31 Queen Street by Gray Puksand

The refurbishment of the foyer space is akin to the approach of set design where the performance is the day to day activity of tenants within the commercial world.

31 Queen Street
Design Team: Gray Puksand
Location: 31 Queen Street, Melbourne
Status: Completion 2009
Cost: $5.0m

The refurbishment of 31 Queen Street, a building foyer and street façade is founded on the need to renew the commercial viability and asset value by ensuring existing and new tenants will remain occupied within the building.

With the city is now a 24/7 entity, where it’s important to ‘market’ such addresses outside of traditional building hours. Coming to life at night as a sculptural space to street view assists with the significance of the place.

By using the approach of set design, a number of elements have been implemented to strengthen the building appearance form street view. Externally it has received a dynamic facelift with the installation of a sculptural canopy. Designed in association with artist and sculptor Dan Templeman, the new canopy provides a new identity and presence at street level. A pure abstraction form to ‘go with the flow’ on one hand, yet ‘critique’ the geometry of the existing building on the other.





Internally, a folding wall of Corian and internally-lit perforated metal panels surround and reinvigorate the core. With lighting, the core wall punches out into the street, creating an impact both during the day and night, providing a strong aura and connection to the outside. The purity and abstraction of form adds a three dimensional layer to what is typically a flat plane.

The renewal of the foyer has been further strengthen, with the unification of the lift lobby and a new larger public waiting area using communal furniture pieces and new artworks. The addition of a seated café area to the upper level has created a new informal meeting space for all users of the building.






via idea-awards

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Shrewsbury Suites by WORK

Influenced by the existing trees on the site, the design features screen inspired by the forms of tree trunks and the translucency of leaves.

Shrewsbury Suites
Design Team: WORK
Location: Singapore
Status: Completion 2010

Located in the Novena area, the site for this 5-storey 1,700 square metres serviced apartment fronts a large and busy road. The client asked for a luxurious and special building, with a distinctive façade.

WORK wanted to create a porous architecture with generous views and light for the occupants. Inspired by the organic forms of nature, the design strategy was to create a building that has separate private and public faces. By dividing the accommodation into two distinct but connected parts, the apartments could have two fronts, one facing the street and the other facing a landscaped poolside area.

The trees on the site inspire the apartment main element – the façade facing the street is clad in a layered mesh screen inspired by the forms of tree trunks and the translucency of leaves. The façade facing the pool area consists of an organic undulating screen and overlapping balconies.

Established in 2007, WORK is the creative house of FARM Singapore, an arts and design community. portal. WORK is the architectural design arm of FARM, collaborating with artists and designers to create novel spaces.





via FARM

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Myer Redevelopment by NH Architecture

Dynamic installations and creative visual displays will create an inspiring shopping environment for customers - one that has never been seen before in Australia.

Myer Redevelopment
Design Team: NH Architecture
Location: Melbourne
Status: Completion end of 2009
Cost: $500 million

NH Architecture has been appointed for the redevelopment of the Myer Bourke and Lonsdale Street stores. The proposal consists of the redesign of the Myer flagship store with a new development north of Little Bourke Street consisting of a number of buildings around a network of public lanes.

This proposal offers a vision driven by bold ideas that include: increased area to the Bourke Street address, an upgrading that can set new standards in department stores, environmentally sustainable initiatives, and an architectural achievement that adds to Melbourne’s design accomplishments.




The proposed rooftop Myer Room provides a contemporary equivalent to the retained historic Mural Hall – the destination within a destination. It will be the hub of calendar of events: launches, shows, exhibitions, and dining. Its crystalline roofscape will be the end of a journey starting from the ground level – it will be the crown of the new Myer Melbourne.

The Lonsdale Street redevelopment will retain the historic façades to the north with five separate buildings behind. These buildings will be up to 10 levels high and be connected via a series of laneways. The mixed use building programme will include retail, hospitality and potential for serviced apartments or a hotel.




via nharchitecture

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Water/ Glass House by Kengo Kuma

Kuma tried to frame space with only two horizontal planes - the floor of water and the ceiling louvers- and to generate between the planes a transparent and fluid time-space.

Water/ Glass House, Atami Villa
Design Team: Kengo Kuma and Associates
Location: Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan
Status: Completion March, 1995

The design of this villa was influenced greatly by "Hyuga" Villa, the sole project which Bruno Taut* had left in Japan. The design also gained influences by the philosophies of Taut. Taut's stay in Japan lasted from 1933 until 1936. Meanwhile, his praise over Katsura Palace was ever-lasting. The reasoning for his commendation lied in the fact that the Palace frames the nature yet frames by being one with nature.

Taut specifically paid attention to mechanisms in Katsura Palace that provoked the framing of nature with nature: the eaves and the bamboo verandas. Thus, in our villa, a layer of water which gently covers the building edges signified bamboo verandas in Katsura. Moreover, a stainless louver that roofs the water signified the eaves. The water surface stretches further out and unites the surface with the Pacific Ocean. And on top of the joined surface, a glass box floats. As the box is super-imposed numerous times, refraction of materials brings in reflections of sorts. The relationship between the subject and the environment is challenged upon in various manners by re-defining and re-shaping the Katsura philosophy, yet always maintaining its fundamental essence.




In the Western architectural tradition, a building is primarily framed by means of walls and windows. That interposes a frame between the subject and the object. The subject is inevitably cut off from the object. The space becomes a painting in a frame (i.e. a static image); it becomes frozen. On the other hand, in traditional Japanese architecture, horizontal planes (i.e. the floor and the ceiling) are the dominant framing devices. This enables the subject and the object to coexist in a continuous space, without being cut off from each other by the frame. In such a case, the main concern of planning is the introduction of a sequence and speed into a continuous space. One cannot help but introduce into the building the parameter of time as well as the parameter of space. As a result, become inextricably entwined.

* Bruno Julius Florian Taut (4 May 1880 – 24 December 1938), was a prolific German architect, urban planner and author active in the Weimar period. Taut is best known for his theoretical work, speculative writings and a handful of exhibition buildings. Taut's best-known single building is the prismatic dome of the Glass Pavilion at the Cologne Werkbund Exhibition (1914). His sketches for "Alpine Architecture" (1917) are the work of an unabashed Utopian visionary, and he is variously classified as a Modernist and an Expressionist.






via Kengo Kuma and Associates

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Pasaan Memorial/ Museum by Fars Studio

The river on the north side of the island has a green color and the south side is red. After those two rivers combine green and red color still tracking itself along Chao Phraya River creates a resonance stripe.

Pasaan Memorial/ Museum
Design Team: Fars Studio
Location: Nakom-Sawan, Thailand
Status: Competition 1st Prize
Cost: 200 Million Baht

Thailand firm Fars Studio has win a national design competition for the Chao Phraya River Memorial and Museum in Nakorn-Sawan, Thailand. Fars' proposal is a bridge-like Memorial & Museum, to create a landmark symbol for the significance of the river in this region.

The site Nakorn-Sawan, is a place where four rivers: River Ping, Wang, Yom and Naan combining together become Chao Phraya River. During the flood season, differentiate between low and high-tide is up to 9 meters.





The Pasaan Memorial/ Museum is designed based on two condition:

First, Inside the Yom island, architecture becomes the complement of the nature; nothing can explain how beautiful the nature better than the river itself. In one axis, parallel to the River’s resonance stripe, the architects optimize numerous locations, elevation and appropriate angle on the site for people to perceive all the sceneries of the Rivers. In one route the architecture leads the people to each imperative locations such as; the point where people see 2 river all together, the point where people can see the whole city around the area, and the point where people see the confluence.

Second, from outside of the island, the architecture becomes a symbol the river represented through the Thai artistic weaving stripes. The bridge-like architecture accentuates visual connection and creates physical connection between 2 sides of the river; allowing people to sail pass and make the memorial alive during the high tide period.

Due to the local construction technology and the materials that resistance to flood, concrete is a major structure on the area between high and low tide and steel is for the rest. The cladding for the stripes is a combination between copper panel and wood.






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