S&T's Wellington design studio has been shortlisted - (amongst some pretty tough competition, we should add!) - for the Interior Awards. There are 18 finalists across six categories, including 15 projects and three emerging design practices. The Design Studio is one of three finalists for the corporate category. 

The award winners will be announced at an Awards and Networking evening, to be held at Imperial Lane, Auckland on 27 June, 2012. For more information, click here. 

- Posted on 11 May, 2012

Drawing upon feedback from over 500 respondents, Masterspec has recently released their National BIM (Building Information Modeling) Survey Report for 2012. The report (which can be downloaded free from their website here) provides an extremely credible picture of the current level of BIM utilisation within the New Zealand building sector and has clearly outlined the future benefit realisation potential for BIM.

One significant opportunity outlined in the report is the adoption of a suitable hosting technology for BIM in New Zealand. This hosting platform would facilitate new ways for managing and facilitating collaborative workflows by secure access to BIM information for all aspects of the building model.

We at S&T are making considerable progress along the BIM Roadmap “Towards Integration” (see the diagram below), particularly through the development of our leading-edge STRATUS BIM Cloud technology, and further aided by the convergence of various BIM industry related cloud offerings. The resulting STRATUS BIM Cloud platform enables S&T to access the 3rd Level of BIM Integration.

Please contact our STRATUS team for further information regarding this exciting BIM-integration technology development.

- Posted 8 May, 2012

S&T recently provided lighting design services for a seven-metre carved waharoa (gateway) located at Victoria University Marae in Wellington. The gateway was carved from tōtara by master carver and VUW alumnus, Dr. Takirirangi Smith, to mark the 25th anniversary of the establishment of Te Herenga Waka Marae.

We were honoured to be involved in this project which transforms the Marae and gives it a more prominent public presence on campus. Before this, the meeting house was hidden down an alleyway behind colonial houses. The gateway now gives the Marae the prominence it deserves and, with its lighting, becomes a beacon for evening and dawn services, improving the functionality of the building.

The Marae is used as a teaching facility and a community-based marae. Taurima (marae manager), Te Ripowai Higgins, says the gateway is “another step in the journey of creating a place on campus where Māori values can be expressed.” 

The gateway was unveiled in a dawn service on December 6, 2011.

Sign up now to reserve your spot at the Australasian Revit Technology Conference (RTC) in Wollongong, NSW Australia from Thursday 24 to Saturday 26 May, 2012.

S&T’s very own Des Pudney will be speaking at the conference about the “Benefits of Deploying a Revit Private Cloud.”

This session will cover the Des’s experience in developing S&T’s Private Revit Cloud, ranging from initial testing through to full production deployment. The majority of session’s content will be drawn from the AECbytes "Building the Future" Article (June 9, 2011). Topics to be covered range from why a Private Revit cloud was deemed necessary, an explanation of the technical challenges that needed to be overcome, Revit Cloud testing, getting management and staff buy‐in to finance and deploy the technology how the solution was deployed to the production environment, the lessons learnt and downstream benefits, and where to from here.

RTC is a unique, independent conference covering all things Revit / BIM and the whole ecosystem that supports it and that goes to ensuring your success in the marketplace.

For more information, please visit the RTC website or contact Des. You can also download the full schedule of speakers here.

- Posted April 18, 2012

An S&T lighting project has made thelong list for the World Architecture News Lighting Awards. The Waka Light, designed for the central space of the First Light House, New Zealand's entry to the US Department of Energy's 2011 Solar Decathlon, is currently featured on their homepage.

Stay tuned for the results!

- Posted April 18, 2011

Last Thursday (5 April) Ferdinand Alexander Porsche passed away at age 76. While not myself a sports car enthusiast, clearly F.A. Porsche was a fabulous creator of driving icons and his death is a big loss to the world of design.

He was born in Stuttgart, Germany, the oldest son of Dorothea and Ferry Porsche.  Ferry Porsche was the son of Ferdinand, creator of the Volkswagen Beetle.  Ferdinand, or F.A. – as he was called by his close colleagues – attended the Waldorf School and hung out in the workshops and construction studios of his father and grandfather.  “I was proud and happy.  I am sure that spending all those hours in the workshops formed a big part of my subconscious,” he said later.  F.A. commenced study at the Ulm School of Design [Hochschule fuer Gestaltung], which was considered the follower of the Bauhaus, but bailed out after the first year.

Instead, he entered the design department at Porsche in 1958. Four years later F.A. became head of his department and developed his own designs for sports cars. His first assignments were to makeover the old model 356 and to come up with a new Formula 1 racing car.

In 1962-63 Porsche launched the F 1 race car 804, the 904 Carrera GTS (still one of the most beautiful super sports cars), and the legendary 911. The latter model has gone through seven generations of evolution but is still clearly rooted in the original 1963 model.

I believe that the 911 has become a classic because its unpretentious design (at least compared to the exuberant Italian Ferraris, Lamborghinis or Maseratis) combined with superior technology met the zeitgeist and proved timeless.  As F.A. Porsche said, “A formally coherent product doesn’t need embellishment.” Otl Aicher, another pre-eminent designer of that time summed up the design of the 911 by saying “She moves even while standing.”

1972 Porsche became a public company and the family members stepped down from management.  Ferdinand Alexander Porsche founded his own studio, Porsche Design, and moved on to design timepieces, eyeware, stationery and other accessories.  

Ferdinand Alexander Porsche’s influence has been greatly extolled.  Perhaps the most meaningful words belong to Wendelin Wiedekind, former head of Porsche, when he simply said “Ferdinand Alexander Porsche designed everything that is important to men.”

- Posted April 10, 2012

I never really understood what Post-Traumatic Shock Disorder was until I began to visit Christchurch a couple of months back.  To arrive as a visitor to this once very proud city is quite a shock on so many levels, but the biggest effects are on the people themselves. It is not just a physical ‘bomb-site’ in places as the feeling of a post war zone has invaded the mental health of the town’s people. 

As you might expect, after having been through so much, there is determination and drive in folk, but there is also a shift in perspectives. Interestingly perhaps, much thinking is driven around issues of safety: personal, family and community.  There is a strong desire to avoid reminders of harm and in many cases to obliterate them from the face of the earth. Rebuilding still appears to be somewhere in the future for many.

The loss of much of the city’s heritage fabric is a sad indictment of current process and shows how a system isn’t prepared can act in the interests of a few. Decisions driven by fear, in this case fear of personal and public safety, are too easily distorted and to me at least, this is part of what has been Christchurch’s heritage death knell.

In a town well known for its outstanding heritage there are very few people who will fight to retain even parts of older buildings. Local architects have been, on the whole, AWOL from any determined discussion.  It is time for fellow professionals to get in and support our Christchurch fellows and help renew their passions for things that last. Quality of our built environment is at stake!

- Posted April 2, 2012

Google reminded me that today, March 27th, 2012, is the 126th birthday of Mies, or, as he named himself Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – congratulations!

I guess the 1,280,000 results of Google ensure that almost everything has been said about him and his masterful architecture of ascetic Modernism. Thus I’d like to share my thoughts about what his architecture means to me.

In Mies Mind Meets Matter

I believe that great artists always create in a manner that at least considers subliminally the frontiers of thinking in other fields as well. When Ludwig Mies van der Rohe developed his emblematic brick country house in 1924 he participated in artistic avant-garde circles such as De Stijl. He also had begun to accomplish his philosophical knowledge after being introduced to this subject by his first client Alois Riehl. The assumption made by historians is that Mies literally took the lines and angles of constructivist paintings, like Theo van Doesburg’s “Rhythm of a Russian Dance” from 1918, and compiled a plan of them. Although that might seem obvious, I think it doesn’t take into account Berlin’s tumultuous intellectual atmosphere in the 1920s, bursting with novelties being discussed everywhere.

Let’s look at the design of the country house more closely. This building type had been established in Berlin by Hermann Muthesius before WW 1 according to the English model with lots of different rooms designed to serve especially the particular demands of their purpose. How different is Mies’ approach; “Not rooms spread out from a secure, defined centre, but a zone of walls emanating into a perpendicular grid independent from any definition of space... Mies doesn’t use the tangible substance of walls as the perimeters of inhabitable space, but uses them to suggest different “fields of interest.”” Wolfgang Pehnt, Architektur. In “Deutsche Kunst der 20er und 30er Jahre”, Hg. Erich Steingraeber. Munich 1979, p 47.

Wolfgang Pehnt describes the superposition of a Cartesian grid by fields of interests, undetermined and only slightly designated by an intensified density of forms. This, to me, is an illustration of how Newtonian determinism was being superceded by the uncertainty of quantum theory.

By the end of 1922 both Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr had received Nobel prizes for their scientific efforts on relativity and quantum mechanics. The theories of relativity had made Einstein a “pop-scientist” who was the subject of public attention and discussion. The developing dispute between Bohr and Einstein about the degree to which Newton’s deterministic classical physics was becoming obsolete occurred between 1922 and 1927, the “Golden Age of Physics”. The dispute was fought in German and discussed in the University of Berlin, “the Stronghold of Physics” as the physicist Werner Heisenberg put it. Mies was living in the context of this debate. Wolfgang Pehnt’s above description of his brick country house reads like one of the quantum atomic models.  According to the Copenhagen interpretation, the atom was not surrounded by electrons on determined orbits, but rather was a “cloud” that only allowed the observer to assume probable particle positions from a “plenitude of possibilities” (Heisenberg). The atom had become a “field of interest”. Einstein disagreed with this theory and refused to deviate from classical physics. He believed that “God doesn’t play dice”.

Whereas the brick country house was merely a design in an early stage, which already displayed a totally new approach to architecture, the German pavilion for the World Fair in Barcelona 1929 established it in a complete building.

The place that Mies had chosen included a passageway from the main area of the exhibition to the “Spanish village” located a short distance away. People had to pass through his pavilion but it blocks their view of the destination. People have to navigate a winding route through the building until they finally can continue their intended passage to the Spanish village.  Again there are differentiated “fields of interest” such as a partly open pool with a travertine wall and a bench to rest on, or a variety of ways through the interior of the pavilion; walking around colourful marble slabs and glass walls, or moving along the introverted reflecting pool with a sculpture. Again there is a “plenitude of possibilities” of how visitors may journey through the bejeweled architectural maze. And again there is the superposition of the Cartesian grid of the columns – even more emphasised by their cruciform section – and the freely arranged partition walls and pools.

In contrast, the other exhibition building entrances were vestibules as outlined by Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand in his Nouveau précis des leçons d’architecture 1813. People would just walk straight though on a central symmetrical axis. Mies breaks free from this restriction allowing for the liberty of movement on a course of probability towards their destination.

When the Japanese couple Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa (SANAA) were invited to create an intervention in the Barcelona pavilion, they added a spiralling maze of blurry acrylic glass that increases the uncertainty aspect of his building even more; they had understood Mies’ message.

I think this aspect of liberation of movement was a central idea behind most of Mies’ work. Looking at his sketch of his last building, the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, we see his pencil wandering around in unleashed uncertainty. Thanks for that, Mies!

- Posted March 27, 2012

A design concept submission for the Civic Square Competition in Hastings has been identified as one of worthy of “merit” according to the evaluation panel.  S&T joined forces with Moorehead and Newdick and Davis Langdon to create a concept for this open square, the largest open space within the Hastings CBD. The intent was to reinvigorate this valued public area and make this a vibrant hub at the heart of the Hastings community with multipurpose internal and external spaces for a range of events and performances. Through this, the designers aimed to represent all the cultures of Hastings and the position of the mana whenua.

The winning concept was designed by Austin Pedlow Architects. All concepts, however, will collectively be the basis for community consultation.  If you’re in the area, they will be exhibited by the Hastings City Art Gallery until 4 May, 2012. Otherwise you can check them out on the Hastings District Council Draft Long-term Plan webpage which will be active from 31 March. 

- Posted 26 Mar, 2012

One year ago a devastating tsunami hit the coast of Japan. Since then, New Zealanders have begun to ask whether this could happen here too. The short answer is: yes, it can.

While most climate-change discussion focuses on reducing greenhouse gases, Stephenson&Turner NZ (S&T) is exploring the potential impact of sea level rise on coastal cities around the world, and Auckland in particular.

We have created a booklet titled  "Adaptive Urbanism" which discusses urban response strategies that - when applied early - can lead to resilient and better living environments for mankind and nature. Click here to download a pdf of the booklet.

Click here to download the full press release.

- Posted Mar. 13, 2012

Urbanized is the latest film documentary of Gary Hustwit, who was the mind behind the films Helvetica and Objectified. His latest work looks at cities as the prevailing, worldwide phenomenon of the 21st century. More than half of humanity lives in cities and Hustwit’s film shows the diversity of what ‘city’ can mean.

He reports from the slums of Mumbai, where hundreds share one toilet; townships in South Africa, where better street lighting reduces the murder-rate by 40%; and – of course – the Chinese mega cities, featuring Yung Ho Chang (whom we met recently at the ‘South and East’ NZIA conference), explaining how life-changing these places are.

The film also considers various ways to overcome the massive problems caused by overcrowded cities. We watch thousands of cyclists commuting in Copenhagen, while Jan Gehl comments (we recently hosted him in Auckland as well). Watching Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia, cycling his 7.5m metropolis on fantastic cycle highways – while alongside him the cars slosh their way through muddy tracks - is a surprising contrast to Auckland.

Gary Hustwit is an American, and naturally emphasises issues facing American cities. He visits Phoenix, Arizona, which sprawls out into the desert; tells us about orchards in the shrunken Detroit, and investigates New York’s High Line, the reconstruction of an abandoned freight railway line as an elevated park, which reinvigorated an entire precinct of the city. 

And at this point I have one criticism of this otherwise great film. Hustwit appears to expect that solutions to problems of rapid metropolitan growth will come from the United States.  Unfortunately America has fallen far behind this pioneering frontier. The finishing scene, an evening shot of an American CPD with a commuter train passing by, for me is more reminiscent of the beginning of last century than a meaningful catalyst of the future. Cities of the future will bypass the need to commute by enabling high speed data transfer to allow for a space-irrelevant exchange of ideas, services or work.

Envisaging the urban future as a smart fabric made of adaptive information patterns is something that is currently taking shape in East Asia, whilst America seeks recovery in the picturesque, idyllic world of New Urbanism that aims for reanimation of the early 20th century beautiful, clean European city. 

However, the film is worth seeing as it tells the ongoing story of the rise, decline, and re-invention of the city as the stage of our cultural expression. Man is an urban creature.  The city has coined our civilisation; it brings us challenges in one hand, but it will offer solutions in the other.  The city is our fate: we’re Urbanized.

Watch the trailer.

- Posted March 12, 2012

As a well established secondary school, Hutt Valley High takes pride in its campus and facilities.  The school was keen to upgrade its largest and oldest classroom block, B Block, transforming the space into flexible and inspirational 21st Century learning environments, as well as ensuring the buildings aligned with current seismic and accessibility standards.

B Block was constructed in stages from c.1940 to c.1970, which were identified as requiring a significant seismic and accessibility upgrade.   After being awarded the project in March 2011, S&T worked with structural engineers to conduct a number of on-site investigations establishing what was required to bring the buildings up to code and Ministry of Education standards.  At the same time we met with the school management to determine how they wanted to improve the look and feel of the classrooms.

The design includes seismic strengthening by way of steel portal frames and the addition of bracing elements to existing walls and ceilings.  Access between the two wings was improved with new external doors at ground floor level and a circulation hub on the first floor.  An additional lift will also be installed.  The replacement of solid walls with glazed sliding doors and partitions between classrooms and in staff areas will give a lighter, communal feel and give more versatility to how spaces are used.  Staff offices and the resource room are also to be rearranged, opening up these areas to provide meeting spaces, kitchenettes, and better storage capacity.  Finally, new finishes in selected parts of the building will freshen the interior design, consistent with newer classroom blocks.

The tight budget and timeframe of this project has led to careful staging of work.  Construction is due to be completed in May 2012.

We at Stephenson&Turner would like to congratulate Wang Shu, founder of Amateur Architecture Studio and this year’s recipient of the world’s most prestigious architecture award, the Pritzker Prize.

Wang Shu’s work is an impressive fusion of traditional and contemporary Chinese architecture that stands out even among the other first class architecture emerging from this country.  We recently posted an article on this subject and are delighted to see the Pritzker Foundation acknowledging the legacy of Chinese traditional architecture.

- Posted Feb. 28, 2012

Last night Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman (NSM) opened his show at the Saatchi & Saatchi Gallery in Parnell. This solo exhibition is part of the ‘Upside Down Tour’ travelling Australia and New Zealand and will be open until 1 March.

Niels’ graffiti name ‘Shoe’ comes from early tags in his hometown Amsterdam, where he marked walls with the outline of a shoe.  As the pictograms were illegible he added ‘Shoe’ and his artistic identity was born. Later he became a professional Advertising Designer in Holland, alongside his nocturnal bombings.  His current design company, ‘Unruly’, says a lot about Shoe’s particular angle.  He combines classical script with graffiti, and that’s what we see in the show.

In the brief conversation I had with the artist he stressed that the tension between the ancient, controlled regularity of Gothic Blackletter and the joyous carelessness and spontaneity of graffiti is the core of Calligraffitti. I immediately thought of commercial architecture, which too often suffers from endless repetition of the ever-same cheap, pre-fabricated elements.  Isn’t it invigorating when a surprisingly ‘irrational’ edge finishes an otherwise mundane building?  Art loves to play with layers and paraphrases, ornamental, ironic or just entertaining, and imbue them with powerful new meaning. Bach’s fugues, jazz, or hip-hop wouldn’t exist without bringing fresh ideas and ingredients into the mix. Just as Shoe’s Calligraffitti might not happen without a Heineken in his free hand...

The centrepiece of NSMs exhibition was when he bombed a white wall in the gallery with audacious brushstrokes made with a broom. Knowing that it’s his ‘Upside Down Tour’, I flipped the tag to read:”Unruly”. This was the Meulman, the advertising designer. What I liked about this huge piece is that on closer inspection it reveals dozens more pictures, like images of the quantum world from a particle accelerator.

Check out NSM’s show at Saatchi & Saatchi’s, level 3, 123-125 The Strand, Parnell until 23 March 2012.

Stephenson&Turner will come back to graffiti and calligraphy later when we disclose our design for the Auckland Court Tribunal Centre; stay tuned.

For further information: NSM's website and the movies about him at home in Amsterdam or hitting Australia. Also don't forget to watch the video of his live painting.

- Posted 10 February, 2012

A brief look at the recent architecture of Latin America shows an amazing burst of creativity. A short while ago most of this continent was in a chokehold of authoritarian regimes or drug lords, which put all sorts of restraints on progress.  I believe that the universe continually expands to bigger and greater things, and in the same way mankind’s achievements become more and more outstanding.  Sometimes, however, this momentum is impeded for a time, and pressure builds up much like a natural river blocked by sediment and debris.  When the tension finally blows the dam, its energy is released in an overpowering deluge.

We see this playing out in history.  After their release from the tyranny of Nazism, the creativity of German architects was unleashed, pushing far beyond the orthodoxies of canonical pre-war Modernism.  Stamps issued in 1997 to commemorate great post-war architecture showcase pieces such as the Berlin Philharmonic, where Hans Scharoun assembled the audience around the orchestra; Gottfried Böhm's pilgrimage church in Neviges that took architecture of sacred places to a new level; Berlin’s New National Gallery, which marked Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's accomplishment in fusing Modernism with Classicism, and finally, Frei Otto's German pavilion at the Expo 1967 in Montreal, Canada, which demonstrated his attempt to adapt architectural structures to natural principles, thereby providing a dress-rehearsal for the Olympic roof structure in Munich 1972.

Something similar happened after Portugal and Spain overcame their authoritarian regimes in the mid 1970s. An overwhelming rise of creativity reinvigorated European architecture and urbanism, previously in an advanced state of decay. I remember being enthused by the fresh vigour emanating from buildings of Rafael Moneo, Alvaro Siza, and Alberto Souto de Moura.  For me there were two epiphanies in these countries’ history of architectural development; first, the re-emergence of Barcelona in the 1990s with its multitude of urban renewal projects at all scales, crisply architectural, and secondly the School of Porto.  Both hotspots displayed a locally-based, contemporary rationalism, unspoiled by the failure of Modernism in northern Europe.

And now we see the same liberation in Latin America, which in the process of breaking free from the dictatorships of sinister military governments and the captivity of drug barons. Instead we see adventurous new architecture evolving, inviting people to engage in the rebirth of civic life. We can see the young generation challenging the heavily-compromised status quo, as Chile students are currently demonstrating (more information here).  What I find most impressive is how the public spaces are leading the way to a new concept of society.  We find these zones of public expression either in the context of urban renewal or within educational and recreational complexes.

The city of Medellín, Colombia, once had the world’s highest crime rates.  Since the death of the drug lord Pablo Escobar and the disarmament of urban militias, public life is recovering.  The Hispanic love affair with the communal stroll, formerly expressed by Barcelona’s Las Ramblas in the 19th century, now re-emerges in places such as the Orquidearum of Medellín (JPRCR Arquitectos/plan:b arquitectura)  The Sports Coliseum for the IV South American games in the same city (Mazzanti Arquitectos/Plan:b arquitectura), creates a playful interpretation of the surrounding hilly landscape with its monumental roof trusses.

Carefully crafted volumes made of cheap materials contribute to an attentively scaled, humane social infrastructure even in poorer areas like Las Mercedes School also in Medellín (Juan Manuel Peláez-Friedel). A major aspect of the works seems to be the human scale.  On the occasions when buildings become part of a community identity, they can have monumental shapes, recognisable from afar; we see this in the España Library (Mazzanti Arquitectos) that towers above a shanty town.  These examples remind us that architectural interventions can be powerful tools to evoke civic pride.

I have rarely seen such respect for the landscape than shown in the recent architecture of Latin America.  The Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez Graduate Centre (Jose Cruz Ovalle) in Peñalolén, Chile, breaks the bulk of the building up into almost fluidly wound, superimposed ‘streams’, recalling the eroded Andes around it.  The Museum of Fine Arts in Cordoba, Argentina, (GGMPU Architects) displays a refined ‘dance’ with the trees and open spaces of an urban park.  On a small scale the Cururo house (Teresa Moller Asociados/FG Arquitectos) in Huentelauquén, Chile, is a perfect example of how to incorporate a spacious house into a pristine landscape.  In this case the collaboration of Landscape Architect (Moller) and FG Architects paid off in a building that is as archaic as it is contemporary; an intrinsic part of the land. The house was made to disappear, buried into a windswept plateau facing the Pacific coast.  If only this sensitivity to nature was the prevailing approach here in our own beautiful country!

In Mexico, the influence of the pre-Columbian legacy is apparent, for example in the Museum of Contemporary Art (Teodoro González de Leon) and Alberto Kalach’s Jose Vasconcelos Library (both buildings in Mexico City), with reference to bold  geometric shapes of ancient simplicity.  The School of Plastic Arts in Oaxaca (Rocha, Carrillo, Facio, Carrillo) has walls made of solid concrete cubes sourced from local aggregate, producing texture and colour that echo its setting.

Brazilian architecture is indebted to the legacy of Modernism and the hegemony of the old masters Paulo Mendes de Rocha and Oscar Niemeyer; the latter dominated the country's architecture since the 1930s. However, the evolving young talents build on the legacy by incorporating ecological aspects into their buildings.  Layered facades blur the boundaries between buildings and environment. The use of natural materials – often recycled – enrich the tactility of the buildings.

Interestingly the adventurous freshness of South American creativity has made an impression online as well. The blogs 'plataforma urbana' and 'plataforma arquitectura', founded by the Chilean architects David Basulto and David Assael, broke the mould by replacing well-established curators with engaged architectural geeks.  It became the most popular architecture website in the Spanish speaking world within two years. They repeated their success with New York based blog ‘ArchDaily’ on a global scale. These examples emphasise the potential in handing tools to young people instead of forcing them into obsolete approaches.

I'm fascinated by the new life in Latin America. I can see a powerful stream of creativity breaking free from meaningless concepts of bygone times.  The culture has been given new life, expression, and expansion.  This is a picture of hope; that even the grim, stifling power of dictatorships are doomed to finally surrender to man’s inherent, unstoppable creativity.

For further reading: Harvard Design Magazine 34 'Architectures of Latin America 2011'

Images taken from: Harvard Design Magazine 34; AV Monografias 138 ‘Latin America 2010’; AV Proyectos 001 2004; Martorell, Bohigas, Mackey, Puigdomenech, Barcelona 1992 The Olympic Village, Gustavo Gili, Barcelona 1991; Stamps from Deutsche Bundespost 1997

Over the past six months we've been dabbling in some in-house video production. We're working up a bit of a collection. Visit our Vimeo site to see them!

Topics include:

• "What drives us?" - Principal Bernd Gundermann discusses about our core strengths as a firm including BIM Cloud Technology (3 videos)

• S&T Lighting - Principal Glen Wright talks about what's new in the world of lighting technology and how we use it to create inspirational environments. 

• Sea Level Rise - the challenges facing every coastal community over the next 100 years will be significant - see some Auckland University masters students' solutions for Auckland

• Our award-winning opening ceremony speeches from some prominent guests 

• Michael Warwick describes his trip to the US Solar Decathlon and about the First Light team (for which S&T were sponsors)

• Our work on the Paihia Waterfront Master Plan was a hugely successful, collaborative project

Arch Daily, the world's most visited architecture website, has recently featured two S&T projects. Click on the links below to see the articles

Harbour View

Biosciences Centre Extension at the University of Auckland

- Posted on Feb. 2, 2012

AECCafe.com, the number one web portal for the architectural, engineering and construction market, has just featured a story on S&T's Wellington Design Studio.

Check it out here.

- Posted on Jan. 27, 2012

About 200 years ago Rossini’s comic opera “The Barber of Seville” entered the stage.  It looks like the city is now producing its own urban drama, centring around the controversial design of a skyscraper.

Seville is a classic Spanish city with a labyrinthine urban tissue made up of castle-like houses with cosy patios, plazas and numerous churches.  The whole is dominated by the cathedral, which had been a mosque before the 13th century when Andalusia was Christianised.  A look at the city council’s website makes it clear that they are comfortable with embracing contemporary architecture alongside the historical legacy; for example Jürgen Mayer H’s amazing Metropol Parasol (see the post on ArchDaily here). 30 years ago Pritzker laureate Rafael Moneo sensitively, subtly integrated an office building into the historic context.  Clearly Seville can achieve bold, yet well-resolved architectural statements in harmony with the city.   However, Cesar Pelli’s latest creation manifests what happens when an urban gem like Seville allows the financial industry to dominate its appearance, artfully crafted over centuries, by a banal monstrosity.

Commissioned by Cajasol (a savings bank), Pelli is building a high rise office tower of 180.5 m height, twice as tall as the apex of the city’s historic landmark Giralda, the gothic cathedral. The architect won a competition in 2006 to construct the tower, which at the moment is half way up. The trouble is that the central part of the old town district of Seville is protected as World Heritage by the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) and they have warned that the city will lose its status of World Heritage, if they allow the Pelli tower to continue to plan. The report, prepared by the Icomos group (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and presented last Thursday (19 Jan 2012), states that the skyscraper  "certainly has a excessive negative impact" in the "buffer" of 187 acres surrounding the protected core area of 12 hectares, which includes the Cathedral, Alcazar and the Indian archives.

Ironically, looking at the current state of Spain’s economy, it’s quite possible that Cajasol might welcome a bailout of this EUR 353m investment. We’ll know more after the next UNESCO conference in May.

In Rossini’s opera Rosina finally got married to the Count as his rival stepped aside, consoled with a handsome payout. I hope that a similarly diplomatic solution will be found in Seville as well - its own comic opera in urban development.

For further interest:

UNESCO Docs

The projects of the new financial centre of Seville

Posted 25 Januar 2012

Just before the break I received the latest issue of the Spanish magazine Arquitectura&Viva (A&V), which exclusively dealt with Chinese architecture executed by Chinese architects. We’re all used to see the prolific works of the “starchitects”, creating icons of contemporary architecture. The 2008 Olympic Games were an exhibition of the latest craze in style and magnitude. Renderings of various projects for Ordos 100 in Inner Mongolia, another example, are widely publicised.  A&V shows a view of the model with all the little icons thrown at the poor landscape; it looks like a railway accident, which demonstrates an obsession with individualism lacking any archetypal common sense.

So it was quite a revelation for me to realise that a home-grown generation of Chinese colleagues has – in my opinion – quietly developed a Chinese architecture deeply rooted in local context and tradition. The magazine features twelve projects located all over the country.

Amateur Architecture Studio, founded 1998 by Wang Shu and Lu Wenyu in Hangzhou (150km west of Shanghai), is presented in the magazine with their Xiangshan campus. I think their choice of materials and the sensitive integration of the fairly large buildings is masterful. Even such mundane detail as egress routes are matched to the serene shape of the roofs. Did we forget the design potential of a roof shape because we succumbed to the modernist banality of the flat roof? After their grunty Ningbo Historical Museum from 2005 the campus shows the architects being attentive and bold at the same time.

Lei Tao Architect built this house for a prolific artist in the northeast Chinese town of Benxi. It’s composed of buildings that are intricately interwoven and comprise three courtyards; a re-interpretation of a traditional theme in Chinese architecture.

Shanghai-based Neri&Hu Design and Research Office, founded in 2004, shows The Waterhouse at South Bund Hotel, a cool conversion of an old colonial building into a boutique hotel, which creates a tension between old and new by choice and treatment of the material.

StandardArchitecture&Zhao Yang Studio present their Niyang River visitor Centre in Daze (Tibet); a tiny structure built of local stone which blends it into its surrounding perfectly. The expressive openings of the distorted, soft-edged pavilion are contrasted with bold colours, rendering the building cheerful and contemporary despite its ancient stone walls.

Urbanus’ circular apartment building in Guangzhou is derived from the traditional Tulou houses. Whereas they were supposed to protect the inhabitants from bandits, this modern version creates a quiet, introverted environment, set apart from the urban chaos around. The Kahn-like, precise geometry organises tightly balanced spaces for social interaction.  

The community centre, which was created by Zhang Lei & AZL Architects in Yangzhou, comprises an assembly of small gabled ‘houses’. For me this project demonstrates that the aim for comprehensiveness within a collective form is possible in contemporary Chinese architecture. We can hope there won’t be too many Ordos in future.

My impression from reading this magazine was that China might soon dismiss the western model of architecture because they won’t need it anymore. In the shadow of the iconic mega-projects of the last decades, such as OMA’s CCTV headquarters, emerging talents may change the basis of Chinese architecture. Many Chinese architects have been educated in the best western universities, so they are familiar with the western model, but at the same time are aware of the rich tradition of their country and are starting to fuse both into an evolving, fascinating, next-generation Chinese architecture.

All images from Arquitectura&Viva #150, Made in China, Madrid 2011

- Posted Jan. 23, 2012