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.
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.
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.
Lacoste + Stevenson Architects
Greystanes Park East, New South Wales
The Recall Storage Facility is designed to contain six million A3 cardboard archive boxes, storage of which depends on the barcode to keep track of their location. So when Lacoste + Stevenson Architects began designing the Recall Storage Facility, the symbolic resonance of barcoding – signifying identification and individualisation, which forms a sound basis for any design principle – was too perfect to overlook
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Ashton Raggatt McDougall
Melbourne, VIC
Melbourne Central was never the city’s main train station, nor was it an architectural masterpiece, or even a successful retail venture. A recent facelift, however, has taken on the challenge of rewriting past shortcomings; rejuvinating the complex much like a Hollywood star reinvents a flagging career with a new ‘image’ and a few well-chosen film and media appearances.
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