2014 Brisbane Regional Architecture Awards Results

Major Awards:

John Dalton Award for Building of the Year:

UQ Advanced Engineering Building – Richard Kirk Architect HASSELL Joint Venture

House of the Year:

Highgate Hill House – Twofold Studio & Cox Rayner Architects

Enduring Architecture Prize:

Torbreck – AH Job and RP Froud

Regional Commendations:

  • Indooroopilly Residence – Kieron Gait Architects
  • Murphy Pipe and Civil – Marc&Co Architects Baber Studio and Jarosz Design
  • West End Tower – Owen and Vokes and Peters
  • New Farm Arbour – Owen and Vokes and Peters
  • UQ Advanced Engineering Building – Richard Kirk Architect HASSELL Joint Venture
  • UQ Chemistry Building Level 8 – m3architecture
  • RNA Industrial Pavilion Redevelopment – Cox Rayner Architects and Tanner Kibble Denton Architects in Association
  • UQ Michie Building Extension – Wilson Architects
  • In-Between Room – Phorm Architecture+Design
  • Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital Upgrade – Hames Sharley
  • Ergon Energy Workplace – BVN Donovan Hill
  • the kenmore – kp architects
  • A&R Plastic Surgery – Base Architecture
  • Griffith University Nathan Campus Revitalisation – Cox Rayner Architects
  • Highgate Hill House – Twofold Studio & Cox Rayner Architects
  • UQ Dayboro Vet – Owen and Vokes and Peters
  • St Peter’s Lutheran College Performing Arts Centre – Phillips Smith Conwell Architects
  • Dakabin Animal Shelter – Brand + Slater Architects
  • Oxlade Drive House – James Russell Architect
  • Brisbane City Hall Restoration Project – Tanner Kibble Denton Architects and GHD Architects in Association (TannerGHD)
  • Baroona Road Mixed Use Redevelopment – Shane Thompson Architects
  • Australian Taxation Office Elizabeth Street – HASSELL
  • PARC Pavilion – BVN Donovan Hill
  • Point Lookout Beach Shack – Marc&Co Architects
  • Bonney Lane Affordable Housing – Cox Rayner Architects
  • 55 Elizabeth Street – BVN Donovan Hill
  • Courtyard Residence – Blueprint Architects
  • Centre for Advanced Imaging – John Wardle Architects + Wilson Architects Architects in Association
  • Studio 217 – Amalie Wright & Richard Buchanan

 

Jury Citations:

 

Commercial Architecture

 41 O’Connell Street
(DC8 Studio) ‘This competent and confident building is a development realised from a lesser brief, where the architects provided real value in identifying and realising a much more valuable asset. Well-chosen colours and materials are juxtaposed with textured finishes and straightforward detailing to a building form responding appropriately to its urban setting and orientation.’

55 Elizabeth St
(BVN Donovan Hill) This project is a restrained and well-proportioned addition to the CBD. Eschewing the bright and shiny materials of many towers, the buildings earthy material palette sits comfortably in its context. It is respectful of the adjacent heritage listed building and takes strong cues from its proportions in articulating the façade.

 

Interior Architecture

Murphy Pipe & Civil
(Marc&Co Architects, Baber Studio and Jarosz Design) This fit-out marries orthogonal and generous workspace with playful freeform interaction spaces. Intelligent use of cost effective materials in a screening device unifies the fit out and brings a sense of richness. Newstead Park is visually connected via a series of screens filtering out the major road in between.

ERM Workplace
(Cox Rayner Architects) Occupying Level 52 and half of Level 53 of One One One Eagle Street, the ERM Workplace has successfully carried through philosophies of the base building, engaging with the organically structured architecture, weaving a non-hierarchical corporate environment through collaboration engendering spatial experiences within a controlled palette of white and Blackbutt timber.

Wilkhahn Showroom
(HASSELL) Utilising a minimalist approach, and constrained by an insurance-dictated budget, this Milton showroom demonstrates a simplicity of purpose and detail. The post-flood refurbishment has been addressed by a mostly white interior, raised display plinths, plywood cladding to the stairway to reflect a corporate approach, and minimal lighting to account for the abundant natural light from both front and rear elevations.

Advanced Engineering Building
(Richard Kirk Architect HASSELL Joint Venture) The UQ Advanced Engineering Building, a collaboration of Richard Kirk Architect and Hassell exquisitely embodies a significant benchmark in sustainability within a complex building program of research, teaching and learning. AEB expertly embraces setting and place and has created an exemplar of engagement with renewable resources and local industry.

UQ Chemistry Building Level 8
(m3architecture) Within an uncompromising 1960’s building (with an inflexible floor plate and low floor to floor heights), the architects have adopted a generic approach to floor refurbishments. This is clearly evident on Level 8 with its circulating street and shopfronts opening on to offices, work areas and laboratories. Tight spaces have been given subtle articulation by material selections and clever detailing, giving each floor its own identity.

Ergon Energy Workplace
(BVN Donovan Hill) The Ergon workspace fit-out is light filled, open and welcoming, making the most of substantial views. Spatial planning, provides opportunities for breakout and quiet respite centrally within the plan. The clever use of voids provides a convincing spatial connection across the floors and facilitates interaction across the workplace.

the kenmore
(kp architects) The Kenmore breaks away from the mould of typical suburban taverns. The planning of the building has been rationalised and different types of spaces from the intimate to the lively have been provided. The honesty of interior material selection and reuse of existing building fabric is well executed.

A&R Plastic Surgery
(Base Architecture) A & R Plastic Surgery by Base Architects delightfully engages with the base building, then plays on sequence through sculpted spatial experiences. With vigilant budget control and collaborative design development, A & R employs materiality and detailing to nurture patient experience, successfully creating a retreat from clinical medical process.

Robertson
(Base Architecture) A typical office-warehouse unit has been successfully converted to an efficient and pleasant working interior for the Place Group. The existing building fabric and structure have been largely retained, enhanced by glazed timber-framed partitions, natural lighting from the rear elevation and introduced skylights, and simple voids to provide connectivity between the two levels. Colour and movement have been playfully introduced to the street elevation.

Newstead Brewing Co
(McVeigh) Newstead Brewing Co has confidently integrated a microbrewery, bar and restaurant within the shell of an existing warehouse, offering an inviting and exciting social experience. Employing raw materials, expressed structure and a layering of old and new, visitors and staff are successfully ingrained within Brisbane’s ‘oldest new craft brewery’.

Pdt Architects Brisbane Office
(Pdt Architects) Designed to express the practise’s values of collaboration, creativity, transparency, honesty and sustainability, Pdt Architects’ own office fit out on McLachlan Street, Fortitude Valley is a natural light-filled delight of contemporary, open, non-hierarchical spatial planning, proficiently programmed to accommodate the myriad needs of this significant architectural practice.

UQ Greenslopes Clinical School
(Phillips Smith Conwell Architects) Situated at the heart of the Greenslopes hospital the University of Queensland Collaborative Learning Centre, is an inviting haven from the clinical bustle of the hospital. Located to attract and facilitate interaction between staff and students, the CLC creates a setting enabling both intense interaction and quiet study.

Australian Taxation Office Elizabeth Street
(HASSELL) A study in considered material usage and attention to detail, this project brings transparency and intimacy to a quality contemporary workspace for a government agency with strict security and privacy requirements. The project works cleverly around the edges of rigid Government standards to deliver an outstanding workplace environment.

Bulimba River House
(Aquatonic) This waterfront small lot house displays a clarity in the overall planning and circulation as well as in the extensive use of timber and maritime references. There is a strong attention to detailing evident throughout, and to achieving innovative options for ventilation. Strong engagement has been achieved between the internal and external living spaces, the infinity edge pool and the moorings on the Brisbane River.

 

Heritage

New Farm Arbour
(Owen and Vokes and Peters) New crafted architectural interventions are inventively orchestrated into the layers of history of this 1890s heritage listed masonry house. The Architect’s exploration for re-occupying the plan as a family home has resulted in sensitive renovations and delightful detailing whilst honouring the original building.

RNA Industrial Pavilion Redevelopment
(Cox Rayner Architects and Tanner Kibble Denton Architect in Association) This project conserves the iconic brick Gregory Terrace façade of the Ekka. The new building behind cleverly provides office accommodation and exhibition space while still invoking the memories of the old show bag pavilion. The technical solution to the conservation of the brick façade is bold and creative.

Children’s Hospital Foundation Building
(Conrad Gargett Riddel Ancher Mortlock Woolley) The project presented challenging circumstances requiring of the project team a wide range of knowledge, skills, and above all determination. Their response has prepared the building for a new life as bespoke office accommodation and guaranteed the future of this part of the South Brisbane townscape.

Centenary Pool Refurbishment
(City Projects Office) With a great appreciation for James Birrell’s architecture, the project team endeavoured to conserve and recover the original design intent for Centenary Pool. An upgrade to public amenity and associated infrastructure ensure the preservation of function for the future use of this cherished heritage place in Brisbane.

Brisbane City Hall Restoration Project
(Tanner Kibble Denton Architects and GHD Architects in Association – TannerGHD) Masterfully conserving the fabric of the building the project has reinvigorated the spaces and uses of City Hall as a place for the people of Brisbane. New functions have been inserted creatively with the museum in the roof, and the complex servicing the commercial kitchen contained below the auditorium.

Mt Maria College Mitchelton Rose Pelletier Building
(Fulton Trotter Architects) The project conserves and enhances surviving elements of building fabric, and grounds. Equally significant is the expansive site master plan that makes the 1930s building the centre of the College. New and rediscovered views from broad quadrangles set up memorable experiences of the campus.

 

Public Architecture

St Joseph’s Nudgee Junior College Library
(Fulton Trotter Architects) The project provides library, teaching and staff facilities with eastern Brisbane River views, and west into a mature stand of eucalypts. External seatings step down to adjacent buildings enabling a courtyard. Curved forms and materials reference the art deco inspired administration building and deliver a sympathetic campus addition.

St Michael’s College Early Learning Centre
(Phillips Smith Conwell Architects) The project provides early learning facilities in a low lying coastal bush setting. The plan works around a central breezeway tapering out towards the northern horizon. This generous volume is covered with a set of three wave inspired roof forms softening the rectilinear geometry of the surrounding program.

Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital Upgrade
(Hames Sharley) The project provides administrative and acute clinical health facilities. A triple glazed elevation and shade structure ensures generous light and thermal protection to the northern double height reception entrance. Continuously suspended central staff benches surrounded by perimeter clinical suites energises functionality. Carefully detailed, technically resolved and pragmatically considered.

UQ Advanced Engineering Building
(Richard Kirk Architect HASSELL Joint Venture) The project provides teaching, research and laboratory facilities either side of a five-storey timber clad, elongated central atrium with a double glazed roof. The axis terminates in an expressive timber trussed off form concrete lecture theatre back dropped by the lake setting. Thoroughly considered and exquisitely detailed.

UQ Dayboro Vet
(Owen and Vokes and Peters) The project provides veterinary facilities in an agrarian context. Aesthetically derived from the vernacular domestic typology the intimate plan defines circulations around core functions. Articulated staff settings enable one to enjoy prospects into the landscape. Materials are carefully detailed and sensitivity to the comfort of the inhabitants prevails

St Peter’s Lutheran College Performing Arts Centre
(Phillips Smith Conwell Architects) The project provides sound attenuated teaching, rehearsal and performance facilities perpendicular to the main axis of the school campus. Covered external seating provides an informal setting for students and entry into the carefully detailed, plywood lined, central concert hall. Robust materials complete the envelope in a lyrical way.

Dakabin Animal Shelter
(Brand + Slater Architects) The project provides veterinary and animal refuge facilities. The industrial frame with a thoughtfully considered envelope houses complex functions and challenging requirements. The rib like steel structure is revealed to mark the main entry and the beginning of a pragmatic yet thoroughly worked plan and robust material selection.

Samford Valley Steiner School Science Building
(pentArchi) The project provides science and teaching facilities in accordance with the holistic principles of Rudolph Steiner. Internally, expressed recycled hardwood columns taper to receive steel struts supporting laminated hardwood beams. The splayed volumes enable an inspirational setting for learning, reflecting the values inherent to head, heart and hand.

Mt Maria College Mitchelton Senior Precinct & Hospitality Building
(Fulton Trotter Architects) The project provides teaching, learning and hospitality facilities. Circulation across three stories ties into the central walkway that unites the adjacent buildings and establishes opportunities for the greater campus. Innovative pedagogical planning enables flexibility. Material selections reference the existing heritage building and caps the end with playful expression.

Centre for Advanced Imaging
(John Wardle Architects + Wilson Architects Architects in Association) The project provides teaching, research and laboratory facilities on a site with difficult access constraints. The impressive southern elevation consists of carefully scaled vertical concrete blades providing complete sun protection to the double glazed curtain wall. This allows internal views out through the eucalypts towards the cricket oval.

Southern Queensland Centre of Excellence in Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care
(Hames Sharley) The project provides administrative, research and clinical health facilities. Staff breakouts to the west overlook a mature gully, to the east a double height reception opens to an outdoor waiting area and garden. The northern perimeter anticipates a second stage of works. Materials are robust and value engineered.

UQ Michie Building Extention
(Wilson Architects) The Michie Building exemplifies how the resolution of a critical corner site contributes both to the inside of the Great Court and the outside perimeter and relationships between adjacent buildings. A delightful garden space and stepped court are enabled and enriched by the carefully scaled detailing of the southern and western elevations. An excellent example of a building that does not sit in isolation but determines and enriches the settings of its larger campus context as a whole.

 

Residential Architecture – Houses (Alterations & Additions)

Indooroopilly Residence
(Kieron Gait Architects) The introduction of this carefully planned, light filled two-storey addition, with refined detailing that celebrates the structural integrity and pallet of selected materials, has afforded a relaxed sense of connection, visual and physical, from within the house to the generous private garden and borrowed landscape beyond

West End Tower
(Owen and Vokes and Peters) This is a sophisticated, considered and poetic piece of architecture, reflective of a deep understanding of the vernacular style from which it manifests. The house engages the senses through a range of exquisite but surprisingly modest spaces, all beautifully detailed in a palette of textural materials

hill end house
(bud brannigan architects) Significantly impacted by the 2011 floods whilst nearing initial construction completion, the final built outcome has successfully responded to the pragmatic requirement of enduring future flood events with a well-considered and elegantly detailed light weight solution reminiscent of the ‘Queenslander’ vernacular.

Ellena
(Base Architecture) Retaining the streetscape character, the house reveals itself from a centrally located breezeway entry with the living spaces contained within a contemporary pavilion opening directly onto a generous north facing lawn and the bedroom spaces carefully planned into the framework of the original dwelling.

Rose
(Base Architecture) A three-bedroom workers cottage has been raised and transformed into a liveable family house. The upstairs covered outdoor deck links directly with the children’s upstairs rumpus and bedrooms, and also connects with the downstairs outdoor dining area. Both spaces skilfully address the street corner.

Moreton Street Residence
(Blueprint Architects) The outdoor seating and fireplace area create the perfect node and meeting place between the existing and new building. The modern and no-fuss new extension is complimented with a well detailed kitchen and display walls for artworks, linking directly to the outside.

In-Between Room
(Phorm Architecture+Design) The introduction of an elegantly folded canopy, sleeved between the existing roof lines of the residence and pavilion, has successfully transformed the negative space between these structures into a flexible living space central to family activities whilst remaining adaptive to climatic conditions.

Highgate Hill House
(Twofold Studio & Cox Rayner Architects) A sublime piece of architecture, expressed through intricate detailing that is seamlessly engaged with an ironically humble brief. A visceral experience of occupation is manifest through a series of spatially modest but poetically executed rooms. A bespoke, controlled garden and sequence of outdoor living zones complete the project.

Additions & Alterations to 16 Drake Street
(Tim Bennetton Architects) The bamboo fenced, high fabric roofed treed courtyard creates a private, relaxing, landscaped node for the entire house, especially the ground-floor kitchen and living areas. The upstairs bedrooms also takes advantage of this volume while directly relating to the treed backyard.

Bulimba Residence
(Tim Bennetton Architects) A beautifully detailed extension that responds well to client brief and shows respect to its heritage origin. A clever abstraction of the section affects a poetic play of light and volume within the space and offers a contemporary, extroverted alternative to the compartmentalised plan of the cottage.

ALT 2_ Triscott Residence
(Geoffrey Cook Architect) A light filled voluminous living / bedroom extension now connects the house directly with the Brisbane River. Refined, skilful and clean detailing helps create this modern and impressive extension. A soft white palette allows the owners to decorate freely with colours and furnishings.

Point Lookout Beach Shack
(Practice Name: Marc&Co Architects) This is a gorgeously unpretentious but intimate outcome, reflective of a deep understanding of the potential of beachside living. A seemingly eclectic but equally poetic sequence of spaces have been carefully curated to function as a whole, all wonderfully detailed in the classic ‘Straddie Shack’ vernacular.

Hallway House
(Paul Butterworth Architect) With minimal intervention to the original form and character of this Queenslander, internal planning is successfully reconsidered to afford generous living spaces which extend through the core of the dwelling, the light filled kitchen carefully sleeved into the existing closed-in verandah linking to a casual ‘breezeway’ sitting area.

 

Residential Architecture – Houses (New)

 Bulimba River House
(Aquatonic) The concept of a boat house on the Brisbane River creates this theme. The timber is well detailed, lighting is creative and the two-storey volume is uplifting. The large sliding door, louvres and outdoor pool aspect makes for a very liveable house.

Longsight
(Base Architecture) A textbook example of an architect delivering a tasteful, sensitive and site-specific modern family home on a lean budget. The clean forms and volumes resonate at the kitchen, dining and family spaces which connect to the outdoor covered area taking full advantage of the views.

Oxlade Drive House
(James Russell Architect) An intelligent, appropriate reinterpretation of the possibilities innercity living. A robust and unexpected series of devices and palette of materials engage the senses and heighten the connection between the inside and out. A provocative, poetic but practical outcome, testament to James’s discourse of living in the sub-tropics.

Coopers Camp
(Base Architecture) A clever solution to a complex site has resulted in a light filled sequence of spaces that engage with northerly district views. An intelligent arrangement of spaces creates a warm and practical living area for year round enjoyment. A challenging brief has been well thought through and executed.

Courtyard Residence
(Blueprint Architects) An understated and refined building form which reveals itself as a generous, well proportioned family residence planned as a series of pavilions linked by courtyard space, the architectural resolve is elegantly detailed with a constrained pallet of materials allowing the landscape to be the focus throughout the journey.

 

Residential Architecture – Multiple Housing

 Circa One
(Arkhefield) Circa One is part of a TOD based on time-proven urban design principles of activated street edges and high-density residential units above. A robust building showing the practice’s experience in dealing with financial and contextual restraints, it reflects the current conditions in the developer-led residential real estate market.

Southern Cross Care Duhig Village
(ABM Architects) Located in a post-war suburb, this project attempts to set a new precedent in aged care accommodation. The large building form is successfully broken down in scale with building recesses, screens and large overhangs. The internals of the building are of a very high finish and quality that has been carefully considered in providing for the aged community.

Bonney Lane Affordable Housing
(Cox Rayner Architects) The affordable housing at Bonney Lane presented by Cox Rayner Architects quietly and deftly responds to its context through retained fragments, robust materiality and responsive orientation. The building’s considered and generous spaces are balanced with exceptional user amenity and humility, exhibiting excellence in public housing.

 

Urban Design

Griffith University Nathan Campus Revitalisation
(Cox Rayner Architects) The project provides a coherent sequence of settings that unite a previously dislocated campus denying the inherent opportunities between buildings. A central promenade descends gently from the ring road down to a generous canopy covered plaza. Prolific tree like steel shade structures establish lively places and enjoyable occupation.

 

Small Project Architecture

Princhester Studios
(gall architects/gall&medek architects) The program of the Princhester Studios unfolds itself like a treasure box, revealing ever more elements for which there is logically no space. A delightful urban dwelling and comfortable workspaces house more than ten people showcasing the architect’s ingenuity and his experience on this minimal and dense scale.

Emergency Shelter
(Conrad Gargett Riddel Ancher Mortlock Woolley) ‘Emergency Shelter’ responds to an increasing need for crisis accommodation facilitated by the ‘Emergency Shelter Exhibition’. Interlocking plywood panels assembled (and disassembled) without complex tools creates a space of surprising subtlety and flexibility.

Steele Lecture Theatre – The University of Queensland
(m3architecture) The simple gestures of this project not only strengthened the architecture but also surpassed the client’s expectations. A new visual connection to the Great Court of the university from this space adds another dimension for the user. The project illustrates how careful attention to detail can add value to a very pragmatic brief.

Baroona Road Mixed Use Redevelopment
(Shane Thompson Architects) This corner retail site has been re-activated by a ‘pergola’ structure that contributes masterfully to the street and maintains its commercial viability. The use of exposed timber structure, brickwork and translucent sheeting all add to the texture and tactility of the space. This project is an example of the strength of a small insertion into an urban fabric.

PARC Pavilion
(BVN Donovan Hill) This surprisingly informal entry area to one of the country’s largest practices was conceived as a welcoming gesture after the merger of the original businesses. As a well-functioning events space it presents an insight into the practice’s design philosophy and its experience in modulating space and program.

Studio 217
(Amalie Wright & Richard Buchanan) Studio 217 is an exquisitely crafted jewellery box tucked underneath heritage-listed Craigston. It is simultaneously able to unpack (and re-pack) the requirements of a commercial office, guest accommodation and delightful pastimes effortlessly. Inventive detailing eloquently reinforces rich materiality and historical significance, leaving nothing unconsidered.

Ray White New Farm
(Channon Architects) This bold project provides a new strong identity to the business and attempts to reform the office culture normally associated with real estate environments. A central communal space with a diversity of uses is central to the project’s success and level of informality.

 

Enduring Architecture Prize

Torbreck Apartments
(AH Job and RP Froud) Torbreck Apartments on Highgate Hill, along with Mount Cootha, the Fourex Brewery, and the Suncorp Clock, were a series of locational icons by which the last two generations of Brisbane residents orientated themselves in the City. Brisbane’s first high-rise apartment building, now 55 years old, with its innovative construction techniques, effective passive climate control, acoustic privacy and robust construction materials, offers an enduring model for current apartment design.