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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 90 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.
Completed in 2006, Council House 2 (CH2) on Little Collins Street, Melbourne still finds its way onto architects’ precedent boards as one of Australia’s most progressive commercial buildings. A pilot project for the City of Melbourne’s Zero Net Emissions by 2020 strategy, it was the first commercial project awarded a 6-star Green Star rating by the Green Building Council of Australia. As far as “green buildings” go, CH2 could be considered a bit of a celebrity.
Through process and approaches that engage with multiple notions of heritage including problematic ones of environmental and cultural destruction, architecture can participate in the widening of a heritage discourse.
The University of Western Australia’s Bilya Marlee designed by Kerry Hill Architects has been purpose-built to house a School of Indigenous Studies. It is also home to the university’s Centre for Aboriginal Medical and Dental Health and the POCHE Centre for Indigenous Health.
Standing proudly on Ballardong Nyoongar land, Iredale Pedersen Hook’s Bilya Koort Boodja (meaning “river, heart, land”) recognises the importance of country while acknowledging that this recognition has not always been given.
Considered across the scales of the neighbourhood, building and apartment, Kerstin Thompson Architects’ recently completed Balfe Park Lane is a demonstration of medium-density housing that is contextual, amenable and lasting. The project lies on a rapidly densifying section of Nicholson Street, where the facades of new developments jostle for attention above nondescript ground floors.
The iconic Parmelia Hilton hotel has undergone a series of minor renovations since its opening in the 1960s. However, in late 2017 COX Architecture, along with their client, Hawaiian, considered how the hotel could be re-imagined – both physically and more broadly in the contemporary urban fabric in which it is located.
Vivienne Hinschen and Ben Peake from Carter Williamson met with the Australian Institute of Architects to talk about the studio’s carbon neutral journey, supporting cleaner power, local ecologies and projects led by First Nations peoples.
Core Collective Architects have taken their practice carbon neutral. Associate, Emily Ouston sat down with the Australian Institute of Architects to chat about in-house auditing, sustainable specifying and the power of collegiate knowledge-sharing.
Director, Eva-Marie describes the rewarding process of taking her studio carbon neutral and how it represents a key step in providing care and respect for Country.
Having worked with bushfire affected communities on the South Coast of NSW, Takt directors Katharina
Hendel and Brent Dunn were asked by the Australian Institute of Architects to reflect on their experience assisting in disaster recovery.
Continuing the architectural lineage of a home lost to bushfire, Scale Architecture have used technical construction knowledge to expedite the rebuild while being strategic about how their studio would value-add to the project. Director, Matt Chan sat down with the Australian Institute of Architects to talk about his experience building resilience and assisting in disaster recovery.
