Profile Lovell Chen Words by Peter Raisbeck Regent Theatre Melbourne-based architecture practice Lovell Chen of Lovell Chen, be it in masterplanning, the preparation Melbourne auditorium is home to one of the most extensive archives of conservation management plans or intricate ceiling bulkhead and truss detail. of architectural, heritage and conservation conservation work. Nor are the firm’s interests merely Image: Lovell Chen. knowledge in Australia. Even so, it would be wrong bound to Melbourne’s nineteenth-century fabric. Lovell Chen’s to characterize the firm’s work over the past four Lovell Chen is acutely aware of the circumstances intervention at the Trades decades in these terms alone. Lovell Chen has been of Australia’s other cities and regional centres, the Hall council chamber playing the long game, eschewing the limelight country’s modernist heritage as well as its histories in Carlton, Melbourne of design heroics in favour of rigorous research and of Indigenous and colonial landscapes. As would is “subtle, surgical and even joyful.” Photographs: design and collaborative processes. While many be expected of a firm of this intellectual depth, Lovell Peter Glenane (prior architects appear to espouse alternative practice Chen is wary that adaptive re-use has become a to restoration), Eve Wilson models, Lovell Chen has actually realized one. Under fashionable label, acknowledging that not all buildings (after restoration). For four decades, Lovell Chen the seemingly polite guise of heritage architecture, deserve adaptive re-use, nor is everything valuable; this firm has, over time, developed a compelling sometimes, what is removed is as important as what and radical practice model: the result of a complex is kept for the future. has not only shaped Melbourne’s interaction between ever-evolving expertise in design, All of this is brought together in design masterplanning, heritage, conservation, construction outcomes that surprise through their grace. and sustainability. It is a remarkable story. This is not the work of cookie cutters, nor of stylists collective memory, but acted The firm began as Allom Lovell and Associates who deploy a sly language regardless of the program, in 1981. Peter Lovell had graduated from the University nor the results of a larger-than-life formalism of irony. of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Building degree The practice’s approach is characterized by a process and an interest in best-practice building conservation. of research, design iteration and a search for detailed as a custodian of its fabric. Kai Chen joined in 1991, having meticulously crafted constructional solutions, depending on the project a number of residential commissions in his own context. This is a group of architects who still know practice, Robinson Chen. That body of work avoided how to detail. And in its work around the easy clichés of the modern bourgeois house in The firm’s conservation skills are evident favour of exploring space, colour and light. The firm in the work to Trades Hall in Carlton, a significant became Lovell Chen in 2005. site in the histories of trade unions in Victoria and Australia, the firm has Since then, the firm has grown to include the Australian Labor Party. The council chamber, five more principals: Kate Gray, Adam Mornement, built in 1891, had been destroyed by fire in 1960 and Anne-Marie Treweeke, Milica Tumbas and Katherine refurbished in what might be described as a kind been visionary in White. Together, the seven principals attest to the of utilitarian moderne style of that time: a flat white firm’s singular diversity, combined expertise and ceiling, brownish timber panels and some green no-nonsense principles of governance. As a result, modern textures. Lovell Chen has reversed the 1960s the firm is able to deploy its embedded knowledge work and highlighted the hall’s original configuration. breaking down the to resolve strategic issues, hard-nosed negotiations The result includes a new three-sided balcony and and intractable trade-offs. It is almost as if Lovell Chen arcaded side galleries. It is a subtle, surgical and even has knowingly designed itself to confront the wicked joyful intervention. old–new binary to problems and ethical quagmires inherent to The practice’s design skill is evident in its contemporary practice. work at the Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute. But there is more to it than this. Lovell Chen This project involved conservation work to a 1921 create “a poetry has not only been instrumental in shaping Melbourne’s Renaissance revival-style building and the addition collective memory as a city, it has also been its of a new pavilion. The new addition employs various custodian. There are few heritage buildings in the exterior devices: Corten steel as a single material, PROJECT REGENT THEATRE, MELBOURNE NOTE ENTRY # 4115-HERITAGE Awards. city that have not at some point had the involvement tapered massing and laser-cut decorative openings TITLE AUDITORIUM CEILING BULKHEAD & TRUSS DETAIL © COPYRIGHT This drawing is copyright and remains the based in ethical practice.” property of Lovell Chen. SCALE N/A 94 Architecture Australia Mar / Apr 2021 95 Profile At the Boyd and Renowden Chapels at the Springvale Botanical Cemetery in Melbourne, clarity was Lovell Chen’s primary aim. Photograph: Trevor Mein. A steel and glass structure has been added to provide shelter at the front of the chapels; its minimal design allows the 1930s portico to retain its visual impact. Photograph: Trevor Mein. At the Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute, Lovell Chen was involved in restoration, reconstruction and adaptation works as well as the addition of a pavilion, which has achieved Passive House certification. Photograph: Trevor Mein. Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute Passive House key Airtight membrane Passive House envelope Insulated envelope ORIGINAL FOOTPRINT Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute (ground floor gallery) 0 1 2 5 10 m Passive House envelope floor plan 1:400 Bendigo Soldiers Memorial Institute Passive House envelope section 1:400 0 12 5 (m) 96 Architecture Australia Mar / Apr 2021 97 Profile and trabeated rhythms expressed by the placement At the University of Melbourne’s Ormond College, The Wade Institute of the steel sheets. The siting of the new pavilion Lovell Chen has designed a series of projects in of Entrepreneurship, in the grounds of Ormond also allows the immediate landscape of the institute a context that includes buildings by Roy Grounds College at the University to be better apprehended. and Frederick Romberg. The largest of these projects of Melbourne, combines Even more remarkably, this new addition is the Wade Institute of Entrepreneurship, a teaching unconventional teaching spaces with a rooftop has been constructed according to Passive House building that explores the intersecting typologies tennis court. Photograph: principles. The tired old stereotype is that heritage of garden pavilion and cloister. The result is a brilliant John Gollings. architects are not early adopters, but Lovell Chen has riposte to the stuffiness of Grounds’s and Romberg’s Mesh columns are used been working with Passive House since 2014. This mid-century mannerisms. both inside and outside interest began as an effort to have increased agency Research is integral to the practice’s modus the Passive House building, in conservation contexts in the face of the whims operandi. The research infrastructure of the office providing a coherent design response to the of service engineers and has thus extended the Passive is outstanding, its library is second-to-none among complex architectural House principles into typologies beyond housing. architecture libraries – containing far more than context of the site. For Lovell Chen, the process of embedding just architecture books – and the firm is generous Photograph: John Gollings. new into old is not about merely making the formalist in sharing the library’s embodied knowledge with distinction between old and new. For less adept scholars, heritage experts, planners and policymakers. architects, this binary enables an easy reversibility – Moreover, unlike many other firms, Lovell Chen when mistakes are revealed later – and assuages actively encourages its staff to be involved in research the consciences of those architects who avoid initiatives, conferences and training programs, and it difficult choices. In contrast, Lovell Chen enfolds new has a research and development budget that it utilizes architectures, functions, fabrics and materials into for these activities. If only more architects employed existing structures in ways that are both visible and a similar research model. In this office, research is not invisible. This departure from the old-new binary confers pursued as a veil for self-interested pragmatism or an enormous responsibility on the architect not egotistic design. With similar humility, this practice has to blunder, whether through ignorance of the existing generously mentored many young architects over time. fabric or missteps in project implementation. Expert Lovell Chen searches for project knowledge information-gathering and decision-making is critical. grounded in detail and, once found, it articulates In going beyond the easy sophistries of the the truths that emerge from this context. This process old-new mantra, Lovell Chen has made subtle yet begins with an ethics that never abandons the significant contributions to the theory of adaptive memories of a city, a place or a landscape. Within re-use practice. Several further projects in the practice the firm there is a culture of modesty that belies portfolio indicate the results of these contributions. its achievements. The result is a poetry based in ethical At Melbourne’s Regent Theatre, a massive 3.7-metre practice rather than self-centred promotion or hunger extension to the front of the dress circle is held in place for the next social-media metric. This is a firm working by a new truss supported by piers hidden inside the to help its clients endure the tumult of future times existing walls.