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Architecture’s most prestigious prize finally honours Jean Nouvel for a career of architectural experimentation.
Jean Nouvel, bald and in black, looks like everyone’s idea of an architect. He acts the part too: formulating ideas in bed, vacationing in the South of France, and dressing only in black (except in summer, when he wears only white). Thankfully, his embodiment of architecture’s great clichés is matched by his contribution to architecture’s contemporary vocabulary. Living up to his image, he is widely recognised as one of the most influential living architects, and routinely included amongst a select group of immensely successful superstar architects. |
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I. M. Pei, Studio Pei-Zhu and Atelier Deshaus modernise the Chinese vernacular
Torn across temporal and spatial axes, the challenge for contemporary Chinese architects is to become both genuinely contemporary and genuinely Chinese. The tension between identity and modernity may well be an old cliché, but there is real difficulty in being modern in a world where modernity is identified with Western grandeur or communist squalor, and real conflict in building a “Chinese” architecture without slipping into pastiche or nostalgia. |
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Marsh Cashman Koolloos Architects
Just the word ‘Bondi’ floods the senses, the mind’s eye vivid with memories or stereotypes (depending on the location of holidays past): the crashing surf, bikinis and surfboards, the scorching sand, a blindingly bright sky stretched overhead, and the classic Aussie beach house across the street, a traditional fibro shack or the majestic homes of the rich and famous. The latter is more likely these days.
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Wright Feldhusen
Playful is a common adjective in the architecture vocabulary, a favourite of designers and reviewers alike.We like to give it an airing every time we see a jaunty angle or a bold splash of colour.We tend to wield the word in its academic sense.We use it to suggest a sense of youthful creativity, innovation, drama and daring. So it’s often forgotten that outside of the architecture headspace, ‘playful’ means treehouses and trainsets and tea-parties. The Cottesloe Residence is different: its playfulness is not confined to either lexicon. It is an adult’s treehouse, replete with jaunty angles and daring voids; a home designed with grown-up tea-parties in mind.
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Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects
The world is full of conflict and binary opposition: black and white, good and evil, yes or no. More often than not, we have to make a definite choice between the two: Tea or coffee? Chicken or beef? ...Curved line or straight? But every so often we get the rare chance to savour both options at the same time – to have our cake and eat it too, as it were. The Gooseberry Hill House is one such chance, continuing Iredale Pederson Hook Architects’ fascination with the potential for a symbiotic coexistence of opposites in the built form. Timber boarding and synthetic green plastic. Smooth concrete and textured. Embedded and suspended. Call it the Jekyll and Hyde factor (the architects do).
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Co-Praxis, Perth
Objectively, it seems Co-praxis’ success on this project comes down to two things: their green thumbs and their holistic approach. In the past this might have sounded a bit newage and left-of-field, but these days, it’s pretty much a basic industry requirement, at least it is if you want to stay two steps ahead of increasingly eco-friendly planning and building regulations. Co-praxis has some pretty impressive green credentials: they aim for carbon neutral or carbon balanced designed environments, and are a member of The Green Building Council of Australia. But what sets them apart from at least the majority of the competition is that they also calculate and offset the carbon footprint generated by each client engagement, at their own expense, using the Western Australia-based reforestation company Elementree.
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Mark Simon, FAIA and Edward J. Keagle, AIA of Centerbrook Architects and Planners
Pepper Pike, Ohio
Religion begins with community. In the coming together of individuals to worship, private spirituality is transformed into the formalised, ritualised, public gathering that marks religion as such. Religion is always called upon to be social and cultural, as well as sacred and divine, and in this way to encourage both spiritual communion and social community. In no other religious tradition is this truer than Judaism, in which community has sustained religion and religion community throughout millennia of exile, persecution and dispossession.
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111 Esplanade, Adelaide
Jostling for space on a crowded beach is a familiar summer ritual. As the nation moves en masse towards the sea, it seems there is never enough space, never enough shade, never enough privacy. Staking out a patch of sand and access to the surf is one thing; making it comfortable despite overcrowding is the real challenge.
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