A new fire-resistant timber community hall has risen from the ashes of the 2009 Black Saturday fires thanks to generous donations of time and money from numerous companies and individuals.

After the original Narbethong Community Hall burned down, the Narbethong Public Hall Committee contacted Emergency Architects looking for low-cost help with the rebuilding process. BVN and Arup were soon on board offering architectural and engineering services at no charge, and other consultants followed including SGM, Rodney Vapp & Associates, Contour Planning, Rodney Aujard & Associates, Douglas Partners Pty Ltd, Fitzgerald Frisbee Landscape Architecture. This large pro bono team worked in conjunction with the Victorian Bushfire Recovery and Reconstruction Authority, DSE, Murrindindi Shire and the Narbethong Public Hall Committee to design and implement the rebuilding of the hall. Many other suppliers donated, or provided at reduced costs, a range of furniture and fittings to finish the hall to the highest standards while the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund and McDonald’s provided major funding.

The original hall had its share of issues. It was a basic timber mid-twentieth century structure built fronting the busy Maroondah Highway with little connection to the surrounding landscape. Comprising a single large space, it lacked adequate heating, and facilities were limited and outmoded.

When faced with creating a new hall, the community asked for a building that expressed the heritage of Narbethong – a town that developed around the timber industry. Timber was therefore an obvious material choice but the challenge was that, due to its proximity to a bush reserve, the new hall was required to meet a high bushfire attack level to ensure its longevity.

A fire resistant solution was found in wrapping the floor-to-ceiling double-glazed exterior in bronze mesh, allowing the interior to be predominantly timber. The primary large gathering space is at the centre of the building, and has direct access to an outdoor gathering space to the north. The floor and ceiling are timber, and vertical timber blades define the curving walls that hide the kitchen and bathroom facilities, creating nooks for smaller group meetings. These blades are reminiscent of the beautiful trees found in the region. The building’s primary entry and new carpark are to the south of the site, while the more enclosed spaces – such as the kitchen and amenities – are located on the east and west facades to limit solar gain and reduce heat loss. Spaces can be individually heated and cooled. The corners of the building are kept clear to enable views into and out of the hall from all aspects.

Rebuilding the Narbethong Community Hall also presented an opportunity to create a new typology for community buildings. Typically, community hall buildings are closed structures. The new, larger Narbethong Community Hall is a highly transparent building that lets passers-by see the life inside and allows the hall’s users to connect with the surrounding landscape.

Flexible Space

Architect: BVN Architecture
Client: Energex
Location: Brisbane
Shortlisted: Australian Interior Design Awards, 2011 Corporate Design

More than 1700 Energex staff formerly dispersed throughout Brisbane, now work together in this open, collaborative work environment. The move aspired to encourage cultural change, improve productivity and efficiency and create a new direction for the organization. The design of the six-level headquarters on the edge of Brisbane’s CBD provides large, flexible workspaces, organized around a lift that opens straight into the workplace.

There are three atriums within the building that link all levels. Staff can see across the levels. Communal spaces, such as casual and formal meeting rooms, are clustered around the edges of the three atrium spaces close to sculptural staircases connecting the floors. Modular workstation can be moved and changed easily.

BMRI Youth Mental Health Building
BVN Architecture

Jury Citation
The Youth Mental Health Building delivers an impressive and gutsy street elevation that serves as a perfect reflection of its client’s ambition to be an alternative institutional health building. Calling for a combination of research laboratories, academic offices, clinical consulting spaces and a social drop in centre, the brief demanded inventive robust and economical architecture.

The new forms are inserted adjacent to, and over the top of, an existing two storey heritage façade, part of the gritty context of this previously industrial quarter in Sydney. This constraint has only benefitted the project’s final form, creating a provocative and mannered solution that addresses the street with originality and character. It presents an embodied representation of the complexity of social and clinical research and consulting facilities within. Inside, these functional areas are layered through floor plates with generous interconnecting stairs and hallways, including tall vertical spatial connections, links to street views and social spaces.

“With just 0.3 per cent of the world’s population, Australia generates between 3 and 4 percent of refereed research publication in health. Australia’s health and medical research sector has produced three Nobel Prize winners and five Australians of the Year in the past decade. In little more than a decade, Australian health research has led to the bionic ear, a cure for stomach ulcers and a cervical cancer vaccine.”

BMRI Youth Mental Health Building
BVN Architecture

Architect 
BVN Architecture - project principal James Grose; project director Ian Goodbury; project architect Andrea Fink; interior designer Alexander Suen

Structural Consultant
Connell Wagner

Services and Facade Consultant
Arup

Heritage Consultant
Godden Mackay Logan

Fire Engineer
Rawfire

Acoustic Consultant
Acoustic Studio

Planning Consultant
Cityplan

Building Regulations consultant
Steve Watson & Partners

Landscape Consultant
Sue Barnsley Design

Cost Consultant
Davis Langdom

Project Manager
AAP Corporation

Construction Manager
Buildcorp

Photographer
John Gollings

BVN Sydney Studio

Design Practice - BVN Architecture
Photography - John Gollings

A 1970's office floor is reworked in a daring interior that uses only the bones of the high-rise concrete building. The cladding on the supporting columns is removed, significantly reducing their bulk ad exposing the texture as 'found' detail. Ceiling grids and tiles are removed to reveal services, with new cable trays inserted like a racetrack.

ESD is not just about individual buildings, but it should look at the bigger picture. Caroline Munro reports on an education project that does just that.

One of the biggest issues facing the architectural profession is the redundancy of existing building stock, says BVN Architecture principal Bill Dowzer.

Many buildings now facing demolition are only 20 years old. “That has got to raise a whole lot of questions about how you design buildings for longevity into the future,” he says.

Dowzer admits that in many quarters it is considered easier to knock something down and start over again, but exciting refurbishments of older buildings incorporating the latest green technology and social design solutions are becoming more common.

Yet when it comes to ESD, implementing innovative green technology is just one step and earning a Green Star or NABERS rating is just the beginning. For Dowzer, the next phase of ESD is more about longevity – creating buildings that can not only adapt to change, but provide the infrastructure to enhance the lifespan of the buildings around them.

In an environment where the way people work, teach, learn ad engage with one another is changing constantly, many buildings and their infrastructure are in danger of becoming redundant. This particularly evident in schools, where the traditional classroom is often no longer flexible enough to enable modern methods of teaching and learning, says Dowzer.

BVN currently has a number of school clients who are facing this very dilemma.

Ravenswood School for Girls on Sydney’s North Shore was one of them, but its recently completed library has breathed new life into the older buildings surrounding it. Before the learning hub (as it is called) was constructed, there was no real entrance to the campus and the school was still lacking infrastructure, such as lifts. Now, the library serves as the linchpin, linking existing buildings and contributing to their longer term sustainability, says Dowzer.

He believes in the near future buildings will no longer be designed in isolation, but will form part of a campus or precinct master plan, sharing infrastructure and delivering much more sustainable solutions. These buildings will also be flexible, their spaces adaptable to changing needs over time. Ravenswood’s learning hub could be considered a scaled example of how that can be achieved.

“It’s not just about a new building,” he says. It’s actually about giving the site longevity by providing the infrastructure that’s going to let the site function with a longer lifespan than it may well have had.”
ESD principals were at the forefront of its design and the building had some clever and cost effective solutions, which have brought down the school’s operating costs significantly. Its water collection facility is used to water the surrounding landscape and flush the toilets, and the façade maximizes the use of natural light. It is a mixed-mode building, in that it is fully ventilated throughout the year while technology takes care of more extreme weather conditions.

“This radically reduces operating costs and during 80 to 90 percent of the school year the building is naturally ventilated,” Dowzer explains.

Yet it is the social infrastructure aspect of the building that most excited Dowzer. For example, Ravenswood’s learning hub has very few walls so the building can be changed depending on how the spaces will be utilized over time.

Externally, the building also solves some issues on the site, linking the existing buildings and providing a true entrance to the campus. Its roof doubles as a grandstand for sporting activities and the building itself has created additional sheltered areas below. Its café – a modern take on the old tuck-shop – actually invites the community in as parents are encouraged to have a coffee when they drop off or pick up their children.

Embracing the community and sharing infrastructure will push the development of green precincts and campuses as opposed to green buildings, Dowzer believes. Across Australia, building owners are recognizing the positive benefits and economies of scale of green initiatives and are keen to showcase them, he says.

“They’re not doing it in a way that is showing off. It’s actually inclusive, bringing people in and letting them share in the education process around the sustainability of the building.”

This was an important consideration in the design of Ravenswood’s library, he adds.

“We utilized the sustainability initiatives as an education tool. These are a series of screens when you come into the new learning hub that monitors the energy use of the building as well as the water collection on site.”

Dowzer admits that there may be some apathy towards green initiatives in some quarters, but a number of BVN’s clients have been real innovators themselves, he says, keen to share their ideas and excited to showcase the sustainability initiatives they have implemented.

A more social approach to ESD is already resulting in sustainable infrastructure on a grander scale, Dowzer notes.
“The generation of power or water retention and all of those sorts of initiatives are much stronger when they are done at a campus or city level than an individual building,” he says.

For example, Sydney is encouraging sewer mining to provide recycled water across the city, and the infrastructure for Melbourne’s Docklands is being designed for entire precincts, shared by individual developments. This shift in thinking is happening at all levels, including residential, Dowzer says.

“When people move into residential areas, more frequently they are buying into communities rather than buying into a building,” says Dowzer. “It’s absolutely happening and the future lies very much in how you share and how you bring things together to be able to get maximum benefit.”

Reform through Making

Sydney’s Urban Islands workshop, now in its fourth incarnation, aims to liberate architectural education from the shackles of the academy by bringing it to, of all places, the prison of Cockatoo Island. As Gretchen Wilkins reports, the program’s success can impart important lessons for the tricky business of resilient city-making.

Established in 2006 by a group of Sydney architects, Urban Islands is a two-week, international architecture workshop sited on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. The project emerged in response to a collective sense amongst the organizers, Tom Rivard, Olivia Hyde and Joanne Jakovich, that conventional studio teaching was becoming increasingly constrained by the overarching university system, that is, tightly bound to calendar semesters, coordinated by pedagogy and a regular pool of staff. They sought to fashion a new model, which was (more or less) free of these constraints, an open network of students, staff and design methodologies situated somewhere between practice and the academy, linking northern and southern hemispheres, and offered periodically.

What better place to release architectural education from the tyranny of the university than Cockatoo Island, the site of decades of incarceration, forced labour, mechanized production and disciplinary reform? This seemingly unlikely, even ironic choice of site proved keenly appropriate, given the island’s history as host to a long series of institutions, each in some way predicated on an idea of reform through making.

Established as a penal institution in 1839, the first inmates of Cockatoo were put to hard labour quarrying stone and forging steel to build their own barracks, guard houses and staff residences. Later established as a maritime centre, they built the dry docks, workshops and factories where shipbuilders manufactured colonial, naval and commercial vessels. And when the maritime industry subsided, several buildings were appropriated for use as an industrial school for girls, where they practiced sewing and embroidery. Thousands of apprentices learned their trades through the industries located at Cockatoo including sheet metal workers, painters, electricians, plumbers and even draughtsmen.

Despite the immediate goals of these institutions – disciplinary or otherwise – each practice was predicated on an idea of making as a transformative act: social reform through prison labour, military reform through manufacturing, educational reform through industrial skilling. This fundamentally pragmatic model holds that the production of something – buildings, boats, blankets, whatever – is simultaneously the production of oneself. Reflection through action, learning through doing and behavioral psychology are all contemporary versions of this same idea, effecting change by doing, and often making. Urban Islands is of this ilk, as both an educational and an architectural model. But this type of practice also resonated at a much greater scale, such as in the production (and regeneration) of cities.

Over five years and four workshops, and now joined by Mark Szczerbicki, Urban Islands has taken shape as an independent studio program, working in collaboration with local and international universities and architectural practices. Students enroll directly in the program and ballot for one of three studios directed by invited international architects, while receiving academic credit through their home institution.

BVN Architecture, TTW Consulting Engineers and the University of Sydney are regular supporters, and the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust generously allows access to all the facilities at Cockatoo Island. The result is a collectively formed network, a public-private, local-global, cross-institutional, vertically integrated studio, whose staff, program and students change every year. In effect, Urban Islands is a university without the university.

The 2011 workshop featured Nat Chard from the University of Manitoba, Nataly Gattegno from San Francisco’s Future Cities Lab and Victor Marquez (Victor Marquez Arquitectos) from Mexico City, with students from Sydney and Melbourne universities and visiting reviewers from Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle. Previous workshops tool place in 2006, 2007 and 2009 and included international guests Iwamoto Scott Architects (San Francisco), PR ARCHITEKTEN (Berlin), Geoff Manaugh (Los Angeles), Morphogenesis (New Delhi), Mark Smout (London), Mette Thomsen (Copenhagen), studio SUMO (New York), Supersudaca (Chile), Jaime Rouilon (Costa Rica) and Responsive Environment (Tokyo).

The invited guests define the studio’s focus, which seems to naturally emerge as a hybrid of their own research and the intense environment of Cockatoo Island. For example, Chard’s students produced a series of exquisitely crafted devices, foregrounding an idea about the remoteness of island life. They honed in on very specific phenomena such as echoes, crevices, shadows and even the patterns of seagulls, and fabricated site-specific mechanisms through which these local conditions could be amplified or dislocated across time and space. Gattegno curated two projects in her group: one chartered soil conditions of the island and proposed a system by which future changes in toxicity could be visualized; and the other constructed a surface to literally produce light at the end of a tunnel. Marquez’s group curated a series of ephemeral installations that could change appearance by day and night. The final projects were reviewed in situ and representationally, and collectively fostered a much broader discussion comparing pedagogical approaches (across countries, universities and/or methodologies) and architectural practices.

The impact of the workshop on Cockatoo Island is already become tangible, if only subtly visible. When in started in 2006 there was no ferry service to the site, and the island had been dormant for over a decade, with only a series of disused factories, rusty tools and unprotected Cliffside pathways. Despite these hazards, the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust allowed the organizers free and unrestricted access to the site, which now, several years later, has proven to be a useful way for them to envision new types of programs as they develop a heritage plan for the island. Indeed, some key aspects of the workshop have set the tone, and  pace, for recent developments of Cockatoo Islands, characterized by short-term, slowly incremental or small-scale changes.

Opening to the public came with only the slightest amount of visible alteration, though with strong effect: the addition of a campground, a coffee shop and a very thin layer of largely self-guided program. A schedule of events, including the Biennale of Sydney and Nick Cave’s All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival, established a link back to the activities of the city. It also works to intensify public engagement, but in a way that is open and resists fixing a singular type, theme or market for future development. It’s the anti master plan, more legible and more effective the more ‘incomplete’ it remains.

Seen in a much broader context, the organizational structure of Urban Islands (and the ongoing development of Cockatoo Island) follows the momentum everywhere around us toward networks and away from centralization: cloud computing, workplace hubs, remote manufacturing. In any of these systems, the power is help in the components, not the larger form, which is constantly shifting. As an urban model, this is fundamentally resilient because it absorbs (and triggers) change at nearly any scale. Urban Islands works like this, gaining strength and identity through the links and people involved, without which it would have no form. As such, its closer in nature to an urban archipelago than an isolated island, forming as a cluster of bodies aligned along a particular (architectural) fault line.

Network, cluster or urban-archipelago structures suggest viable, if nascent, models for an urbanism that is by nature incomplete and polycentric, autonomous yet interdependent, potent but not necessarily volatile. This is a city comprised of many dispersed sites, both virtual and local, a larger collective of people and places connected across infrastructures already in place, and new ones yet to emerge. The shape of this city may change, like the network itself, but we can be certain it will look less like the large centralized metropolises and more like a network of ‘sister cities’.

Cockatoo Island inspires this sort of speculation about future city building, as it is an urban model that visibly connects the way we make things to the way we make places. As these production methods change, as industries transform and techniques expand, so does the city around them, sometimes incrementally, sometimes drastically. This may sound like an obvious correlation, but extreme examples of such a close link offer deeper insight, and caution. Detroit, Dubai and China’s mono-factory cities were all tooled for a singular type of output, and when that industry dissolved so did the city. Rather, contemporary production integrates across any number of techniques, a combination of processes only possible at this point in time: the industrial craft of Cockatoo, 20th century mass production, 21st century mass-customization, digital mass collaboration.

What is urbanism of this city? Like the Zen saying ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’, reforming the way we make anything will reform the way we make everything, and this is especially true of urban form.

AECOM Brisbane Workplace by BVN Architecture

Lead designers: David Kelly and Angie McKay
Project Team: Joel Kelder, Rebecca Carroll, Pamela Trathen
Photography: Christopher Frederick Jones

"BVN has created a unified tenancy for AECOM which has fostered a culture that is dynamic, collaborative and sustainable." - Sue Carr, 2011 Jury

Designed to accommodate 850 staff, the design cuts large coids through the existing building to create spatial unity across the building's five floors.

Social gathering and creative spaces provide new ways to work, interact and communicate.

In support of AECOM's commitment to sustainability, the design team focussed on using sustainable building methods and materials. Timber features heavily in the fitout, all of which is 100% post-consumer recycled Australian blackbutt.

At interconnecting stair links all levels through the building's voids to create a dynmaic common space and provide a sense of connectivity and transparency.

BVN reports that AECOM's new workplace is already facilitating an increase in collaborative activity and productivity, staff retention and attraction and reduced operational costs.

The AECOM fitout boasts a number of sustainable features, some less standard than others. The ventilation system provides 50 percent more fresh air than the average commercial building, workstations are recyclable, and task chairs are 'cradle to cradle' accredited. Even the kitchen boasts worm farms, where organic waste is harvested and recycled.

Brain and Mind Research Institute

Youth Mental Health Building, Australia

Commissioned by Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Sydney

Designed by BVN Architecture

NSW Minister for the Environment Robyn Parker led a recent ground-breaking ceremony to commence construction of a PlantBank vital for the future of Australian bodiversity.

Located at the nation's largest botanic garden, the $19.8 million scientific facility will incorporate Australia's largest native seedbank.

Minister Parker stated "while banks manage our money and futures, PlantBank at the Australian Botanic Garden, Mount Annan will invest in nature.

"Millions of living seeds will be collected and deposited to preserve Australia's biodiversity and establish a hub for research into the survival needs and life-giving properties of our plants.

"This bank really matters because if a species becomes extinct, no amount of money and no government on Earth can bail it out. When we lose species, we lose threads in the web of life and untold potential for human health and well-being."

Minister Parker said that the ultimate goal is to collect and store seeds or live tissue from all of Australia's 25,000 plant species, adding "up to 200 million living seeds may eventually be stored in its thermally-efficient, refrigerated vault, designed to withstand fire and other threats."

PlantBank will be open to the public and is expected to attract local, national and international visitors and students.

Minister Parker added that "there will be opportunities to interact with scientists and advanced technolology while learning about Australian plants. It will be a place to educate us all and inspire a new generation of scientists.

Combined with the marvellous horticultural displays of the Australian Botanic Garden here at Mount Annan, there will be no place like it on Earth."

Royal Botanic Gardens & Domain Trust Executive Director Professor David Mabberley said PlantBank was of global significance for the scientific community, stating "the United Nations Environment Program identifies Australia as one of 12 mega diverse countries and fifth in the world for mega diversity of flora. More than 85% of our plants are unique to the Australian wilderness."

Professor Mabberley said that threats to Australia's mega diversity have increased dramatically over recent decades, in particular from land clearance and degradation, introduction of alien species, pollution, disease and climate change.

"In New South Wales, ten per cent of our plant species are now at risk of extinction. This is a serious matter. Human life depends on plants – as does all life on Earth.

"PlantBank will will be a major centre of plant science for NSW, Australia and the Asia-Pacific region, where the Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust is spear-heading botanical research and conservation training."

James Grose, who headed the PlantBank design team at BVN Architecture, said the building will be a model of sustainability, incorporating energy efficiency, low maintenance construction materials, water recycling and passive design to maximise natural lighting, ventilation and warmth.

The NSW Government has committed $15.5 million of the total $19.8 million construction cost.

Generous contributors and sponsors to date include the Ian Potter Foundation, HSBC Australia, the Friends of the Botanic Gardens, TransGrid and the Royal Botanic Gardens Foundation.

Project management is by Thinc Projects and the construction firm is Hansen Yuncken.

Creatively adapting and preserving an historic Melbourne train shed into contemporary open offices required BVN Architecture to rethink the entire structure.

When architects talk about the challenges of adaptive reuse and renovation, rarely do they talk about runaway trains. Ninotschka Titchkosky, a principal in the Melbourne, Australia, office of Bligh Voller Nield (BVN) Architecture, found herself facing that subject head-on while planning new interiors for the complete restoration and adaptation of Melbourne’s historic Goods Shed North.

“It’s always a balance when working with these old buildings to enhance the character, while also making them functional for contemporary use,” says Titchkosky, who led the interior design of the project. Originally built as a railway shed in 1889, the structure was damaged by a runaway train within just a few year, and was later abandoned in the 1980’s after decades of neglect. BVN’s charge was to convert the shed into open offices for two separate tenants: the Urban Renewal Authority (URA, formerly known as VicUrban) and the Building Commission and Plumbing Industry Commission (BC/PIC). BVN worked for the developer Equiset, with Lovell Chen as heritage architect. Goods Shed’s key historic elements, including clerestory windows, exposed trusses and brickwork, and cast-iron columns, were retained and restored, and the renovation overall is touted as the most sustainable historic building in the state of Victoria, Australia.

In plan, the roughly 110,000-square foot shed divides into three bays from east to west, with an approximately 40-foot-high central bay crowned by a lantern running the length of the building. The 265 employees of the URA (pictured opposite and below) occupy 70,000 square feet at the south end of the shed, where BVN added a new building that connects the site with the adjacent  Collins Street bridge. The 200 employees of BC/PIC occupy two bays within 36,000 square feet at the shed’s north end. The remaining north bay was converted to street-facing retail space/ in the side bays, BVN increased floor area by creating mezzanines that look onto the central spine, taking advantage of the lack of windows on the warehouse’s long sides.

The shed’s renovation was especially important for the URA, since it is Melbourne’s public agency responsible for city planning and projects such as the Docklands redevelopment, where the shed is located. The BC/PIC also plays a public role, overseeing the development and implementation of building and plumbing codes in the Australian state of Victoria. So, both organizations require not only space for their employees, but also showpiece offices that would provide flexible collaboration spaces to engage developers, contractors, design professionals, and public employees who may be planning new building projects or consulting on code adoption.

The BC/PIC interior
Even with the mezzanines, accommodating BC/PIC’s employees into its space presented challenges. BVN addressed this by developing two typologies of standalone, double-height boxes in the central spine – one framed in black steel and clad in glass and the other a hybrid of sustainably harvested messmate timber and steel bracing with messmate slat cladding. The timber box or “tree house,” as Titchkosky describes it, contains two floors for meeting rooms. The boxes provide acoustic and visual privacy typically lacking in open plan offices, while the finishes respond to the existing shed’s prominent black steel ceiling truss structure and Baltic pine tongue and groove ceiling finishes. The open offices feature white Vitra Joyn and Level 34 office furniture. Other materials and furnishings also take cues from the existing historical conditions of the shed. Artemide’s Nur 1618 pendant, used prominently in the glass meeting room, echoes the industrial look of high-bay lighting fixtures that are typical in warehouses. Chairs in the lounges, meeting rooms, and breakout spaces include traditional bentwood Eames chairs from Herman Miller, as well as oak chairs from Melbourne-based Jardan and specialty furniture from Sydney-based Schamburg + Alvisse. The majority of the floor is a newly polished concrete slab, with strategically placed modular carpets and rugs.

The URA interior
The URA’s offices is divided into active and passive spaces, with the mobile furniture by Jardan, Mark Tuckey, Wilhahn, Stylecraft, and Schiavello in the central spaces that allow for flexibility and collaboration. Furniture included BVN- designed wooden benches, self-contained Schiavello-designed green walls with potted plants, and the reuse of the shed’s original rolling doors as hanging partitions under a large central stair of heavy timber. The doors were used again to make a table, topped with glass and supported by repurposed railway tracks, in URA’s café space. The URA works on sensitive projects that require discrete conversations, so some executives accustomed to private offices inspired BVN to design metal mesh rolling screens on a steel track to flexibly divide up their offices along the perimeter brick walls. The flooring is a vinyl product by Bolon that subtly picks up the metal details of the interior.

In both PC/PIC and URA, the design challenge was to create quiet work spaces within the large shed structure. “We used the mezzanine level and bridges together with the freestanding towers to provide smaller, quieter spaces,” says Titchkosky.

A touchstone for the clients
The project has become a touchstone for its tenants, particularly the URA. Sam Sangster, acting CEO of the URA, says staff not only have enjoyed working there, but love giving tours to show off the building. And the project’s success for BVN attests to the firm’s current project, which is the restoration and adaptation of the adjacent Goods She South. “Needless to say, now that we know the building, working on Goods Shed South has been much easier,” says Titchkosky.

As the year comes to an end, join us as we revisit what made headlines on Indesignlive in 2011.
What a year it's been! Some standout built works and exciting new initiatives kept us inspired about the state of design – as well as the odd quirky development that kept us guessing.

In February the release of the high heel-wearing, hard hat-toting Architect Barbie resonated with a lot of people as they questioned how the industry was being represented. Where was the sleep deprivation, and would she even be allowed on site in those shoes?

Throughout the year we enjoyed visits from some very special international guests. Botanist and artist Patrick Blanc gave us a glimpse of his plans for the green walls of Sydney's Central Park One development; Yves Béhar jetted in to launch his new SAYL chair.

At the AIA's national conference we enjoyed the presence of Juhani Pallasmaa, R&Sie(n) and Iwamoto Scott, among many others. Saturday in Design Sydney saw hotshot designers like Benjamin Hubert and Michael Young grace our shores. In November, Bruce Mau inspired Brisbane audiences with his '24 hours to massive change' mantra, and Tokujin Yoshioka's first ever visit to Australia brought us the captivating Waterfall installation.

At imm Cologne, Maison Objet, the Milan Furniture Fair and Cersaie we saw a shift toward more thoughtful and considered design, and design that blurred boundaries, erasing the lines between residential and commercial furniture, for example, or the lines between what's real and fake with techniques of authentic imitation. The Australian International Design Awards (AIDA) garnered more entries this year than ever before, with a focus on products that encouraged a more sustainable way of life.

The architecture and design community showed a wonderful solidarity in the face of natural disaster. Initiatives contributing to recovery after the Queensland floods and earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand showed how strong and supportive the industry can be.

We mourned the premature deaths of Nick Murcutt, and Lena Yali, Greg McNamara and Kevin Taylor, and stopped to celebrate their work and contributions to our built environment.

Some standout projects captured our imaginations. A beachside fish bar in Perth and a sumptuous new airport lounge in Canberra were among the most clicked-on stories of the year. We also welcomed the opening of MONA, Hobart's enigmatic 'anti-museum' with its confronting and controversial private art collection.

Here at Indesign HQ, it was a year of growth and exciting new ventures. We hosted the first of our Indesign in Discussion series, with Ken Maher and James Grose giving us a glimpse into their work on Melbourne's Docklands. We kicked off the year with a bang by launching Indesignlive.asia, and brought Singapore's design community together for one very special inaugural Saturday in Design Singapore. DQ was awarded 2 international design awards for its redesign, and Habitus and Habitusliving both received a revamp – fresh new looks for a fresh new year!

We ended the year by bringing out our very first licensed title Indesign Indonesia and joining forces with Singapore-based publishing house Concepts Asia Publishing, which means next year there'll be 3 glossy new Asian titles under the Indesign umbrella – Cubes, Lookbox and Lookbox Annual. Phew! Here's to an exciting and busy time ahead in 2012...

Candidates who meet these criteria should submit an application in .pdf format including a current cv nominating two referees to:

Richard Sucksmith
Operations Manger
BVN Architecture Melbourne

richard_sucksmith@bvn.com.au

From dinosaurs to designing rugs, interiors to products, futurespace's Gavin Harris has a long and varied body of work.

Interior designer Gavin Harris is a man who isn't afraid to diversify. When the recession hit in the early 1990s, Harris put his design credentials and his childhood dinosaur obsession to good use, working for a Brisbane-based company that created artificial environments for natural history museums and the like.

"We made artificial rainforests, robotic dinosaurs, rocks, trees; we worked with zoologists and palaeontologists," Harris recalls. "It was a great job, totally out of the field – still design I suppose, but [incorporating] some of my passion as a kid." One of his scale models still has pride of place in his living room.

Stints in Australia with Bligh Voller (now BVN) and Woods Bagot working on "everything from call centres to corporate fitouts, restaurants, hotels" followed a stint in London with Mackay and Partners, a firm whose portfolio included an impressive 70,000 sqm space for pharmaceutical company Merck Serono and a fitout for Deloitte Consulting, both early examples of activity-based working before it had a real name to it.

Harris joined futurespace's Sydney office as Senior Associate in 2009, where his experience in designing progressive corporate fitouts became a great asset in an environment that was quick to embrace new ways of working.

"Australia is very advanced in how we work," he says. "In its activity-based working, in the open planning, all those kinds of things, Australia really leads that process against the more traditional companies." Among futurespace's most recent work are new corporate fitouts for John Holland, Jones Lang Lasalle, McCann CMG advertising and Microsoft – multi-level, multi-use spaces embracing the concepts of activity-based working and demonstrating a shift in how Australian workplaces operate.

Harris' success as a designer isn't limited to interiors – he's also a keen product designer, having won Corporate Culture's Design Journey for his 'Takushi' table and Designer Rugs' Evolve competition for his 'Squiggle It' rug in 2010. A competition in London run by lighting company Whitegoods led to the production of his winning design, Line of Light – a concept that was born when Harris identified a lack in an interior project he was working on.

"We wanted a light that you didn't see; something that was very simple," he explains. "There are things in the market now that do that, but at the time there wasn't anything. So I thought, that will be my competition entry, to make this thing almost disappear like a blade."

Harris' product design informs his interior design and vice versa, his ideas for products often arising out of a need for a particular object in his fitouts.

"With interiors, I get to see what we don't have – something that's fallen short, like a product," he explains. "It's nice having the practice of using these things and finding what the gap is."