is elegant and refined, with gardens and rooftop terraces enhancing social and relaxation opportunities.”

Houses, hotels and hospitals throughout the Gold Coast and Northern Rivers region were among the twenty-three entries submitted for the 2012 awards.

An additional six projects received regional commendations, as follows:

Park Lake State School by Suters Architects
Surf Residence by Paul Uhlmann Architects
Sunbrite Residence by BGD Architects
The Oracle by DBI Design
GCRT 2031 (Gold Coast Rapid Transit Corridor Study) by Hassell
Metricon Stadium by Populous

The awards were judged by Leigh Shutter from Griffith University Gold Coast campus, Scott Carpenter from Scott Carpenter Architect, Matt Cooper from Aspect Architecture, Darren Greenaway from BDA Architecture, Leah Lang of Leah Lang Architect and Brian Mossop from the Gold Coast Bulletin.