Author: duluxstudytour

Dusty morning. The crew pull up rough from a night exploring the town. That sangria is a quiet sleeper.

The day was dedicated to Mies and a survey of the city’s contemporary public space and buildings,

with a smattering of the old. With time of the essence the crew split into teams to explore different layers of the city. The Barcelona pavilion was a clear standout, but we were pleasantly surprised with the depth and quality of the contemporary work. Gaudi’s work inspired the ‘historic team’, and lead to a lively evening’s discussion and photo swapping to try to discover the essence of Barcelona.

Day 5-Barcelona continued
Visits to the offices of Miralles and Bofil, as well as taking in some of the city sites have the team relaxed and excited. The Culture of the offices appears as

though they know how to relax and have some great examples of how to achieve a good work-life balance. Most exciting to us was the office environments themselves – abundant light, cool breezes, wicker chairs, classical music in the background. Surely this is a model to replicate in our similar climate?

Day 5. Barcelona
Start the day at this little old church called the Sagrada Familia, which is disappointingly over program. They’ve achieved lock up, but defects abound. Rectification due for completion in 36 years. Models helpful in lieu of lost drawings. Shame about gaudi s tram incident.

Who are we kidding?

In all seriousness, despite the fact were now in our third scotch,

it was an experience that can’t be put in words. The interior is now scaffold free and revealed in it’s full glory. A special thanks to Marta for a generous, warm and welcoming tour. Having access to behind the scenes was a true privilege.

Day 4. Barcelona
Arrive to a warm sun and a new culture. The crew is excited to see how the financial crisis has affected this nation.

Arriola and Fiol spent a generous afternoon with the team today, beginning with a tour of the Parc Central. Interestingly, the competition process that we tend to associate with european practice appears to be having a detrimental affect here, with the chances of winning so low that practices

are no longer as interested. Renumeration is now
poor also. Reform to the system appears immanent. If that is the case, it prompts the question what model would be a suitable replacement?

This is especially relevant given this offices’ history with the
Parc de la Villette competition back in the 80’s. Aside from the usual issues of maintaining design integrity through the construction process (an apparently universal phenomenon, along with D&B), the studio finds that there are often different expectations of the role of a winning practice when working abroad, particularly. Design ideas competitions are a notable point of contention here. Should the architect be guaranteed the opportunity to see the winning scheme built? This is certainly the cultural expectation here for now but there appears no guarantee the contractors will take it through to completion with the same integrity, as in Australia. Unfortunately the language barrier didn’t
enable us to probe further on this issue. Eye-opening none the less.

Sagrada Familia
Mind officially blown! Elated elevatoring to peak of sagrada familia, all faces drenched in expressions of awe + amazement

Day 2. We Start the day with a breakfast at the Davis Langdon offices, with an introduction to the management and technical backup they offer. Aside from being a nice bunch of chaps, it was interesting to have insight into a clever business model which is being used by most of the big names in London. It makes you wonder whether or not this is a model that the architectural profession could adopt itself.

Sufficiently caffeinated, we headed to the site of the Rothschild bank building under construction for a site tour with OMA,s site architect, Carol. What a fantastic building and supportive client! But we left with no illusions as to how challenging the project must have been for the team. Design and build is out, construction management is in.

Rogers Stirk harbor and partners provided our first insight into the workings of a

large practice before ARUP provided a broad yet comprehensive survey of their work with the worlds best architects and the business models they use to support this. A special thanks to Simon Anson , an expat Aussie, for setting this up via the blog! Lets hope next years group will have the same opportunity.

The DST crew found that both of these experiences provoked discussion as to the changing face of the way we practice.

Now for drinks with our peers at RIBA.

Day One: Today we were led on an expedition by Architect Ken Allison through the urban playground for the prolific and adventurous architect; London. The city is a built form of complexity, of Contextualism, futurism, pre-classicism, modernism, brutalism,and deconstructionism. Ken talks about the city as if it were his best friend, and explains its history through chalk diagrams on the sidewalk. The tour gave us insight in the formation of today’s London, our next visit would show us the future direction of London…

The site of the 2012 Olympics is surreal. Enormous man made structures surrounded by piles of decontaminated soil. The current

debate in the media is Olympic form vs. Legacy form. The Olympic form is massive and awkward, Zaha Hadid’s legacy form of a curavature aquatic centre is unrecognizable in between the additional 25,000 box seats plugged onto its ends. The main stadium by Populous once designed to legacy mode by having detachable top tier seating has now been bought by a football team and these seats will remain changing the whole intent of the design. Tensile fabric designed to wrap the circumference of the stadium to project media was value managed out by the new government, but whom have now decided to reiinstate the fabric. They are currently test fitting design options. The endless residential towers of the Atheletes village is a scene directly from a Shanghai. 2800 apartments need to accomodate 17,000 atheletes. Kitchens are currently rooms, and will be retrofitted with fixtures after the games, and sold onto the public and some used for social housing.  The importance of integrated design becomes evident through this process. Jetlag begins to hit in the afternoon, and we retire to a warm pub meal and some rest, ready for the next 9 days…

And we

are off…..nice day to leave Melbourne. Next stop Singapore.

It’s a nice day

to be leaving this Melbourne weather behind.