Vision 2009
On the Beat
Bendigo has a new police station headquarters and it's certain to put some spring into the step of the local constabulary. More often confined to hunker in their bunker, police rarely experience such luminous spatial qualities. Prismatic and purposeful, here is a community presence far less confronting and much more engaging.
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Best Seller
Portrayed in television commercials as a hot tub of suburban bliss and golden, everlasting, afternoons Caroline Springs is a surprising locale to discover architecture for the body and mind. Founded on basalt plains 20kms to Melbourne's west, its a suburb that has come a long way in a short time - from bedrock and thistle to Arcadian fields. Its new library and civic centre is an indication of why the place has surged. Suters Prior Cheney Architects and a potentially chaotic client group of nine, have delivered a knockout result. The library's richly detailed, jewel-like glazing features and a materful play of scale and volume provide an intriguing narrative.
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Play of Light
Glass and sunlight can be heavenly but, just as easily, the work of the Devil. The secret is in knowing when to be brave and when to be cautious. HASSELL and Bovis Lend Lease considered this potential to create the saint or sinner with their design and management of the $99 million Kolling Building for Medical Research and Education, at the Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) in Sydney. The project explores the environmental possibilities through the extensive use of Viridian performance glazing.
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The Butterfly Effect
Bus and rail users are playing their part for the environment by avoiding excessive motorvehicle use. Which is why they should be encouraged at every twist and turn of an often tortured daily commute.
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Inside Outer Space
With a title such as The Vader House, expecitations could be for a suitably darkly cloaked, introspective residence. Perhaps with a hi-tech, Star Wars flourish. But this inner urban extension is much less about Dark Matter and the forbidden realm, than the delight in light of pleasures of space travel, inside and out.
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Hover Craft
How hard can it be to relate the built form, to the natural environment? ‘Very hard’, would appear to be the answer in many instances. The closer to water, the greater the challenge not to transfer a land-lubber’s ideas into the equation. Will a brick float? Not very well and to this end the firm delivers precisely the opposite. The Perth-based Cox, Howlett and Bailey Woodland reveals how the sliver and wafer craftily assembled and installed in a highly considerate manner can deliver so much. Subtraction rather than addition appears to be the means of charting the right course and the result is thankfully a ballast free beauty.
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