News & Discussion: Adelaide Architects & Developers

All other development discussion.
Message
Author
User avatar
Ho Really
Super Size Scraper Poster!
Posts: 2670
Joined: Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:29 pm
Location: In your head

Re: #Article: Young architect's vision

#16 Post by Ho Really » Mon Aug 13, 2007 2:47 pm

I agree with you guys, moving AAMI Stadium to Cheltenham would be a waste of money. If it has to be moved then it should go to a centrally located position. Major sports and other entertainment arenas need to be centralised and close to public transport. The same with hospitals, cultural and tourist precincts.

Keswick barracks and the Royal Adelaide Showgrounds are two interesting sites. They could be easily combined over the railway lines. What do you guys think should go there? I think this is a sleeping giant. What I want to see is that damn Keswick Interstate Terminal (cum suburban station) thriving with people and traffic. If only we had that underground rail loop down King William Street come out either at Goodwood or Keswick. I just love Adelaide, it has so much potential. Thoughts.

Cheers
Confucius say: Dumb man climb tree to get cherry, wise man spread limbs.

urban
Legendary Member!
Posts: 607
Joined: Thu Apr 12, 2007 10:59 am
Location: City of Unley

Re: #Article: Young architect's vision

#17 Post by urban » Tue Aug 14, 2007 11:16 am

The former industrial areas around Keswick would seem to be a logical place for sporting arenas.

I also like the idea of building across the rail tracks between the barracks & showgrounds.

While I would love the interstate train terminal to go back to Adelaide station I can't see it happening. Therefore I think we really need to boost the activity around the current station so that passengers don't feel like they have been dumped in the middle of nowhere.

crawf
Donating Member
Donating Member
Posts: 5518
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 7:49 pm
Location: Adelaide

Re: #Article: Young architect's vision

#18 Post by crawf » Thu Aug 16, 2007 2:37 am

The Adelaide Corporate Park is going to help that

The Keswick area is going to be very different in a few years...

Ben
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 7475
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:46 am
Location: Adelaide

Re: Links to development websites

#19 Post by Ben » Fri Oct 05, 2007 11:45 am

Updated

User avatar
omada
Donating Member
Donating Member
Posts: 686
Joined: Mon Jul 16, 2007 10:03 am
Location: Eden Hills

Re: Links to development websites

#20 Post by omada » Fri Oct 05, 2007 12:45 pm

i just looked on the aurora website,

a link to the sensational-adelaide site appears under "latest news".. we appear along side such luminaries as news.com :D

User avatar
Xaragmata
Super Size Scraper Poster!
Posts: 1613
Joined: Thu Jul 19, 2007 2:08 pm
Location: Adelaide / West
Contact:

Re: Links to development websites

#21 Post by Xaragmata » Fri Oct 05, 2007 3:17 pm

http://odx.bhpbilliton.com/
Olympic Dam Expansion (ODX)

User avatar
metalMONSTER
Sen-Rookie-Sational
Posts: 25
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:24 pm
Location: Western

Re: Links to development websites

#22 Post by metalMONSTER » Fri Oct 05, 2007 4:11 pm

Some of the details should be updated such as:
beamer85 wrote: http://www.babcockbrown.com.au

Development and architecture firm. Projects include Conservatory on Hindmarsh.
They are actually an investment firm & advisory firm, they usually get involved in PPP projects

beamer85 wrote:http://www.wallbridgeandgilbert.com.au

Website for the above achitecture firm. Responsible for the Wakefield st towers.
They are actually engineers, not architects

User avatar
Howie
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 4871
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2005 3:55 pm
Location: Adelaide
Contact:

Re: Links to development websites

#23 Post by Howie » Fri Oct 05, 2007 5:01 pm

Hope you don't mind beamer, but i've reorganised your initial threads into categories.

Ben
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 7475
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 11:46 am
Location: Adelaide

Re: Links to development websites

#24 Post by Ben » Mon Oct 08, 2007 3:07 pm

Great Idea. Thanks Howie!

User avatar
Howie
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 4871
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2005 3:55 pm
Location: Adelaide
Contact:

#Article: Focus on Our Architects (Hassell,Wdhead,Wdbagots)

#25 Post by Howie » Sat Oct 13, 2007 9:59 am

Excellent article by the Advertiser ...
Adelaide's big three
Article from: The Advertiser
DEBORAH BOGLE

October 12, 2007 11:50pm


Image
Adelaide architects Mariano De Duonni (l) and David Hassell outside the Federal Courts building. Picture: GRANT NOWELL.

FROM solid foundations designing most of our major buildings, three Adelaide architecture firms have burst on to the global stage, changing the face of cities from Shanghai to London.
WALK down the main boulevards of Adelaide's square mile and you'll see them everywhere: the landmarks that define the built environment of the city. Most are the work of three architecture firms which, between them, have designed almost all of the significant public and private buildings in Adelaide since the 1870s.

From Parliament House to the GPO, the Festival Centre and the new generation of commercial buildings now transforming the city centre, Woods Bagot, Hassell and Woodhead have had a profound influence on the shape of the city.

All were founded in Adelaide and have long histories here – Woods Bagot goes back to 1869, Hassell to 1938 and Woodhead celebrated its 80th birthday last month.

They have weathered world wars, the Depression, recessions and fallen in and out of favour with governments to achieve success that would surely be beyond the grandest dreams of their founding partners.

Each of them has gone on to establish a national and international presence, pushing into Asia, the Middle East and Europe.

From airports in India and Hong Kong, to whole city precincts in the Middle East, huge public complexes in China, to Trafalgar Square in London, they are now making their mark abroad. All three cite the specific circumstances of the Adelaide market as the driving force behind their expansion.

While the big fish on the eastern seaboard never swam west, finding enough to sustain themselves in their own market, Adelaide proved too small a pond for "the big three".

David Gilbert is a principal at Woodhead, now based in Adelaide after a four-year stint in China. "We think it's a bit unique and a bit special that three firms from Adelaide have expanded and probably become the dominant firms in Australia and, to a greater or lesser extent, overseas," he says.

It's no coincidence that three such dominant firms all originated here.

"Adelaide is a small market, and it's always been a tough market," he says.

To survive required the kinds of astute business skills capable of driving expansion.

"You've got to expand to maintain a vibrant business and provide opportunities for your staff. In the Adelaide market, you just can't do that," says Gilbert.

"And then you find that the Australian market isn't big enough. There are only 20 million here, and a certain amount of economic development. Shanghai has got 20 million people in just one city."

Woods Bagot director Andrew Ford agrees that expansion is the only way to survive the economic peaks and troughs that can wreak havoc in small markets.

"There's a pattern," says Ford. "You spend three or four years building expertise and training people while the work's there and then the economy falls and you spend the next two years downsizing. Growth costs money and downsizing costs money. Now that we're global, we can commit to training and keep the workforce stable."

Mariano De Duonni, a principal with Hassell, points out that success in Adelaide doesn't necessarily guarantee success elsewhere, but it helps. "There's something about Adelaide," he says. "If you can do business in Adelaide in a very tight, rigorous manner, you're more astute, more agile in the way you do your work and you tend to become more street-smart."

Chris Bowe, South Australian manager of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, confirms all three companies rank among the biggest architectural firms in Australia. "They're corporate architects. They do all the big commercial work," he says.

"Hassell has a strong profile because they did work at the Sydney Olympics. Woods Bagot probably would be the biggest because of their spread – they really just want to be everywhere. They've just gone into Abu Dhabi, where the level of development is going to dwarf Dubai."
Focus on Hassell
Article from: The Advertiser

October 13, 2007 12:15am

WORKING in Europe in the 1930s, founder Colin Hassell fell under the spell of modernism.

Imbued with the spirit of the times, Claridge, Hassell and McConnell produced some striking examples of modernist architecture, including the former Bank of New South Wales on the corner of King William St and North Tce, which may soon be given new life as a boutique hotel.

The next generation of partners included John Morphett, who joined in 1962 after a stint running the Rome office of famous modernist architect Walter Gropius. Morphett repeated the achievement, in 1970, of founder Jack McConnell when he won a Royal Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal in 2000.

(Woods Bagot partner Louis Laybourne Smith was the only other South Australian architect to be awarded the medal, in 1961).

Colin Hassell, who died in August, was succeeded by his son David, managing principal of the Adelaide studio for the past nine years.

"Design has been pre-eminent since the very beginning," he says.

Hassell's nearly 800 staff are spread across 12 cities in Australia and Asia, including Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, in central China.

Prominent projects there include a development in Shanghai's "Silicon Valley", the Zor Yuan Ju residential complex in Chongqing and urban design master-planning for Yinzhou, in the city of Ningbo.

Hassell prides itself on being a truly multidisciplinary practice, with architecture, planning, landscape architecture and interior design operating as discrete units across the company.

"We believe we would be one of the few practices that operates distinctively in four areas," says Adelaide principal Mariano De Duonni.

"It's a unique model."

Image
Hassell drew on inspiration from nature for this towering residential complex in Singapore.


Focus on Woods Bagot
Article from: The Advertiser
October 13, 2007 12:15am

Image
The United Arab Emirates University at Al Ain will house 20,000 students.



WITH its 137-year history, offices in 15 cities from Adelaide to Abu Dhabi, Brisbane to Bangkok, Shanghai to London and a staff of about 800 people, Woods Bagot is the undisputed grand-daddy of South Australia's "big three".
Founded in 1869 by Edward Woods and Walter Bagot, its august register of former partners includes Louis Laybourne Smith who, with Bagot, founded the SA School of Architecture which now bears his name, and Sir James Irwin, a former lord mayor of Adelaide.

The first of the Adelaide firms to set up in the Middle East and Europe, it has offices in Dubai, Bahrain and Doha and is recruiting staff for Abu Dhabi.

Its projects there include masterplans for Dubai's Maritime City development and the Oquyana World Islands project – 18 islands, hundreds of apartments and villas, shops and hotels and, in Doha, the new 200,000sq m Quatar Science and Technology Park.

"We won work early on in the Middle East because the Australian dollar was so competitive," says director Andrew Ford.

With our dollar trading against the greenback as low as 58c, Woods Bagot could service its Middle East clients from the Adelaide office, giving them a clear advantage when bidding for contracts against firms from the U.S. and the UK. "We could do work for a third of their cost," says Ford.

It's a formula that still works in its favour today, thanks to the company's global reach and the communications revolution.

"A person with same skills might earn $80 to $120 an hour in Adelaide and, with the aid of telecommunications, can work on projects in Dubai or London at $400 an hour," says Ford.

Rarely working on developments that come in under $50 million, the company now competes with usually only a handful of global firms per project.

"Here, as a mid-range firm, you can have 30 or 40 competitors for every bit of work," says Ford.

"When you're shooting for a mega project, you're probably only competing with half a dozen firms, because few have got the grunt to provide the services."

Competition, however, hasn't soured relations with the other two firms in the Adelaide triumvirate. With associations that in some cases go back to student days, most of the principals remain friends and have partnered on significant projects.

"I think the good thing is that Adelaide is a place where all three firms actually get on very well and talk to each other whereas, in other cities, most firms would not talk to each other and probably hate each other."


Focus on Woodhead
Article from: The Advertiser

October 13, 2007 12:55pm

Image
Delhi International Airport is in its design stage.

THE firm that today employs 400 people in 12 cities around the world began life when Caradoc Ashton opened a one-room office in Pirie St, employing a single draftsman.
That was 1927. Robert Woodhead joined as a draftsman in 1932 and was later offered a partnership.

Significant commissions – among them the Savings Bank of SA in Hindley St, Queen Elizabeth Hospital and the ETSA building – fuelled steady growth and, in the 1980s, the firm began its push interstate.

David Gilbert, a principal based in the Adelaide office, was a key figure in Woodhead's next growth spurt in the early '90s, this time into Asia. In China, the company worked as consultants for a decade before opening its first office there, in Shanghai, in 2002, where Gilbert worked for four years.

"Our big breakthrough in China was when, with an introduction from the South Australian government, we were invited to enter a design competition for the interior design of a very large hotel, which we won," says Gilbert.

The project grew to include a large convention centre and a provincial congress hall, and consumed Gilbert's attention for nearly six years.

India, with its booming economy, became the next frontier. Woodhead is the only one of the three Adelaide firms to have an office there. Airports in Kolkata and New Delhi, residential complexes in the Corbusier-designed city of Chandagar and the Australian embassy are among its high-profile projects.

"Woodhead has been historically regarded as a very strong commercial company, as very good nuts-and-bolts architects," says Gilbert.

"We're good at doing difficult one-off projects, but we probably don't have the same design profile as, say, Hassell, and yet design is our life.

"We see design as being very, very important but our focus has tended to be really delivering a product to our client.

"It's not about design preferences and styles but about determining what the client wants, rather than creating monuments to ourselves."
Walking tour of Central Adelaide
Article from: The Advertiser

October 13, 2007 12:15am

A WALKING tour of the centre of Adelaide reveals just how many of our city's landmark buildings began life on the drawing boards of Woods Bagot, Hassell and Woodhead.

Beginning at St Peter's Cathedral, with its spires at your back, walk across Adelaide Bridge and pause to admire the festive peaks of the eastern stands at Adelaide Oval. Up ahead are the Convention Centre, the Riverside office block and the Hyatt Regency.

Walk on up the slow rise of King William Rd, past the Festival Centre, to Parliament House. Across North Tce is the austere facade of the old Bank of New South Wales, built in the international style in 1938.

From here, you might turn left, and stroll the shady path beside Government House's stone wall to the War Memorial. Across Kintore Ave is the State Library with its elegant facelift and, next door, the SA Museum.

Walk on down North Tce to the University of Adelaide's imposing Bonython Hall and make your way to the Barr Smith Library.

Had you bypassed North Tce and continued straight up King William St, you couldn't fail to notice the former Santos (now Westpac) tower – still the city's tallest – and, on the corner of Waymouth St, stage two of the City Central building, nearing completion.

At Victoria Square, the old is represented by the solid bulk of the GPO, the new by the concrete shell of SA Water's future home on the southeast corner, already growing the shiny skin of its glass facade and partially obscuring the view of the controversial Commonwealth Law Courts, completed last year. Beside the SA Water building, in Angas St, is St Aloysius's new gym.

From Victoria Square, you might fan out from the city's heart, to the new Santos building in Flinders St, or west to the bus station thrusting its bulk out over Gouger St, to the old Balfours pie factory in Morphett St, now bearing billboards that boast of a future that's light-years from pies and sauce; or to UniSA's West End campus, with its award-winning Kaurna Building fronting Hindley St.

These are but a few examples of the work of Woods Bagot, Hassell and Woodhead.
You should probably get the hardcopy of the tiser to see the walking tour... we're obviously all familar because we do the tour nearly every day of the week here, and love it too :D

Would have been terrific to see Pruszinski Architects here too who're also helping to transform the Adelaide skyline more recently, and a few others from Adelaide. Hopefully they'll get to that soon enough.

User avatar
AG
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 2068
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:44 am
Location: Adelaide SA

Re: #Article: Focus on Our Architects (Hassell,Wdhead,Wdbagots)

#26 Post by AG » Sat Oct 13, 2007 10:29 am

What page and what section of today's 'Tiser is this in?

Brando
Donating Member
Donating Member
Posts: 773
Joined: Mon Dec 12, 2005 3:11 pm
Location: Adelaide

Re: #Article: Focus on Our Architects (Hassell,Wdhead,Wdbagots)

#27 Post by Brando » Sat Oct 13, 2007 12:18 pm

AG wrote:What page and what section of today's 'Tiser is this in?
AG it's in the Review section. 4 page spread from pg 4 - 7.

User avatar
Pants
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 1282
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:49 am
Location: Back Home

Re: #Article: Focus on Our Architects (Hassell,Wdhead,Wdbagots)

#28 Post by Pants » Sun Oct 14, 2007 11:12 am

Just shows what they can do with their international resources at hand and with sufficient cash and creative freedom from developers.

I've been guilty of this in the past, but as an e.g., Hassell aren't really to blame for the blandness of the airport, IAG, Santos and SA Water - the money men are.

Hopefully, with buildings such as the new Currie St tower, tenants or residents will expect more from developers and the arcitectural bar will be raised, as it has been in Melbourne, leaving us with some lasting monuments that are worthy of the beautiful backdrop that Adelaide provides them.

Will
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 5790
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2005 6:48 pm
Location: Adelaide

Re: #Article: Focus on Our Architects (Hassell,Wdhead,Wdbagots)

#29 Post by Will » Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:11 pm

Pants wrote:Just shows what they can do with their international resources at hand and with sufficient cash and creative freedom from developers.

I've been guilty of this in the past, but as an e.g., Hassell aren't really to blame for the blandness of the airport, IAG, Santos and SA Water - the money men are.

.
I have to admit to this as well. However I still find it confusing how the money men here in Adelaide allow for so much money to be spent on interiors and on energy efficiceny features. If only they would place as much emphasis on the exterior appearance of their buildings.

User avatar
Pants
VIP Member
VIP Member
Posts: 1282
Joined: Wed Jul 13, 2005 11:49 am
Location: Back Home

Re: #Article: Focus on Our Architects (Hassell,Wdhead,Wdbagots)

#30 Post by Pants » Sun Oct 14, 2007 12:24 pm

I imagine it's all about bringing in tenants and making money mate.

I'd be surprised if tenants were anywhere near as fussed about the exterior of a building (so long as it's reasonable) as they are about interiors. As for environmental issues, 'green star rating' is the buzz phrase these days, with tenants looking to keep their energy bills down and their workers alert and healthy.

It's disappointing but unsurprising.

Still, I hope, and would think, that as buildings of greater architectural merit come onto the market, prospective tenants will become more discerning about exteriors forcing developers to pay more attention to them.

Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 10 guests