The winners of the 2000 RAIA & BHP Colorbond® Steel Student Biennale were announced at the recent RAIA National Convention in Sydney. After assessing 51 submissions from students of various Australian schools of architecture, the jury shortlisted 11 submissions and awarded two major prizes, plus a special commendation. Lewis Hunt, of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, is this year’s winner of the BHP Colorbond® Steel Award and Eugene Cheah, also from the University of Melbourne, has won the BHP Steel Design Prize. The judging panel also awarded a special commendation to Corey Jones, of the School of Architecture and Fine Arts, University of Western Australia.
Chaired by Canberra architect Andrew Metcalf, the jury comprised Desley Luscombe, University of New South Wales, Brian Donovan, architect, and Louise Wallis, RAIA/SONA representative. The jury’s criteria included the resolution and exploration of ideas, space, structure and materials, as well as the complexity of the project and its interaction with the existing site. Lewis Hunt wins $5,000 while Eugene Cheah receives a return economy class air ticket to the USA or Europe or equivalent destination plus spending money. The jury applauded Lewis Hunt’s design for the Cinema of Reproduction and were unanimous in awarding it the BHP Colorbond® Steel Award.
For its demonstration of the theoretical potential of steel framing, the jury awarded the BHP Steel Design Prize to Eugene Cheah’s design for a MediaThek – described as an ambitious project which explores the intersection between architecture and virtual reality.
The RAIA & BHP Colorbond® Steel Student Biennale is conducted every two years. With the generous support of BHP, the Biennale awards are an acknowledgement by the RAIA of outstanding student architectural design work. The quality of design is communicated to students and the profession through an exhibition which tours selected schools of architecture and public galleries across Australia. The 2000 travelling exhibition will be headed by the winners’ entries and will include displays from all eleven shortlisted candidates. The exhibition was launched at the RAIA National Convention. Exhibited entries are recorded in a commemorative booklet.
Cinema of Reproduction by Lewis Hunt, winner of the BHP Colorbond ® Award.
THE BHP COLORBOND® AWARD LEWIS HUNT – CINEMA OF REPRODUCTION
Jury Comments
In his BHP COLORBOND® Award project Lewis Hunt has developed a scheme that synthesises building use, space and technique with the character of its Melbourne CBD site.
The program organises traditional cinema, exhibition/gallery spaces, production and service areas around a principal public space. This space is developed as an outdoor cinema/entry/circulation space, linked to a pre-existing pedestrian lane, and thus used by both specific users and the general public.
The building aesthetic and interior has been developed as a metaphor for “film” – a series of “screens” – that are located both in response to the plan and the rhythm of the Melbourne grid.
The scheme is complex, complete and beautifully rendered. However, the CAD technique in some instances suggests the reliance on the building as an object rather than the emphasis on spatial experience and urban integration that is explained in the text.
Although general plan arrangements are resolved, the jury were puzzled over various room relationships and upper level circulation. For example, the nature of the public room between the two cinemas is questionable given it doesn’t provide direct access to the cinemas and the building’s important major space is elsewhere.
The jury applauded Lewis Hunt’s tenacity with such a complex urban program. They also noted the experience of use of the building has been clearly articulated with the various episodes influenced by scale, material qualities, light and user activity. The jury felt that this scheme was the most outstanding submission, explaining various architectural issues at an urban and human scale, and unanimously awarded it the BHP Colorbond® Award
Eugene Cheah’s Mediathek, Melbourne.
THE BHP STEEL DESIGN PRIZE EUGENE CHEAH – MEDIATHEKMELBOURNE
Jury Comments
Eugene Cheah’s design for a MediaThek in Melbourne is an ambitious project which explores the intersection between architecture and virtual reality. It attempts to endow architectural elements such as circulation routes, glass enclosures and building boundaries with tangible forms that invoke something of the indeterminacy and complexity of virtual reality. In so doing it raises but does not answer the question: can we depict or experience virtual reality in orthodox architectural forms?
The building – sited on an under-utilised, expressway-defined site in downtown Melbourne – provides spaces for the production and viewing of digital media, using conventional forms such as a theatre and circulation walkways, as well as newer elements such as viewing booths and smaller work spaces.
All these components are supported by a complex lightweight steel framed structure system derived from box towers, bow framed columns and beams, and small steel postal frames.
Cheah’s work to combine this array of programmatic, architectural and constructional elements into an experimental and complex whole is noteworthy and the presentation is powerful and absorbing if sometimes cryptic. It wouldn’t be possible to conceive of this building in anything other than steel. For its demonstration of the theoretical potential of steel framing this project has been awarded the BHP Steel Design Prize.
In their discussion of the MediaThek, the jury considered some issues such as entry and access, car parking, servicing and circulation to be underdeveloped in relation to the work’s more obvious attributes, but not to a degree that would suggest it would not qualify for the prize.
Corey Jones Nieuw Holland: Zuytdorp Institute.
SPECIAL COMMENDATION
COREY JONES – NIEUW HOLLAND: ZUYTDORP INSTITUTE
Jury Comments
In this project by Corey Jones the question of ‘architecture as metaphor’ in contrast to the experiential nature of siting and material was obviously pre-eminent in its architectural development. The brief was to create a facility for maritime archaeology which drew formal reference from the shipwreck of the Zuytdorp which foundered during the eighteenth century. The site, an extremely exposed coastal landscape of Western Australia, is transformed into an intricate storm garden locating the building sculpturally in the manner of the wreck. The jury was very impressed by the form-making of the landscape/building relationship. They were intrigued by Corey Jones’ evocative descriptions of the workings of the garden and by the depth of knowledge displayed concerning architectural elements. The jury also applauded the project’s textual and graphic qualities. On the other hand there was a feeling that the metaphor of the shipwreck had dominated design decisions related to program and interior to the extent that the building has flaws in its circulation, accommodation and exposure. However, important as they are, such scruples do not diminish the sophistication of the architectural resolution and the jury awarded a commendation to this submission.
