“Building a contemporary home in the late 80’s – you just couldn’t get approval,” Thompson recalls.

The Bligh Voller Nield director persisted and eventually obtained approval to build a modest-size house on one of the two Teneriffe Hill blocks he’d snapped up for $32,000.

Revisiting Thompson House this week, Thompson was pleased with how its design had stood the test of time and how Brisbane was now home to so many modern houses.

Relying on his design skills rather than cash, Thompson created the house using standard off-the-shelf windows, laminate joinery and plaster walls.

“It’s reminiscent of a beach house,” Thompson said.

With its deck and lush garden surrounding a swimming pool, the two-bedroom house has been home to several families.

The latest owners, Natasha Stevenson and Chris Vose, have lived in the home for six years but now have the home and the adjoining larger house, which was also designed by Thompson, on the market.  Both are being marketed by real estate agent Glenn Gracie for auction on September 20.

The proposal promoted a contemporary image for the RNA and set world standards as a new “healthy” and environmentally responsive exhibition space.

The two towers act as thermal chimneys to provide the updraft and exhaust system for displacement air movement, maximising the use of natural ventilation and fresh air. The towers also help support the long span roof structure and become landmarks on Brisbane’s skyline, improving visual recognition of the new exhibition building.

A characteristic of the existing Industrial Pavilion is the use of daylight from the south facing saw-tooth roof and skylight system. The proposition continued the intent of a space in which daylight plays an important role as well as reducing energy demands.

The center's three main courts are dodecagonal with each of the 12 sides as a stands. The gray cement walls around each of the 12 sections form 12 stands which look like 12 petals of a lotus flower in the Olympic Forest Park.

With 10 competition courts, the venue covers a surface area of 16.68 hectares and has a building area of 26,514 square meters. The venue has a capacity of 17,400 seats, including 10,000 seats in the main court; 4,000 seats in the No. 1 court; 2,000 seats in the No. 2 court; and 1,400 seats in the seven preliminary competition courts at the No. 2 platform. Next year, the Olympic tennis and Paralympic wheelchair tennis competitions will be held at the Center.

The main court is the biggest among the three "lotus flowers." Its "petals" are sustained by 48 sloping beams, each weighing 62 tons with a length of 17 meters. On August 17, 2008, some 10,000 spectators will gather here to watch the final matches of the Olympic tennis events.

Taking into account the small size of the tennis ball and its high speed, the architects have designed a steep stands which gives the spectators the best sight line, according to Zheng Fang, chief architect of China State Construction International Shenzhen Design Consulting Company, Ltd -- the construction management group for the Olympic Green Tennis Center project.

For the same purpose, the height difference between the stand rows is nine cm, instead of six cm for other tennis stands, he added.

The seats for the people with a disability are installed alternatively with ordinary seats; thus disabled people can sit side by side with ordinary people to watch the competitions.

The natural ventilation concept was introduced in the design of the center to solve the problem of high temperatures, and this is unprecedented in the history of Olympic tennis courts.

Several devices to draw natural wind are installed to send the cooling breezes to the competition court through channels around the venue. The system can lower the court temperature by five degrees Celsius.

At high temperatures, the automatic sun-shading curtains attached to the roof are able to fall to shade the quadrangular orifices between the "petals" from the sunlight, Zheng said.

Designers have taken advantage of the inclination of the forest park's landscape to build a center on a mild west-east slope, in perfect harmony with its surroundings.

From October 6-20, the Good Luck Beijing 2007 ITF Pro Circuit will be held at the center. Eighty tennis players, including 36 men and 44 women from 13 countries and regions, will compete in a total of 210 matches.

Through the tournament, the center will be tested according to the Olympic standards. There will be closed qualification matches on October 6 and 7, and starting from October 8 the spectators will be able to enjoy tennis matches inside the petal-shaped building.

http://en.beijing2008.cn/en_index.shtml

Zheng Fang, chief architect of the project, said the concept was to create a highly open tennis center in the backdrop of the forest park with no excessive decorations on the external wall -- a strong expression of the harmony of architecture and nature.

When the design was submitted, the International Tennis Federation considered the scheme to be an extension of the atmosphere and tradition of the tennis game and a highly professional tennis center, Zheng said.

The main court, for the finals of the Olympic tennis events, is the largest "flower" among the three. During the Games, a maximum crowd of 10,000 will sit here to enjoy the sunshine and the exciting tennis matches. The court has 48 cast-in-place reinforced concrete cantilever beams propping the 12 petal-like stands. At 42 degrees, each beam is 17 meters long and weighs 62 tons.

http://en.beijing2008.cn/en_index.shtml

The Tennis Centre is a permanent venue which includes a 10,000 seat centre court, 4,000 and 2,000 seat show courts, seven 200 seat match courts and six practice courts with associated player, VIP and spectator support facilities. It is intended for this venue to become the home of the Chinese Tennis Federation in the future.

The Tennis Centre is an ordered ensemble of components with a symbolic Centre Court as the climax of the composition. A series of four giant scaled landscaped platforms organise the programme into a series of field-of-play clusters with support accommodation below.

Centre Court is situated on a large public concourse podium which houses within it all the VIP, player, official and BOH support areas. Player circulation to all the courts is facilitated by the lower level within the podiums which allows undisturbed access separated from the public domain.

Centre Court is composed of twelve raking segments which rise out of the platform and fold and separate into a dramatically cantilevering roof, shading two thirds of the seats. The twelve sided seating bowl of the centre court provides a clear structural proposition while giving excellent sight-lines and proximity to the field of play.  The openings between the segments induce natural ventilation while providing views out and engagement with the outside.

Heroically scaled concrete beams and raking structures define the structure of the courts and the platforms. The vigorous use of structure and geometry, combined with a robust and minimum use of materials, has provided a venue with an order and clarity rarely achieved in sporting venues.

The Olympic overlay design incorporates all technical and operational requirements into the base building design to ensure readiness for Olympic competition, and compliance with all specific requirements of the IOC and sports governing bodies.

The Stadium consists of two permanent grandstands, east and west, with some 30,000 seats on each side sheltered under the semi-circle of the doubly-curved polycarbonate roof, the front edges of which are defined by distinctive arched steel trusses.

A further 25,000 temporary seats are provided by each of the stands at the north and south ends of the arena which sweep up and out in a wedge shape, boosting seating capacity to the Games maximum of 110,00. After the Olympics, and the Paralympics which followed the Games, the upper tier of the temporary stands will be removed and the lower seating bowl will move in 15m to a new position for football usage over the long term.

The removal of the end stands will allow the completion of the hyperbolic paraboloid roof, with ‘end' roofs installed between the main trusses, and seating capacity reduced to the ‘normal mode' commercial optimum of 80,000.

The stadium is defined at each corner by distinctive spiral egress towers which frame the principal elevations. Spectator entry is made under welcoming awnings, via broad forecourts, complemented by the Olympic boulevard with its sculptural light towers, the ‘urban forest' landscaping and public art installations.

While the huge capacity of Telstra Stadium is an important design solution, it is just one of a range of innovations that have helped to make the venue aesthetically robust, ecologically sensitive and user-and-owner friendly.

The stadium makes extensive use of natural ventilation and lighting to the concourse areas, with giant air shafts in the body of the tiers generating natural convection air currents deep in the building. All roof water is collected and stored in four giant tanks to irrigate the pitch and supplement water supply to the public facilities, with dual water systems recycled for sanitary flushing. The building has been constructed from materials that are free of PVC and have low embodied energy ratings. There are two gas cogeneration plants, supplementing hot water systems.

Telstra Stadium was designed by Bligh Lobb Sports Architecture, a joint venture between Bligh Voller Nield and Lobb Partnership.

Matthew Blair signals further generational change at BVN as one of the youngest principals of any large architecture practice in Australia.

Blair joined BVN in 1999 and has been involved in everything from University buildings to public buildings such as the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. Most recently Blair has been heading up the Canberra Studio and played a key role in the award-winning Sovereign House in Auckland.

“I am passionate about making the best buildings for us – humans – using contemporary design and construction technology that is more than generic,” Blair says.

As new principal, Blair continues to work on Canberra projects for BVN including the Belconnen Police Station and a 3000-seat stadium for Netball ACT.

Designed by Australian practice BVN Architecture, the space accommodates the Melbourne office of the international engineering practice that is strongly committed to sustainability. Housed in a 1930s department store on Bourke Street in the central business district, the single-floor office was converted from a dilapidated, low-grade commercial tenancy.

The client had significant involvement in the project. Not only was it the engineering consultant, but before the design process began, extensive briefings with management and staff workshops were conducted to ensure that the new space specifically suited their needs. Lincolne Scott’s managing director, Che Wall, recognised the “investment in the workplace was also an investment in business”, especially during the current skills shortage.

The director of BVN’s own Melbourne office Trudy-Ann King, says: “She believed the momentum was being lost in the company because junior engineers felt unable to make decisions and progress while directors were out of the office. We were charged with providing them with spaces to pull project teams together quickly, without needing to book a space of leave the working environment. He also charged us to get the engineers off their chairs and encourage them to integrate with their workmates. In every office, there is always somebody who comes to work hoping to avoid spending time with their colleagues.” A former chair of the World Green Building Council, Wall stressed that the fit out reflected the company’s commitment to sustainability. The Melbourne directors requested that something of the city’s identity be incorporated into the design, and what could be more distinctly Melbourne than its urban warren if eccentric laneways.

Staff were asked about where they felt most comfortable and places that inspired them. Including anything but work, responses ranged from “the café where they know my name and how I like my coffee” and “my local pub” to “the beach on a sunny day” and “the mountains”. The commonality was the idea of change, with shifting sounds, textures, colour, light and movement affecting the environment. People could make that place their own, with alternatives in which to meet and interact. “Understanding that people feel their best in these types of environments poses a dilemma in the design of a commercial workplace,” says King. “Traditionally, designers have been trained in a modernist style where consistency in the design, detailing, lighting and colour is encouraged. Our approach here was to be random in how we designed the space.”

With that in mind and a tight budget, the aim was to channel the resources into the main priorities – providing stylish health and wellbeing benefits for staff and a holistic sustainable outcome.

Instead of “renovating”, the philosophy was the “dematerialize” by stripping back to the shell and using materials only where necessary – for example, for acoustic requirements – thereby saving huge costs and resources from unnecessary finishes. The damaged false ceiling was removed, instantly increasing the height of the space and highlighting the core principles and services of the business. The chaotic network of crumbling beams, conduits, ducts and pipework, along with the outer walls and columns, were painted white to increase light reflectivity, hence creating a clean backdrop. “The randomness and rawness of the space speaks of extreme honesty in how it is being used and how its history and bones are revealed,” adds King.

New additions, seen as pods and modules, are “insertions” that don’t touch the newly bare shell of the building. Relating to temporality, it also references the dynamic nature of the laneways where bars, art, shops and even festivals pop up as fast as they pop out. These centrally located elements form meeting and communal environments, each with their own personality.

As you step out of the lift, much of the eclectic interior is revealed, where a random combination of textures, colours, heights and forms stand out. The first thought that comes to mind is that you must have got out of the lift at the wrong floor, as this can’t be the office of an engineering company. At a raked angle to the left, a yellow reproduction shipping container – a real one was too big for the lift - accommodates a meeting room that can be closed to provide darkness for lighting engineers to test now recognise this practice because of the signature yellow box.

Directly opposite is the brightly lit white reception, with the glass-clad boxes of the formal meeting rooms and boardroom behind. While these rooms provide more traditional meeting spaces, the bold red separation screens are slightly less conventional; they originate from remnant steel sheets from laser cut automotive parts. The false floor of the rooms, elevated to create a height differentiation, conceal a displacement air-conditioning system. Fresh air is pumped up from below, avoiding annoying drafts from above.

Linking the container and formal areas is a band of black-clad elements that house the café and service functions. The central location encourages staff to bump into each other if they go to the printer, kitchen or bathroom. An open eating area separates the kitchen from the rest, above which hovers a curious flock of lights – energy efficient, of course. “Waste wall” dividers were fashioned from unused timber shelves from the previous office. Furniture combines new, vintage, refurbished and custom-made pieces from recycled materials. Within this zone is the games room, no doubt a huge hit at lunchtimes and after work with the predominantly young-ish male engineers. Equipped with a foosball and pool table, the space is a definite retreat, its darker interior, low ceiling and décor more akin to the local pub than corporate office.

“Within meetings functioning alongside here, it was initially thought of as a problem for staff to be seen – and heard – playing games in the office,” says King. “The reality is that space is seen as honest and open, with an acknowledgement that staff need time out from their focused engineering pursuits.”

 Everybody, including the directors, works in open plan. Personal workspaces were valued above all else in the office. In this way, workspaces are located along the perimeter to maximize daylight and views and custom-made workstations were introduced. Lighting, which is zones in individual blocks, can be personally adjusted from a user’s PC, while chairs are ergonomic.

Defined by yellow scaffolding, team meeting points within each project area cater for impromptu meeting spaces, which help empower young engineers in the decision-making process. Whiteboards and drawings hand from the frames, allowing others to see what the team is working on. Modularity was incorporated into joinery, workstations, flooring and walls to enable relocation and reuse. As a final touch, blue fluorescent uplighting, designed to trigger occupants’ circadian rhythms, is programmed to activate at 3om to draw staff out of their afternoon dip. Either that or they should eat less for lunch.

The energy of the environment is addictive and the details really make the space. Young engineers have decided to join Lincolne Scott over other practices because they were inspired by the office interior. Since moving into there, the number of staff has expanded from 96 to 130. Melbourne state director Dang Hodink, who had his own office for more than 20 years, comments: “I initially resisted the relocation to this building, but I am now completely reinvigorated by this space.” So while you can’t control who your colleagues will be nor what projects you will be given, you can at least enjoy being at work and battling over a game of lunchtime table football.

Unlike most other sports, tennis both as a game being played and viewed is one of precise and limiting geometry. It is also a sport in which tournaments often are played during the extreme conditions of summer’s peak with spectators viewing matches across the day, many of which extend to over three hours of play. From a rigorous analysis of context, program and amenity, the venue arises as an ensemble of components responding specifically to their circumstance.

The Beijing Tennis Centre is both clearly organised and memorable as well as having a symbolic and important centre court as the climax of the architectural composition. The 11,000-seat Centre Court demonstrates a direct and elegant tectonic solution composed in 12 segments, approximately circular, with a concrete upper seating bowl and a lower bowl recessed into the platform with additional seats parallel to the court on the east and west. The raking surfaces of the bowl folds into a dramatically cantilevering roof structure that shades two-thirds of the seats. At night the raking surfaces are backlit, providing an important effect for night games – a giant lantern hovering off the platforms. The roof also integrates the court lighting, which is joined by catwalk around the roof perimeter.

The 12-segment configuration of Centre Court (together with match Courts 1 and 2) allows close engagement for all spectators with the most distant spectator being only 40 metres from the centre point of the net. Rather than the typical bowl structure of continuous seating, the upper bowl and roof of the stadium is arranged around the expression of the 12 segments, which have been tapered in alignment to the optimum sightlines, the effect being the introduction of 12 openings that interrupt the even surface of the bowl serve. This strategy, organised through an understanding of bowl geometry, provides a significant environmental and amenity purpose. While the alignment focuses attention on the field of play, the openings between the segments allow visual relief from the intense focus of the bowl, permit distant views of Forest Park and Olympic Green to be enjoyed across the duration of play, and allow for those arriving at the venue to engage with the spectators within. More importantly, however, this interruption form releases the heat that collects in the upper bowl and induces a slow cyclonic airflow that significantly contributes to reducing court level temperatures and increasing air movement to a more comfortable level for players and spectators alike.

Directness in the expression of the venue’s components allows a dialogue between the materiality and the activities and events. A strong architectural language is made with a restricted palette of materials – off-white in situ concrete, charcoal painted steel beams, perforated white aluminium sheet, insulated glazed-in-black anodised aluminium frames and precast concrete paving. The dominant language of concrete is continued with the heroically scaled structure of platforms. Each raised platform is bound by 3.6-metre high horizontal bands and these are used as deep beams to provide large openings and dramatic cantilevers for varying points of entry, access and openings below the upper platforms, while providing consistency to the definition of the venue’s perimeter.

The Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre

I arrived in Beijing on a bad day: the sky was filled with smog and the visibility was about 100 metres. All the clichés about air pollution in China’s capital city Beijing proved to be true, and yet the Olympic Games are under two months away. Readers will not see my amateur photos of the Olympic projects which show the ‘Birds Nest’ – the Olympic National Stadium – as bombed a postwar building skeleton, and the ‘Water Cube’ – the National Swimming Centre – as a mattress factory on an industry site. I did not intent to portray them in such a fashion. Instead, I really wanted to see the warmth of the Bird’s Nest with a massive crowd sitting in it, and a starry night sky crystallised by the molecular bubbles that cover the swimming pools, which I imagined in my 2006 book New China Architecture. But alas the army have fenced off these sites, so the ‘interior life’ of them will not be revealed until the game starts.

Among all the Olympic structures, the Tennis Centre, which incidentally does not seem to have a figurative nickname, has not attracted much limelight. Yet there is something strangely robust about it: situated on the north of the main stadium site, in the so-called Olympic Green parkland, the Tennis Centre is unaffected by the flaunting of its southern neighbours. Whether it is set against the grey smog in my amateur shots, or the dark blue sky as can be seen in the artistic photos prepared for publications, this structure appears like an alien UFO that has been accidentally landed on the site, and yet has been there forever. There is a sense of performance in this structure, but it does not come from any site specifics. Three characters may have contributed to this robust sense of permanence: they are, namely, the concrete frame of the stadium, the parti of a room and the image of flower symmetry. Each of them, to my mind, is significant idea in the Centre’s architecture.

The heavy concrete structure – the inclined concrete blades – is firmly rooted into the podium and ground, which forms the ‘bowl’ of the stadium. Though pre-stressed concrete roof beams tensioned to the concrete blades were first proposed, they have been replaced by a steel roof truss with metal cladding due to Chinese construction conventions, as well as the last minute cost reduction exercise that was applied to all the Olympic projects in Beijing. The concrete structure itself may not seem extraordinary, but it says something different in the immediate context of the Olympic site. It is like the mysterious Stonehenge, which is neither current nor historical, but aspires to eternity. That the architecture stays the same and transcends time is the very meaning of its existence, which offers consolation to our transient mortality: one day we will die, but we have architecture that has registered our temporary occupation of this world. The static nature, we may admit, is the common trait of –pre-modern masonry architecture. Buildings in our time send out the opposite message: the fluid Bird’s Nest and the dynamic ‘Mobius strip’ of the CCTV tower in Beijing record the ecstasy of glorification: they seem to capture a moment of joyful explosion, like that of fireworks. But instead of being ephemeral, these structures are very expensive static structures that will not change shapes and dimensions according to circumstances. Here is irony: these structures will look old-fashioned when they are outdated by new trends and building technology advancement. The Tennis Centre, which is perhaps the only one from among its Olympic neighbours that does not seek to win this beauty contest, may have a chance to survive the verdict of time, for it wants simply to stay the same.

The static nature of the Tennis Centre lies also in its parti of a room. It may be far-fetched to suggest all stadiums are large rooms, but the Roman amphitheatre certainly has an interior life drama. It is after all a theatre. Tennis is a game of power, technique and drama; it demands to be watched in a theatre setting: the curtains are up and the lights are on. This ‘black box’ intimacy in the Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre is not achieved by shortening the distance between the spectators and the court (there is only so much the architects can do when the size of the tennis stadium is pre-decided), but by creating a room-like ambience. The steel seating helps, but of more importance is the series of corner openings in between each two of the 12 segments at the junction of seating and roof: they are, experienced from inside, large ‘windows’. Windows offer demarcation between the interior and the outside world. These large windows frame the sky and enhance cross ventilation in the stadium. A window, more symbolically charged than a door, is to allow the person inside a room to view out, and to be viewed from outside. A door is a necessity, which allows you in and out. But a window is a luxury: you don’t have to go out because you have a window to bring the world to you when needed. A window, therefore, defines the room, and you are in the centre of it.

Like a Shakespearean theatre, the Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre awaits a charged interior life to unfold. When the window is dissolved in transparency, as seen in many of our modern and contemporary buildings, gone with it is the interior life that architecture must confine and enshrine. This brings me to the architectural problem of sports architecture: what does the architect actually do while the predominant structure is the work of an engineer? The Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre shows that the artifice lies in the craft on an architect to consciously manipulate the felt qualities of a building that are determined by the degree of enclosure as well as its proportion and human scale.

I have written elsewhere that the architecture of Bligh Voller Nield should be understood as ‘flower architecture’. By this I mean, like a flower, good architecture must be universally admired. Kant calls this ‘free beauty’. To be precise, both the image and the metaphoric meaning of a flower are legible to the inhabitants. There is, however, no guarantee that the figurative image and its meaning of a building can be deciphered in the same way as what is originally conceived by the architect. It often is a risky business where architects rely on culturally specific images in the hope of evoking an affinity with the inhabitants. Paul Andreu’s National Grand Theatre in Beijing, conceived as a “round heaven and square earth” Chinese cosmos, is dubbed either as an eggshell or, even more unfortunately, a tomb on the west of Tiananmen Square. The Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre, as mentioned earlier, does not yet have a figurative nickname. It was, however, quite naturally envisaged as a gigantic flower amid the planted forest in the Olympic Green parkland. My sense is that it will be understood as such, for the 12-segment configuration of the tennis stadium is flower symmetry.

Modern and contemporary architects have often treated geometry and its consequential harmony and symmetry – once held dear by the ancients and the Renaissance architects – with disdain. Yes, geometry and symmetry no longer hold the validity of a cosmic model for our moderns, but they still are part of our biological make-up, for our body is essentially symmetrical. A simple geometric relation, the meaning of front and back, for example, is intrinsically linked to our restricted forward vision. We therefore look forward to the bright future, and turn our back to the dark past. The concentric flower symmetry must recall our primordial urge for centrality. This may explain as to why the flower is what Kant calls “free beauty”, for it is culturally independent.

The Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre is an unfinished building. If one is to look for defects and problems, there are signs of shoddy construction: the steel roof truss occasionally does not lie flush with the inclined concrete blade, the hastily cut plastic handrail cap could have been replaced by hardwood and the aluminium panels that seal the building could have been stone panels, or even copper, which would age gracefully along with the concrete structure. Though the rooms beneath the stadium are nicely punctuated by light-well gardens, their finish seems too clinical. But a great building should not be judged merely by its quality finish and clever details. What a waste it would be if expensive finish and intricate details were added to a building with a faulty parti!

Lawrence Nield and Andrew Cortese, the design architects from Bligh Voller Nield, as well as the project architect Zheng Fang from the Chinese CCDI, understand this only too well: they predicted the potential compromises that they would have to make in the construction system to accommodate the budget constraints and the conventional methods of the contractor. This understanding in fact has become the strongest incentive for the architect to come up with a robust room parti and its art of intimate ambiance, which have withstood the test of the above mentioned situation. These, for Louis Kahn, are problems of ‘design’, which are circumstantial, whereas the ‘form’ must hold. If what I have said holds any truth, the Beijing Olympic Tennis Centre will pass the verdict of time. One hopes that it will be beautifully finished by the future generation. This is what we have been hoping for out own Sydney Opera House – a great and yet unfinished building. Kahn once complained that the 20th century, unlike ancient Rome, would leave poor ruins for future generations. Do the architects in our time aim high enough for good ruins in the future?

There was a hint of blue sky after a heavy storm on the previous night. I departed Beijing via Norman Foster’s delightful Terminal 3. To my gratification, I have noticed that Foster too seems to have come to the same realisation: a robust parti of the clearest routes for departure and arrival. They are two Ys joined together and read in the air as two humans in Chinese ideogram. The subtle use of poche, which separates the external envelope and the ceiling, avoids showcasing the details of the roof truss. Yet, the brightly coloured roof truss in yellow, orange and red is partially revealed where the skylights are bounced back by the ceiling batts. The result is a massive slivery wave of starry sky. My trip to Beijing ended with a hopeful conclusion: these two buildings prove that, despite the construction deficiency and cultural differences, good architects are producing great buildings in China.