Archinect - News

Woods Bagot will lead a new adaptive reuse project in Hobart for the University of Tasmania

2022-01-26T15:20:00-05:00

An underused piece of award-winning architecture in Australia is getting a makeover thanks to one of the country’s leading firms.

ArchitectureAU is reporting that the iconic one-time Forestry Tasmania headquarters in Hobart is set for an adaptive reuse scheme from Woods Bagot that will convert the dome and former warehouse space into an academic facility for the University of Tasmania.

The dome was designed around two existing 1930s structures by UTAS professor Robert Morris-Nunn in 1997. It received the RAIA’s Recycled Buildings award the next year and has been listed on Tasmania’s state heritage register for over three decades. The architect is now working closely with Woods Bagot on restoring his design, which he described as being a “wonderful” development for the community.

“Seeing the building fall into disuse over the last few years has been really sad, so to know that the University is planning to restore it, and even reinstate the forest under the dome, is amazing news,” ...

Our coming apocalypse is now being recorded thanks to this new intervention

2021-12-09T13:37:00-05:00

A digital record of earth’s man-made demise is about to begin thanks to an intervention in Australia called Earth's Black Box.

A remote part of Tasmania is the home of the ominous new steel box that’s meant to capture and record climate data such as oceanic acidification, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, and land and sea temperature increases in addition to information about population growth, energy use, and newspaper stories related to climate change.

The box runs on a combination of batteries and solar power and can collect the data thanks to an algorithm that was developed by the communications firm Clemenger BBDO with the help from the University of Tasmania, and the artist collective Glue Society, which had help from architects Thomas Bailey and Kate Philipps of Room11.

Image: Earth's Black Box

“The idea is if the Earth does crash as a result of climate change, this indestructible recording device will be there for whoever's left to learn from that,” Clemenger’s Jim Curtis ...

This proposed luxury hotel by Fender Katsalidis Architects incorporates a suspension bridge

2017-07-06T20:44:00-04:00

It will be built from the top down on a suspension bridge, modelled after and painted the colour of the Golden Gate bridge. At its base will be a new 1,075-seat theatre, and below that an excavation site that’s 4.5 times as large as the museum’s excavation. It is expected to cost over $300m.

In a noteworthy meeting of infrastructure and luxury real estate development, Tasmanian organizer of Hobart's Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) David Walsh believes the people who enjoy the museum will definitely dig an onsite luxury hotel that uses a suspension bridge to support its seven upper storeys. The design has been proposed by Australia's Fender Katsalidis Architects.

A proposed three-story library. Image: Mona

In this article he notes that "you can’t usually build a theatre inside a building because when it shakes, the whole building shakes. But because this is a bridge, the top seven floors are suspended from above, and the bottom three floors are built from below. They’re not connected to each other – there’s no [noise] transmission. It’s the best idea anyone ever had. And it wasn’t mine!”

A proposed installation. Image: Mona