Showing Off The Belle Of The Mall

The Age

Saturday September 2, 2006

MARY O'BRIEN

The idiosyncrasies of the Australian cityscape are demystified at an exhibit at the Venice Architecture Biennale, writes Mary O'Brien.

FORGET STUNNING beach houses and romantic outback homesteads - the car park is where it's all happening today. Most Australians live in sprawling urban settlements, and the humble car park is a hub of social and now architectural significance.

Whether we like it or not, large shopping centres are a growing influence on our environment. When architects were designing Adelaide's Marion Cultural Centre they bravely decided to pay tribute to its car-park location with giant, over-the-top road markings.

The cultural centre is one of the eight examples that architects and academics Shane Murray and Nigel Bertram will focus on at the Venice Architectural Biennale in Italy next weekend. They want to expose the true face of everyday Australia with 12 giant photographs, demonstrating how architecture responds to and is changed by our environment.

This is only the third time in 20 years that Australia has been represented at the biennale, which is held on alternate years to the more famous arts biennale. The Royal Australian Institute of Architects has committed funding for future exhibitions so local architects are guaranteed exposure at the event, which attracts more than 100,000 people over three months.

Murray and Bertram are doing something different by showing significant buildings in their environments, and focusing on the interplay between the two.

Murray says Australian architecture is depicted in a romantic way internationally. "We are a highly urbanised country with more than 85 per cent of the population living in an urban context," he says. "We are trying to depict to an international audience the real conditions of everyday Australian life and how good architecture relates to this," he says.

Bertram says he and Murray have spent five years looking at parts of the city and the country that are undergoing significant change. "We want to look at its underlying potential and richness rather than thinking it should be something else or lamenting its existence. We want to look at suburbs like Caroline Springs and see what's interesting there."

The Micro Macro City exhibition, which features eight urban conditions around Australia, has stunning images by art photographers. There are also videos and a soundscape to give an international audience a feeling of what each place is like.

The common link between the 12 examples is that of transformation. Architecture is shaped by social change, and successful architecture responds to it. "Good architecture is a framework or stage that can accommodate contemporary transformations," Murray explains.

Bertram agrees: "Architecture registers that change and also is an agent of the change."

The Marion Centre, designed by Melbourne-based Ashton Raggatt McDougall, with Phillips/Pilkington Architects in Adelaide, involved drawing up a master plan for a suburban area with the third-largest shopping centre in Australia.

Melbourne's much-lauded QVII apartments, designed by McBride Charles Ryan and NH Architecture, have had an interesting impact on the neighbouring State Library. Designed in the 19th century, the library forecourt has had many functions over the years. Today, shoppers, students and workers take a break or grab a bite to eat there, and it's also popular with skateboarders. The much newer QVII borrows the forecourt as its front yard. In turn, the public can enjoy the buzz the apartment dwellers bring to the area.

People are leaving rural towns, here and in other countries, and heading to regional centres. In Kellerberrin, in Western Australia's wheat belt, Donaldson & Warn Architects took on a modest renovation to turn a haberdashery shop into a gallery and accommodation for artists-in-residence. The project has revitalised the town and could offer inspiration to other struggling towns.

"The shrinking of a country town is the flipside of the growing of a regional centre - it's almost the same people moving around," Bertram says.

With improved transport, many regional cities are expanding and, in some cases, are becoming satellite towns around capital cities. People move to these cities and create pressure for redevelopment.

In Queensland, the veterinary laboratory at the University of Queensland's Gatton campus is another flashpoint. Here, m3architecture was commissioned to design a school for animal studies and accommodation for students. Pedestrian access opens up the university to the surrounding area and the campus is being absorbed into the town's existing master plan.

In cities, the increasing demand for space has led to more sub-divided blocks. Murray and Bertram say many examples are unattractive, but believe developments such as D House by Donovan Hill in Brisbane's New Farm demonstrate the positive potential of dual occupancy.

Some urban areas can successfully balance overlapping functions. The University of South Australia's Kaurna building by John Wardle Architects + Hassell helps the campus engage with the outside world because it fronts onto a busy Adelaide street. This adds a vibrancy to the street, where newcomers are also moving into warehouses and a Lebanese bakery, formerly a factory, has has opened.

City areas can have many different incarnations. Sydney's Olympic Park was an old industrial area that was transformed for the 2000 event. Now the area is being reused, providing much-needed space for housing. The Brickpit Ring (Durbach Block Architects) and Shipwreck Lookout (Neeson Murcutt Architects) are two projects that are giving the area a new lease of life. The attractive ring building connects two parts of Homebush Bay, reflects on its dramatic landscape and the history of the old quarry and includes a protected habitat for an endangered frog.

The Deepwater Woolshed in Wagga Wagga, NSW, by Stutchbury and Pape, turns a 19th-century shearing shed into a state-of-the-art wool processing centre with up-to-date workplace safety conditions. Woolsheds are traditionally thought of as primitive, romantic buildings. But this is an advanced industrial facility, with environmentally sustainable features that reflect the changing nature of agriculture.

Architectural photographs often only focus on a single building. One of the interesting things about this exhibition is that many of the photographs set the buildings in the context of their environments. They show how people interact with the buildings - so that they become more than just inanimate objects - and take their place in today's ever-changing Australia. Many of these urban trends, which are all interrelated, are happening around the world. Successful architecture is the first to respond in an inventive way to changing conditions.

Micro Macro City is at the Venice Architecture Biennale from September 10 to November 19.

© 2006 The Age

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