Australian Awards for International Architecture 2014 – Australian Award for Commercial Architecture

The block-sized PARKROYAL on Pickering consists of a hotel of three linked towers in an E-shaped plan, on a podium shared by a speculative office building. The front faces north-east over a park with tree canopies co-opted into the landscape of the pool terrace.  At lower levels the interplay of trunks and branches is recognised in the trabeated detailing of the interior, with an overlay of Chinese styling in a lantern motif explored at large and small scales.

The car-park supporting soffit, readable as a geological or jungle element, shelters public areas of the hotel. The narrow lobby is visually broadened by mirrored screening of the core, and control of the ground plane is maintained right to the street edge with generous ponds, planting and covered walkways. The swimming pool on level five cascades into a garden that loops the podium-top; heavy timbers project over the water with light gangways spanning to suspended cabanas.

Double loaded wings of guestrooms rise from level six. Elevation elaboration is resisted, investment instead made in sculpting garden terraces at four floor intervals and in managing the mullions to integrate with internal planning and furnishings. Additional rooms hang off the single loaded access corridor with its open, planted and naturally ventilated bridging both alluding to the typical form of neighbouring housing board flats and replacing the green view which they lost with the construction of the hotel.

PARKROYAL on Pickering achieves a fine balance of the natural and the cultural. The architects’ theories of context and climate have been proven experimentally; ‘breathing architecture’, at least in the tropics, can work.

Fiona Nixon FRAIA

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Header photo by Patrick Bingham-Hall