The winning John Wardle and Office dA submission has been described by Tom Kvan as showing “a detailed understanding of the teaching and research activities of the Faculty and the potential for contribution to research across the campus”. It is the internal planning of the building and its integration with the broader urban environment of the university that is the designs strongest selling point. JW & DA have created an internal avenue connecting the Concrete Lawn with Swanston St and the proposed landscaping near Castro’s Café. This avenue brings people through the Architecture Building as they travel through the precinct engaging the broader community with architectural exploration through the focal points of the gallery space, located on the South West corner of the building, and the Library placed as a focal point on the Western side. Yet sadly this resolution of the project is hard to glean from the multitude of tiny diagrams packed into the panels on display in the Wunderlich Gallery and the only impression most are left with is the ‘Wardle envelope’.

As a friend of mine said on his first glimpse of the John Wardle & Office dA submission, “its all Wa and no dA”, as it seems the aesthetic controlling hand of the John Wardle team has dictated the building’s outer form. This is even more obvious when you compare the submission to some of Wardle’s previous projects (just have a look at the comparison to the Hawk building in Adelaide below). In saying this, I understand that architects have their style; and by choosing Wardle we are choosing that aesthetic. I guess I was just hoping for some more obvious influence from Office dA.

I was initially surprised at how ‘safe’ a lot of the entries seemed. The Sauerbruch Hutton with NH Architecture submission looked like something that inhabits a modern industrial park. Looking past this façade I saw that they had developed some interesting program arrangements and tiered rooftop gardens. The KoningEizenberg with William J Mitchell and Gehry Technologies entry looked unremarkably institutional and was certainly not what I was expecting from a team with ‘Gehry’ in their name. They did however take the risk of extending one of the building volumes into the union court effectively creating two smaller public zones around the new building connected by an axis between the two building volumes. However, as the University already lacks outdoor space around the union building, removing more is certainly not the answer.

In contrast, the submissions by McBride Charles Ryan and Diller Scofidio + Renfro were more playful responses to the brief.  Yet MCR seemed to rely too much on hero shot renders without the urban engagement with the broader University or the clarity of internal planning needed to pull off this playfulness. DS+R went for a non-traditional iconic building that focused upon integration with the broader university community while also enabling a more transparent pedagogical process through the motif of the educational stairs. This design was certainly the riskiest and the hardest to realise practically, yet it was the only one that proposed a new symbolic approach to the pedagogical experience. It left me imagining the giant stairs rising out of the concrete lawn on a Summers afternoon. Students from all faculties around the Uni relaxing, talking and studying while subconsciously engaging with the architecture school.

DCM was the only submission that managed to effectively integrate the Heritage Bank Façade using it as a coffee shop frontage and a filter for the main axis through the building into the large atrium and gallery space internally. For the envelope DCM stuck with their tried and true approach, the platonic geometry of a cube. However through twisting and abrasively pixilating the facade they managed to lose the timelessness and turn it into what others have described as “an architectural black hole” (see the arch daily blog). Again this is a project which is sadly let down by the exhibited panels which don’t do justice to the depth of investigation the team at DCM put into the project. We’ll just have to ignore the black box envelop on this one as well.

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The official website for the Architectural competition can be found at www.abp.unimelb.edu.au/competition

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