Today.

29.10’19

BENEFICIAL ARCHITECTURE

The International Energy Agency states that the Buildings and Buildings Construction sectors combined are responsible for 36 % of global final energy consumption and nearly 40 % of total direct and indirect CO2 emissions and growing !

This is a lot of energy use and CO2 emissions.

We know that this can be reduced substantially and simply by good passive design, northern orientation allowing winter solar penetration into buildings and summer shading, planning for natural cross ventilation and importantly the use of singular low embodied energy building materials.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Save all that energy !

More to come……

CLIMATE CRISIS

We, the ‘Guardian’ pronounces, are in an escalating Climate Crisis!

 And, the Planet, is in the grip of an emergency.

 The Guardian’s position is ‘rooted in scientific fact’.

 And, our country, Australia, is ‘the biggest exporter of coal and liquefied natural gas’.

 This is the new design reality that Architects’ must address.

 As is the power of the multi-national building product suppliers, the banks and the chaos and cacophony of agreements within a largely privatized ’Construction Industry’.

 And the Architects’ position has never been more eroded, nor the challenges for innovation by design greater.

 We cannot be stymied !

 The only imperative is to innovate by design. Now, with professional collaboration.

QUALIFICATION BASED SELECTION FOR BUILDING DESIGN My Words

The Architect is the trained Building Design Specialist. The Architect must be Registered with the Architects’ Registration Board and thus must comply with the Architects’ Act and Code of Professional Conduct.

Prior to ‘Registration’ the Graduate Architect in order to be registered must pass a professional practice registration exam.

Prior to that the undergraduate student generally completes a five year degree or diploma at a registered tertiary institution and complete a years professional practice in a Registered Architect Practice.

The Architect carries Professional Indemnity and Public Risk insurance

The Architect continually undertakes Compulsory Professional Development.

When choosing your Building Designer look at Value not Price. You get what you pay for.

CLIMATE CHANGE....REAL....!!!

Heads are out of the sand at last. Amazing is it not, how something of such unimaginable consequence for humanity, for all life on this planet can innocuously come to the fore ? Does it take impending catastrophe, even doom to inspire action ? THIS is serious. Reality. WE are responsible. WE are responsible for the FIX UP.

Think about it…..And Architects CAN think,. I think…

DARLING RIVER CATASTROPHE !

Is there a more contemptible demonstration of - ‘EVERY ACTION UPON NATURE HAS AN EQUAL AND OPPOSITE REACTION THAT EXTRAPOLATES’ ! The complete ecology of our major river system STUFFED because WHAT is more important ???

No Water at all. NONE below cotton farms at the top of Queensland. No water means no life. How can the same humanity that created Global Warming, Climate Change, Drought favor cotton over life itself ?

Without water there is no life.

Opal Tower

0901’19

OPAL TOWER, 1.

No surprise there !

 The built faults exemplify an inevitability wrought from ‘Design and Construct’ agreements’ - complexities of adversarial relationships and symptomatic methodologies that stretch the capabilities of all participants beyond their limits.

Something had, has to give way and it did, does and will.

TIME E E E E

Good Architecture takes time.  

Better Architecture takes more time.

Years ago, the C.S.I.R.O. demonstrated that the best and most economic buildings were produced by a direct relationship between architect and client.

We could add – over reasonable TIME …..

Time to obtain ‘information’, to synthesize, analyze and understand.

Time to meet – Client and Architect face to face

Time to trust.

Time to agree.

Time to sketch, to overlay over overlay until Design sings its own tune

Time to ‘pin-up’, to peer review and to tweak

And that is just the beginning….

AFFORDABLE HOUSING ?

Affordable Housing. Two simple words that hide a myriad of complexities and often contradictions. I remember renowned Architect Daryl Jackson back in the early 1060s pronouncing to us students the difficulties that architects had in designing and constructing ‘affordable housing’ then.

And here we are now some 55 years later still wrestling in a divided society of our own making, one of haves and have-nots, accellerative change, chaos and climate change facing this same but seemingly insurmountable challenge.

Quickly, smaller is better, much smaller but but just clever, but ingenious by ‘DESIGN’. That for which we have been trained. Answers anyone ?

LISTEN TO OUR CHILDREN

Bringing THE most important message to the public eye, OUR children in a supreme example of participatory democracy peacefully and in their thousands brought CLIMATE CHANGE to the forefront of Australian thinking in one day.

The future is indeed theirs !

HOSPITALITY

With Global Warming near uppermost in this Architect’s mind, I am surprised that the Place where we have chosen to live, the Township of Kyneton, Victoria, Australia is ecologically so ‘Hospitable’

I recently visited the Apollo Bay area for a few days with old mates. A few of us were fly-fishing for ‘trout’.

I searched a favorite stream that I have fished for around 50 years, to discover no trout, no insects, in fact no life at all.

I drove saddened home to Bendigo. Virtually no dead insects on the windscreen. Not so many years ago I would have stopped at least once to scrape and wash insects off the windscreen just to see..

However, my instincts must have been working well when we chose Kyneton as a Place to live.

Cold, freezingly cold for five months of the year, relatively wet and the beautiful Campaspe river walk below the old botanical gardens, soothe the soul.

But there is a punchline.

There are frogs on the river. Clean water ?

I have discovered recently on the river, the trout fisherman’s holy grail, large black Mayfly spinners. A call to local angling identity John Condliffe establishes that there are also red spinners.

Tiny miracles of a foodchain in an increasingly insect deprived world. Hospitable indeed.

Green and Healthy Space

More often than not, the treatment of the Spaces between buildings, can be of more beneficial significance than the ‘Architecture’.

A therapeutic landscape nurtures the soul.

Carbon dioxide is absorbed and oxygen released. Greenery offers peace. So do the sounds and site of insects, birds, frogs and such-like.

The ‘architecture’ may be ordinary, or at best at one with nature. this is good for our well being and that of our Place. It is healthy.

Energy responsibility

Not so long ago a journalist was in southern U.S. of A.  when he noticed at night all the houses lit up and air conditioners churning away – but could see no people ?

Summerhouses of wealthy northerners - the A.C. ensured no mould to curtains and furnishings and the lights were to deter burglars….

Climate Change 29/10/2018

As I’ve said many times over many years – NATURE RULES.

And every action by man upon NATURE has an equal and opposite action that extrapolates.

And never has it been more important for Architects to accept our professional responsibility, and by DESIGN, address Climate Change !

Inhabiting Bendigo

INHABITING BENDIGO   June 19 - July 14, 2013

... at the very first word, at the first poetic overture, the reader who is ‘reading a room’ [reading a house] leaves off reading and starts to think of some place in his own past.  You would like to tell everything about your room [your house].  You would like to interest the reader in yourself, whereas you have unlocked a door to daydreaming.  The values of intimacy are so absorbing that the reader has ceased to read your room, [your house]; he sees his own again.  He is already far off, listening to the recollections of a father, ... a mother, ... in short, of the human being who dominates the corner of his most cherished memories. 

Gaston Bachelard Poetics of Space, 1964 p. 14.

The La Trobe University’s Visual Art Centre in Bendigo has held its first ‘architectural’ exhibition in its Access Gallery, Inhabiting Bendigo June 19 - July 14, by architects Dennis Carter and Peter Williams.

Carter and Williams have been colleagues, collaborators and friends for many decades and this exhibition is a celebration their personal journeys, influences and works in ‘becoming’ an architect. 

The Access Gallery is a specific ‘local artists’ gallery; Carter is a resident of Bendigo, while Williams has a farm at Resedale, a small hamlet fifty kilometers south east of Bendigo.

The exhibition is simple, intimate and thoughtful.   It is poetic.  

There are no grand gestures, no polemic, no architectural egos. A rare feat for two fairly architecturally opinionated passionate practitioners.

As you walk into this small gallery on the far wall, directly in front are two projected screens of images; photographs of non-architecture and architecture, Afghanistan, Australia, France, Germany, Hong Kong, cars, people, architectural offices, fisherman and guitarist - a whole assortment of disparate lives, travels, experiences, remembrances and interests - on two slightly out of sync 20 minutes loops.  So the visitor, who may sit in one of the two domestic lounge chairs that the gallery so artful placed in position, can watch both screens at once, concentrate on one or the other, get lost in the imagery, the exotic, the unexpected that references these two different but not dissimilar men.

While sitting and contemplating the images, one can also listen to the pre-recorded conversation between Carter and Williams as they discuss their travels, their experiences and how that has inculcated on their architectural practices, their philosophies, their successes and their dreams.

On one of the side walls are cantilevered architectural models.  Not the grand statement models, but more the working models that many architects make ‘in house’ to question their own designs or to explain design ideas to clients. 

This is a gentle show, a private contemplation on the making of place. It offers the visitor with time and an open heart a space for reverie. 

Karen Ward July 2013 

Affordable Contemporary Small Allotment Houses in Nature

In the ‘The Guardian Weekly’, 13.01.12, is a wonderful article, (‘Scots demand legal 

change to make 2012 the year of the hut’). The author writes of huts and hutters who in 

spare time, in all weathers, including freezing Scottish winters, escape from grim 

Glasgow urban high rises their to their own hut within a colony of hutters - Google, A 

Thousand Huts.

In the previous issue is a lengthy article in praise of trees.......

Nature rules. This is the single most important sustaining architectural continuum.

All current environmental science and psychology is telling us this.

Nature enhances our well being. It is not to be afraid of - Exactly the opposite is true. 

Treading lightly in cherished natural places, has always calmed us and replenished the 

soul. This is something that as urbanites, we have forgotten, lost, or at worst, never 

known. Trees are vital to our lives in the process of photosynthesis, and like us are 

inherently similar to each other, and equally, infinitely varied in their make-up. Trees are 

also the best carbon sinks that we have and they release oxygen that we rely on for

life.

Architecture, should always respond to place as a contribution to nature. This is good 

for us and good for our planet.

There are fundamentally two distinct single-building dwelling typologies - the Pavilion 

and the Courtyard house.

The singular Pavilion looks outward over its domain and is thus suited to larger sites

with space and views. The country manor in its spacious estate epitomizes this notion. 

Conversely, the Courtyard House is introspective, and essentially an urban type of 

dwelling, a place of privacy within a community.

It can as history demonstrates, provide us with both community and privacy. It is not

hard   to ensure that habitable rooms can absorb the benefits of nature - sunshine,

natural ventilation and greenery. 

To do this well, the dwelling needs to be carefully planned from the inside-out - and 

knitted in its urban context to its neighbors.

Rationally, rooms can be designed to meet our anthropometric and ergonomic needs

as a starting point.  Functionality. 

In some instances, this may be as good as it gets - to go beyond may be unaffordable 

luxury. On analysis it is surprising at how little space is required to make do.

If we think in ‘modules’, one can well imagine if circumstances demand, modules of 2.4 

x 2.4 x 2.4m providing adequate ‘rooms’ and courtyards - with doubling, trebling or 

quadrupling up adding further potential.  2.7 x 2.7 x 2.7m adds space.

And so 3.0 x 3.0 x 3.0m seems suddenly quite large. Mezzanine sleeping platforms

are conceivable.

And 3.6 x 3.6 x 3.6m offers all sorts of possibilities, but is it not on analysis, over 

generous ?

To consider the prospect of Australian single to two storied single dwelling housing

in the interest of urban consolidation in the quest for affordability and, Community,

it seems that allotment sizes in Australian suburban housing are reduced without 

analysis or even consideration of the above - which should, should it not, be the

starting platform for design ?

Nearly all Australian small allotment development involves the ‘plonking’ of pavilions on 

tiny sites, housing that is the antithesis of that which is required.

It is inevitable however, that as land is subdivided into increasingly smaller allotments

the design determinants become more complex and interrelated.

This is to say - To design the subdivision layout including allotment planning without 

dwelling planning does not work. It is working from the outside in, whereas, is not the 

reverse required ?

In 1963, two architects, Serge Chermayeff and Christopher Alexander wrote about a 

modern European approach to the courtyard house as one means of meeting

affordable housing needs. The title of the book was ‘Community and Privacy’ and it may

generally be considered as the, or one of the books on modern courtyard housing. Still

an excellent reference, (spatiality does not change), it suggests, “The relationship of

rooms to courtyard, and of the house to its neighbors and to public areas are a physical

expression of man’s various roles, as family member, neighbour and citizen. 

The courtyard house is symbolic of man, the social animal. A cluster of courtyard

houses has a cellular structure which suggests that man is working in harmony with

nature....The courtyard house plan was developed to achieve privacy in the garden and

a good orientation of the rooms... Mass courtyard housing... was created afresh during

the search for a new, functional, low-rise housing form for the urban working class”. 

Workable and affordable.

“In hot dry areas exposure to the sun is to be avoided. Courtyards are kept small and 

overshadowed by high walls, wide eaves and foliage. By sharing the external walls with 

the neighboring houses, exposure of the vertical surfaces to the sun is minimized. In

the courtyard, dark colours are used to reduce glare, and pots and fountains help cool

the air through evaporation. In hot humid regions, courtyard plans are good for

encouraging through ventilation.”

Modern courtyard housing started with the L-shaped plan. Single storey led to later two 

storey plans. Jorn Utzon’s housing at Helsingfors in Denmark is a good early example.

Chermayeff developed more linear, row house plans carefully knitting open space and 

built on area between adjoining properties.

I expect because of Australia being a more affluent place retaining arcadian garden city 

visions in modern times as much as anything, is a reaction to Victorian era ‘slums’. 

Designed mass courtyard housing largely slipped us by - except for the work,

particularly in Melbourne from the 1960s, designed largely by Graham Gunn and

developed with John Ridge and David Yencken, the principals of Merchant Builders -

larger houses, but still well knitted and fittingly, a part of their natural surroundings.

Such designing from the inside out, within nature, carefully planned, modest in scale 

with the aim of providing privacy within Community is very much worth re-visiting.

And to be successful, such places require the sort of design sensitivity that probably

only  architects can provide - a bit of leadership again ?

Dennis Carter 15.01.12  reviewed 24.02.2013

New, new beginnings ...

 ‘Life is experiential, learning by doing (what you can with what you have got) supported by an indefatigably inquisitive nature that continues to develop, when intuition and instinct become a given.’ 

Architecture. At three score and ten, the next phase begins.

I am a ‘Consultant’. What does that mean ?

I offer 70 years of experiential learning and 40 + as a practice principal.

I have many interests and have forsaken none. I learned to love the making of shelter as a child - when we built ‘huts’ making do with whatever we could scrounge. Each was a special place.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a Place called Doncaster that exists now in name only. I struggle to find a remnant of the then modestly modified landscape of cottages, orchards, small paddocks and gravelled lanes and dams that held monster eels. And the Yarra yielded haversacks of blackfish, redfin, trout, perch and bony little roach over years of cycle rides.

I watched an architect designed house being built by a happy family, its powerful logic captivating.

I heard Leadbelly singing ‘Goodnight Irene’, on a bus returning from a sunday school picnic , and again, later at sixteen when I wangled my first Canora guitar.

I managed a degree from Melbourne Uni. after six years of absorption in extra-curricular activities.

Later, married, I travelled over nine and a half months when ‘home’ was a short-wheel based diesel Landrover from London to Calcutta via Ireland.

I was young and fearless and the experiences ranged from the exquisite to confronting and outright dangerous, but I learned that we are all the same and we are all different.

And I again was captivated by ‘Anonymous’ Architecture, rooms, houses, intuited spaces and places constructed from sticks or earth and stone. 

Thus evolved an architectural philosophy of ‘romantic minimalism’ (at about the same time as American ILURSC - inward looking upward reaching shed construction)

In summary, all of the above to me have been essential ingredients as has a lifetime of reading and some writing in making me the architect that I now am.  

I have been fortunate to be recognised by peers more recently as a LFRAIA and a Senior Counsellor.

Since first visiting Central Victoria in the 1950s, and shortly thereafter ‘slow’ travelling to and fro from Melbourne via Citroen 2CV, I have, slowly, gained a deep knowledge and understanding of the Goldfields locales, and the meaning of ‘Regionality’.

The last two decades as a resident Architect have further emphasised that here, over the divide, at the edge of the great inland desert, Bendigo is its own place that generates architectural responses that differ from those of the urban coastal fringe.

During drought Nature was harsher, dryer.

Nature rules.

And so, develops a design philosophy with notions of anthropometric spatiality, structural honesty and frugality, material integrity, fitness for purpose, and environmental sensitivity.

Solid, void, sunlight and shadow and nature are guiding forces.

I am thus now mostly known for sinewy horizontal house designs, constructed of metal, timber, rammed earth or pre-cast concrete that sit well and feel good to be in. Places of a certain toughness and a comforting resilience.

North facing passive solar design is a given. Some buildings work toward autonomy.

I have been (and continue to be committed) towards the furthering of architectural design and to the public’s awareness of architecture, through the weekly writing of column in the Age during the late 70s and early 1980s, and many valuable years of participation in the RAIA and AIA. I have loved occasions as a juror in the RAIA Awards system and the years as an active RAIA (Victorian Chapter Councillor that led to an RAIA Citation for his services to architecture in 2001.

In 2006 I was made a RAIA (Victorian Chapter) Senior Counsellor, leading the counselling/mentoring of younger architects now being at the core of my professional philosophy.

In 2007, I was made a Life Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. (Sounds like the noble profession of Architecture, doesn’t it ?)

I remain an often lapsed but committed fly-fisherman - and through the life-time pursuit of this recreational passion, I have developed a finely tuned understanding of our fragile environment, nature and thus, environmental design issues. I know no other way.

I am an active designer providing a high level of contact with clients and practice leadership to those who work alongside me.

My work with Williams Boag has led me to much larger projects.

You will know that I am a lover of wilderness and an avid reader and collector of books, an aficionado of acoustic blues who has owned 50 plus motor cars and is still learning.

What fun.