TERROIR
It was hardly a case of terra incognita when TERROIR came to work on this latest extension of Fish349, midway along North Hobart’s popular commercial strip. In 2006, the firm transformed a grocery store – a 1970s extension in an original Georgian heritage building – into a contemporary seafood café. And so this time around, when invited to turn an adjoining car park into a Function Room, TERROIR were on familiar territory.
DesignInc
In this era of ‘green is cool’, we often forget that ecological sustainability isn’t just about the natural environment. An ecosystem is more than just an environment, and it is also more than just a sum of its parts. So a truly sustainable project must also give equal consideration to social and economic sustainability, as well as human and intergenerational sustainability. Which is why the K2 Apartments project is a sustainable development.
James Stockwell Architect
How can this be done with fewer materials? is a question architect James Stockwell often asked himself while designing this home in Leura, a township nestled high in the Blue Mountains. Overlooking a valley and small creek to the Northeast, the lithe structure is perched on a neat bed of local rammed earth. Even the upper floor appears as if it is floating, since it is supported by a grid of slender Australian hardwood columns cantilevering off the central loft slab.
Studio 39
While the function of a cemetery is to preserve the memory of the departed as they were, it arguably serves to suggest continuity as well. In a tranquil parkland setting, the material world of commerce, industry, and politics seems removed enough for the memorial to serve as a bubble in time, but in nature as in all things there is at least gradual change.
Robert Simeoni Architects
The local Surf Life Saving Club is an essential icon of Australian beach culture: red-and-yellow caps; hot chips from the kiosk and the seagulls that love them; melting icecreams and sandy suncream; noisy nippers competitions, and surfboat racing at dawn. Traditionally, this quintessential Aussie scene would all play out around a concrete, brick and/or timber club house: usually a slapdash, piecemeal construction built sometime between 1900 and 1970.
Stanley Saitowitz | Natoma Architects
To walk, blinking, out of a ceremonial space and straight onto the footpath is a sure sign of architectural carelessness. The old Beth Sholom temple, built in the 1930s in the Richmond district of San Francisco, was a big offender on this count. It had twenty-three entry points; many, with the subtlety of a fire exit, opening straight to the street, with others leading the visitor into a maddening catacomb of alleyways linking the internal functions of the sanctuary.
