Melbourne-based John Wardle Architects in collaboration with Office dA have beat out Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Sauerbruch Hutton, and others to win the new Melbourne Faculty of Architecture competition.
Melbourne-based John Wardle Architects in collaboration with Office dA have beat out Diller + Scofidio, Sauerbruch Hutton, and others to win the new Melbourne Faculty of Architecture competition.
8 Comments
congrats to the local architects! wish the locals got these things more often.
a crazy and intense project. good work!
would be nice to see the other design proposals as well...
did you click on the first link, justavisual? i couldn't open the mp4s, but it looks like that's where they are.
yeah those are the first round presentations, just backgrounds on the offices...not the final competion proposals.
*competition, sorry
Steven: This is a collaboration between local architects and US architects. The work is aesthetically similar between the two, but it could be argued that JW have more experience in project resolution, whilst Office DA have a greater cutting-edge and theory based practice. Is this a victory for local architects? The competition winners need to at least be partnered with an Australian architect (witness the similar UTS competition). Looking in to the firms, what really is the purpose of this partnership? Are the local architects not good enough to win the competition without outside help/names or is it merely the result of the necessity for foreign firms to partner with local ones? Just throwing it out there...
Sorry to disagree SW, but the problem in Melbourne (and most of Australia) is that far too few projects are open to the outside. it is "off the radar" for most architects in the rest of the world.
At the end of the day, Australia is a small country (in terms of population and therefore number of significant projects) and as such, few projects are undertaken as "international" competitions - or competitions at all for that matter.
the short-listing was quite interesting and diverse - with most of the selected international practices forming associations at the 1st stage.
John Wardle is a well-respected and very busy architect, so i wouldn't say that there is a lack of JW buildings in Melbourne, or Australia in general. he has recent school projects in Sydney and Adelaide, as well as commercial projects there as well.
based on this circumstances, i hope that it will be Office d'A and Nader who take the lead in the development of the design.
Australia needs more diversity of architectural ideas, not a closing of the borders.
fine line, you're right, i actually misread. still glad a local is involved and is listed first, but the team was obviously important in the development of their proposal.
dlb, maybe it's just a regional difference but what we see here is that while a LOT of projects go to locals, the plum projects - the ones where the client is actively looking for architectural ideas and interesting solutions - go to the usual suspects not from here. in fact, locals are hardly ever invited to participate/compete with the big name firms.
when i first saw this and misread it, i thought this was a wardle project - and a good one. still think it's very good, but the office da involvement makes it less unique in the way i first thought.
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