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Winners of Australia Architect (AIA) Awards 2014

A surf club and a mental health facility are among the winners of this year's National Architecture Awards in Australia.

The award, given out by the Australian Institute of Architects, says "community-oriented projects" dominated this year's competition.

Here is a selection of images of winning and shortlisted buildings

1-Kerstin Thompson's House at Hanging Rock - built on a steep slope - won the Robin Boyd award in the category for new houses

2-This boatshed and surf life-saving club in Bicheno - the work of Birrelli architects - won the award in the category for Small Project Architecture

3-The Australian Plant Bank - by BVN Donovan Hill - was shortlisted in the category for Public Architecture

4-The winner in the Public Architecture category was The University of Queensland Advanced Engineering Building - a joint venture by Richard Kirk Architects and HASSELL. The building also won in several other categories.

5-The North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club was also shortlisted in the Public Architecture category. The wave-like building is the work of Durbach Block Jaggers in association with Peter Colquhoun

6-The interiors of the Sustainable Industries Education centre in South Australia earned a place on the shortlist for MPH Architects and Architectus

7-Room 11 Studio were shortlisted in the Urban Design category for this riverside community park in Tasmania, known by its acronym, GASP!

Stunning Railway Stations of World

Antwerpen-Centraal
Architects: Louis DelaCenserie, Clement van Bogaert
The station’s main building, one of the world’s most impressive rail “cathedrals”, was built after the completion of the vault and the platforms.
From 1998 to 2007, the station was converted from a terminus into a through station.

ChhatrapatiShivaji Terminus

Architect: Frederik William Stevens

The station’s entrance gate displays sculptures of a lion and a tiger, symbolizing Britain and India respectively.

The building, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, was completed in 1888 to commemorate Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee.

Gare de Liège-Guillemins
Architect: Santiago Calatrava S.A.
Thanks to this high-speed station, Liège is now only 39 minutes from Brussels, approx. 1 hour from Cologne, around 2 hours from Paris and Frankfurt, and approx. 3 hours from London.
The station is one of the busiest in Belgium as it is used by around 15,000 people every day

Gare de Strasbourg
Architect: Johann Eduard Jacobsthal, Jean Duthilleul
The huge glass roof covering the façade of the historical building was added in 2007 as part of the station’s refurbishment.
The Gare de Strasbourg is the second-largest train station in France

Gare do Oriente
Architect: Santiago Calatrava S.A.
The building was constructed in 1998 as a transportation hub for the Lisbon World Exhibition.
With approx. 75 million passengers per year, it is one of Portugal’s busiest stations.

Grand Central Terminal
Architect: Warren & Wetmore
Grand Central is a "terminal", not a station, because trains terminate there, mainly on stub-end tracks.
In 1968, the Penn Central Corporation proposed an office tower to be built over the building. There was little hope that the building could be saved until Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis stood in front of the building and urged the preservation of the historic site

HundertwasserBahnhof
Architect: Hubert Stier, FriedensreichHundertwasser
The original station building from 1887 was refurbished for the World Exposition from 1998 to 2000 by FriedensreichHundertwasser.
The station was one of Hundertwasser’s last projects as he died in 2000.

King’s Cross Railway Station
Architects: Lewis Cubitt, William Cubitt, John McAslan + Partners
King’s Cross Railway Station was built as the London hub of the Great Northern Railway and is the terminus of the East Coast main line.
The building has an important function in Joanne K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” novels: Platform 9 ¾, the starting point of the “Hogwarts Express”, is located in the station and can be accessed through a secret entrance in the brick-wall barrier between platforms 9 and 10.

 Rotterdam Centraal Station
Architects: Sybold of Ravesteyn, BenthemCrouwel, Meyer en Van SchootenArchitecten, West 8 Landscape Architects BV
The building was officially reopened on 13 March, 2014 by King Willem-Alexander.
The station sees about 110,000 passengers per day, and offers 750 car parking places as well as 5,200 bicycle parking spaces.

 Southern Cross Railway Station
Architects: Grimshaw Architects, Daryl Jackson Pty Ltd
The original building was constructed in 1859 and formerly known as Spencer Street Station. A vast redevelopment of the station was completed in 2006, adding a dune-like roof that covers the station’s whole city block.
It is Melbourne's third-busiest railway station with approx. 16.8mn passengers per year.

WTC Transportation Hub
Architect: Santiago Calatrava S.A.
The railway station, which is currently under construction in New York, is due for completion in 2015.
The Hub's roof looks like wings made of glass and steel. They will allow natural light to enter the building.

Green Routine

The construction industry is often criticised for neglecting environmental issues in favour of profit.

While the industry as a whole is actively pursuing the building of green building projects, the flip side is that not all companies who are accredited to Green Building Council membership nor all LEED-accredited professionals follow or encourage others to follow eco-friendly practices in their day-to-day tasks.

If we do not collectively change our thinking and how we operate, critics of the sector’s overall environmental performance may be proved right.

With World Expo 2020 and the FIFA 2022 World Cup on the horizon, and as the GCC construction industry prepares for another construction extravaganza, there could not be a better time for all stakeholders to start seriously practicing sustainability in everything that they do.

One such issue is heavy usage of paper in the construction industry.

It’s a fact that tonnes of paper and several thousands of printer cartridges  are being used by all stakeholders for communicating by means of circulating  multiple hard copies of drawings, reports, submittals, schedules, manuals,  purchase orders, invoices, delivery notes, timesheets, letters and faxes, without realising the adverse effect we leave on the environment.

Due to this uncontrolled use of paper, paper mills produce tonnes of extra supplies. However, such paper production and usage takes a toll on the beautiful planet we live in.

Paper is the third-largest industrial polluter of air, water and land, releasing well over 100m kg of toxic pollutants each year.

The worldwide pulp and paper industry is the fifth-largest consumer of electrical energy.

The paper industry also consumes more water in production per ton of product than any other industry. In addition, the carbon dioxide emitted during paper production is a greenhouse gas responsible for acid rain.

And wastewater from paper mills contains solids that affect ecological characteristics and results in the death of several living organisms in water.

Discarded paper is another significant issue. Even in recycling processes, sludge produced during de-inking is a major source of pollution.

We in the construction industry have a collective responsibility and should set an example for other industries to follow. This includes reducing or eliminating paper usage by going digital by means of electronic transmittal, communication, storage and data management.

Such an approach gives better control over projects and identifies potential issues early as electronic documents allow a company to capture cost and information on a real-time basis.

Also, it is a more secure way of doing business against loss of information and other fire-associated risks. Staffing and overheads also reduce considerably and the speed and efficiency of communications, document filing and retrieval all increase.

By digitising paper-based documents, the industry will gain from a multitude of benefits that not only help to create a better planet to live in but also increase our efficiency and create a healthier bottom line for business.

Reference:

http://www.constructionweekonline.com/

by CW Guest Columnist on Jan 5, 2014

Hidden Drainage System Revealed in Bath

Modern Engineering: Historic Setting

Beneath the pedestrian areas of modern day Bath lies an example of clever engineering not actually invented until fairly recently. Ingenious as the Romans were, it fell to the specialised engineers at Gatic to come up with a surface water drainage system that was not only highly efficient but practically invisible to the untrained eye.

 Rapid surface water disposal

Gatic Slotdrain shows only as a deceptively discreet, continuous 10mm slot on the surface but underneath, its unique profile means it can rapidly dispose of surface water, whether a trickle or a torrent.

Free 21st Century Software

Slotdrain's straightforward installation process is complemented by our rapid design service and the availability of FREE design software. The concept's flexibility and adaptability mean that bespoke design requirements can be easily accommodated. Even the Romans would have been impressed.

Transparent Concrete

Made of fine concrete embedded with 4% by weight of optical glass fibers

New Architecture in Concrete... ... from translucent blocks and photo-engraved building fronts to revolutionary materials that promise to change the rules of construction as we know them today. We all know that concrete can be concocted to look like many things, but who would have thought that the rock-solid substance could be a substitute for a window? As it turns out, a handful of academic and commercial researchers are not just dreaming of this, they are busy making it happen.