PricePricePrice TagsTagsTags April 11, 2010 Issue 109

S o u t h e a s t Q u e e n s l a n d AustralianAustralianAustralian StyleStyleStyle

Ipswich CBD / Blueprint Architects / De Martini Fletcher and Rohrig Properties Price Tags first featured Australian Style six years ago. It tried to pin down the characteristics that make Australian architecture distinctive. Not unique, necessarily, but very good. On the whole, superior to Canada’s.

For examples from across Australia, see Issue 52 of Price Tags.

This issue looks at Australian Style in Southeast Queensland. There’s a comfortable modernism to Australian design: it looks AustralianAustralianAustralian StyleStyleStyle considered, balanced and a little quirky.

It’s spacious and open; it responds to climate; it’s colourful without being ostentatious.

This is not architecture and design that aims to be ‘great’ in the sense of ‘starchitecture.’ It’s almost generic, partly generated by developers Examples: two with a sense of style. commercial buildings at And that has made for Lake Kawana on the broad acceptance. Sunshine Coast. The ordinary is well done.

At first glance: typical condo. On second look: a little colour, an occasional angle, variations in repetition, complementary landscaping. How about that long narrow window on the corner providing light to the stairwell. Was this required? That small gesture lifts this apartment building above the ordinary.

Location / Architect / Developer West End / Bligh Voller Nield / Stockland All locations in Brisbane unless specified BRISBANE’S INNER 5K More mixing of uses, more infill, more experimentation. Within the CBD, South Bank, Fortitude Valley, Kelvin Grove and other parts of the Inner 5- kilometre ring, there are all kinds of examples. Fortitude Valley / Cottee Parker / Anthony John Group

Fortitude Valley / ML Design / Winston Group BRISBANE’S INNER 5K

Kelvin Fortitude Grove Valley

CBD

South Bank

For enlarged map, click here. Kelvin Grove Urban Village

TVS Partnership / Indigo Group

A mix of commercial, academic, non- market residen- tial, condos and retail properties – all part of a larger vision at Kelvin Grove Urban Village, a few kilometres from the CBD. Cottee Parker / Citimark Properties South Bank Great urban streets Vancouver and Brisbane both mounted world expos on large industrial sites, both along waterways, both redeveloped as urban neighbourhoods afterwards. Instead of thin highrises, Brisbane chose as its urban form mid-rise slabs. Lined up, they created strong streetwalls along the south edge of the site..

Fairweather Proberts / Stockland

Grey Street

South Bank, Brisbane Cox Rayner / Thiess

Grey and Little Stanley Streets.

Grey Street during the Great Brisbane Bike Ride Little Stanley Street

Mid-block passages connect Grey and Little Stanley Outdoor dining became legal with the world’s fair – and in the years since 1988, Brisbane has been designing their spaces for living indoors and out.

Fortitude Valley Indoor / Outdoor

The most satisfying way that subtropical Brisbane responds is simply by making the walls disappear. There’s a seamless- ness between indoor and outdoor, an ambiguity between private and public.

Roma Street Parklands Queensland Performing Arts Centre, South Bank Adelaide Street, CBD Fortitude Valley State Library, South Bank Toowong / Powe Architects / First State Developments

Elements of Australian Style: Colour! . Solid blocks and stripes of colour highlight the geometry of the facades , drawing the eye to the larger composition.

West End / Donovan Hill / FKP Mary Street, CBD Felix Tower – another apartment block in Brisbane’s residential highrise boom.

CBD / Cottee Parker / Citimark Properties Santos Place – a mid-block office tower with an exuberantly colourful façade.

CBD / Donovan Hill / Ross Nielson Properties With a single soft colour and textured stones in the mid- block passageway. Brisbane Square, designed by Melbourne architects, doesn’t fit. It’s top heavy. The cheerier colours of the podium blocks haven’t much of a chance against the ominous grey.

CBD / Denton Corker Marshall / ABN AMRO Highrises along the Gold Coast are playing with colour on a scale never seen before. The yellow wall of Air on Broadbeach radiates back the light of the subtropical sun, while the adjustable sunscreens create patterns in gray.

Broadbeach, Gold Coast / Ian Moore Architects / Niecon Developments For the new Clem Jones Tunnel (a 4.8- kilometre toll road under the CBD and Brisbane River ), the ventilation stacks were tiled in purple and red, after the flowering trees, jacaranda and poinciana.

Engineering is Art

Bowen Hills / John Ilett (EDAW) / River City Motorway Overhangs Shade is a necessity. These cantilevered overhangs – often tilted planes – provide both sun protection and style.

An overhang is what the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art is dramatically about. Here the architects do aspire to greatness, taking the more modest ambitions of commercial design and scaling them up.

Gallery of Modern Art, South Bank The Architectus team (that designed the Gallery) includes Lindsay and Kerry Clare, who … had run a successful partnership at Mooloolaba, north of Brisbane since 1979 … integrating Queensland climatic sensibility into a highly practical, elegant and modern 'Sunshine Coast style'. - QGOMA web site

Gallery of Modern Art On the north, a café and lawn, with a riverfront connection to the Kurilpa Bridge.

Gallery of Modern Art On the west, one of Brisbane’s least known and best small public spaces: An aboriginal-style firepit of Queensland sandstone.

Gallery of Modern Art Louvers A different kind of sunscreen. Fortitude Valley / Cottee Parker / Anthony John Group Louvers and overhangs often become more decorative than practical. In this case, they add sleekness to the Brisbane Magis- trates Court.

George and Turbot Streets, CBD / Cox Rayner / State Government Adelaide and George Streets, CBD / Crone & Associates / Charter Hall

Facades become canvases for sunscreen design.

Woolloongabba / Forrest Architects / Queensland Health Pushed to extremes the balcony becomes the building. Like The Wave. Spacious enough to accommodate a barbeque, roomy enough for chairs and tables, deep enough to be shaded, open enough to be seamless.

Broadbeach, Gold Coast / DBI Design / Ho consortium The Australian balcony essentially adds another room to the home, and becomes something more integral to the look of the building than the little-used add-ons too typical of the Vancouver highrise.

New Farm / Mirvac Design / Mirvac West End, Brisbane

There are little touches. Above, shadows of awning wires cast equilateral triangles on flat white walls. Ball-shaped plantings are set against angled slats. Nice geometry. This is architecture that isn’t excessive. Most of it is competent and commercial, and takes advantage of its subtropical circumstance.

But it looks good because it is responding to the climate, the light, the landscape and the public realm.

Australian Style achieves a very good-looking fit.

Era, Melbourne Street Brisbane is beginning to appreciate how good it is. For more Australian Style in Southeast Queensland:

www.richardkirkarchitect.com

www.donovanhill.com.au

www.m3architecture.com PPPricericerice TagsTagsTags

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