Adelaide: Mount Lofty Tourist Centre
 Because it offers exceptional views of Adelaide’s hills and plain, the summit of Mount Lofty is a logical stop for tourist buses–yet the site was long-neglected after the 1983 Ash Wednesday fires. However, the SA government recently funded a Raffen Maron-designed tourist centre, restoration of the damamged heritage landmark, Flinders Column, improvements to the car park, and a plaza with subterranean water-storage and recycling tanks for potential use to fight fires. The centre was conceived as two circular pavilions topped with overhanging roofs like inverted parasols. One wing contains a café and the other an information booth/gift shop-and both offer 180 degree views around the landscape through facets of glass.
Düsseldorf: A Window to the Park
Gruppe Baukunst, a German urban design practice co-directed by Australian architect Boris Kazanski, has won a recent competition in Düsseldorf for housing on the brow of a new park in a major commerce-oriented redevelopment around the central railway station. For a small site with a five-ish storey height limit, Kazanski’s group proposed a “window to the park” scheme of 55-80 sq m apartments with wintergardens, above local shops, a large kindergarten and underground parking. Five roof villas form a “cornice to the sky”.
Sydney: Art Gallery of NSW Asian Gallery Extension
 In a departure from its past associations with the Government Architect in general and Andrew Andersons in particular, the Art Gallery of NSW has accepted Denton Corker Marshall‘s design for a lantern-inspired extension to house its expanding gallery of Asian art. To be built above the Andersons-designed Bicentennial wing at the back of the gallery (overlooking Woolloomooloo), the new wing will be clad with two-metre squares of milky glass delineated by fine stainless steel mullions. Internally, the scheme proposes a glass bridge from the back of the gallery’s current foyer to its sculpture court, a new naturally lit outer gallery and artificially lit inner gallery to the south, and ‘floating’ restaurants to the north.
Sydney: Rose Bay Cottage Restoration
Alan Croker and heritage architects Design 5 have won this year’s Woollahra Conservation Award (council-backed) for their restoration of Rose Bay Cottage, the last-surviving house built on the colonial estate of the Cooper family, who gave Woollahra its name. The cottage is built on land vested in 1820 to a Thomas Benson, who may have built the present east wing. But it was substantially designed by John Verge in 1834-and many of his features remain despite extensive additions which Design 5 have rigorously deconstructed.
Perth: 50 The Terrace
 An uncommon system of marketing apartments-as shells known as ‘vacant strata lots’-is being tested in Perth by developers Lutton Stroud , directed by architect Dr Linley Lutton. Investors in its 31-storey tower called 50 The Terrace may buy one or more cells without room subdivisions or finishes, then hire their own designer to fitout the space along with the designated project managers. The tower, designed by The Buchan Group, also offers a tennis court, driving range, 25 m pool, underground parking and excellent views across the Swan River.
Hunter Valley: Cypress Lakes Resort
Cox Richardson have completed the first stage of a five-star golf and tennis resort set on 340 acres near Pokolbin in NSW’s Hunter Valley wine district. The scheme’s focus is a lakeside clubhouse, designed in the region’s favoured homestead style and incorporating a ground floor health centre, pro shops and a beauty salon, and first-floor restaurants and bars linked by a north-eastern balcony overlooking floodlit tennis courts. Around this complex is being built a “linear village” of for-hire townhouses and apartments offset beside meandering roads.
|
