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Articles by Paul McGillick
Chong Siew Ying Finds Her Voice As An Artist
For Malaysian artist Chong Siew Ying the siren call of Paris proved to be not just irresistible, but also transformative. The youngest of five siblings, Chong Siew Ying describes herself as “the black sheep of the family”. The scion of a poor, second-generation Chinese farming family, Siew Ying started school at seven and realised she could draw. “Before that,” she says, “I just played with mud and palm trees.” Acknowledgement of her gift came in art class. At the same time, she began to read.
Gijs Nooteboom shares 6 truths of the progressive workplace
Gijs Nooteboom is a managing partner with Veldhoen + Company which began the ‘revolution’ with the legendary Interpolis in the mid-1990s – the world’s introduction to activity-based working. He identifies a number of key issues in workplace planning today. Evolution not revolution “I think we are still in evolution because this process of moving from traditional towards new ways of working is very slow. You have to distinguish between the physical and the mental space.
Eva Tilley Memorial Home by Studio Tate
For a long time, health facilities such as hospitals and aged care homes were anything but hospitable. They were not welcoming and not places where anyone wanted to be. But things have been changing in recent years. Hospitals have led the way with a new emphasis on wellness, in recognition that life-affirming contexts – warm internal finishes and external connections to sunshine, natural light and nature – help drive faster recovery rates.
Compound House | Habitusliving.com
This may look like a radical house, but it is actually just about connection with family and with the natural world. It was once just one in a street of very modest, single-storey row houses with pitched tiled rooves dating from the 1950s. Now its parti wall remains intact along with the opposing wall flanking a pedestrian walkway, but the interior has been completely opened up.
House at Kalalgoda
Both a journey and a destination, this house connects its inhabitants to the natural world while creating its own connected internal world. A little over 15 kilometres from downtown Colombo, this house offers a transition from the bustle of the city to rural calm. It is a classic example of the tropical modern house where the clean functionality of modernism is fully at home within a tropical climate: celebrating it without sacrificing comfort and sanctuary.
Wall House | Habitusliving.com
It started by wanting to close itself off, but this house ended up with an elegant blend of privacy and community. This house is located in Bansberia, a city and municipality about 45 kilometres from Kolkata in West Bengal. The owner had acquired three adjacent plots on a busy intersection and wanted to consolidate them and build a new residence. He approached Abin Design Studio because he had seen previous residential work of theirs.
CH House | Habitusliving.com
We all know about free plan, but what about free section? This house over five levels (plus a roof terrace) plays with differing ceiling heights, split levels, three voids and a spread of functional spaces to create the sense of a continuous vertical space in what is a very narrow building. The house was built […] We all know about free plan, but what about free section?
Shade House | Habitusliving.com
In frenetic Bangkok, this house stays connected to the city while providing an oasis of cool green respite. The architects say that their objective in designing this house was to create an ecosystem, a kind of self-sustaining house with its own green lungs to combat the air and noise pollution of the city outside. At the same time, it is an exercise in refuge and prospect, combining the convenience of the city with the life-enhancing benefits of nature.
Bamboo Veil House
A sustainable, modern tropical home suggests openness and connection. But what if you also want privacy? This house reconciles the two. This 680-square-metre, semi-detached house replaces an earlier house on a curving triangulated site. It is for a small family of just three. “[I] had the luxury of building a small house with an ample amount of shade with deep overhangs,” says the architect, Robin Tan of Wallflower.
Binary Wood House
This house in Thailand’s north east offers timeless living in perfect harmony with its environment. Responding to place is not just a sentimental exercise. It brings all kinds of benefits: to the existing environment but also to the people who will live there. Overall, it brings a sense of unity and a feeling of belonging. Too often the built environment brings alienation, but a home that responds to its place provides existential security.
Peter Stutchbury Architecture Celebrates The Beach Hut
In an era when the traditional informal beach retreat has given way to McMansions, Peter Stutchbury re-invents the beach hut of old on the south coast of New South Wales. “The South Coast of New South Wales is, in my view,” says architect Peter Stutchbury, “the romantic coast.
Considered Density
Part urban infill and part urban heritage protection, this renovation and extension is the second stage of an innovative sub-division project in Perth. Kate Fitzgerald, founder of the boutique architectural practice, Whispering Smith, and her partner, Matthew Johnston, garnered national attention in 2017 with their imaginative House A in Perth’s seaside suburb of Scarborough.
Geoff Warn: architect and design luminary
Geoff Warn likes working in teams. The Principal of With_Architecture Studio (formerly Donaldson Warn) and Western Australia Government Architect since 2013, he sees architecture and planning as inclusive, collaborative processes, commenting: “Architecture emerges from creative engagement with community and is always a function of relationships between people.” Indeed, the tousled-haired Warn is gregarious and insatiably curious — a walking advertisement for life-long learning.
UTS Central by fjmt studio Reinvents Campus Design
Like RMIT in Melbourne, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) is an urban campus. But when it was founded in 1988, it was more of a suburban campus, as the city edge essentially ended at Central Station.
Sunshine Coast Design Book Review
The Sunshine Coast Design book suggests four core values in architecture and developments to create responsive design and uphold a placemaking approach on the Sunshine Coast. Sadly, when it comes to quality residential, commercial and institutional design, local government in Australia is too often reactive rather than visionary. When it is proactive it is frequently petty and obstructive.
Edgar’s Creek House Breathes Simple Elegance
The simple but elegant Edgar’s Creek House by Breathe Architecture connects with its unique landscape by way of a refined collaboration between the two. Just to save you the trouble of looking it up – as I, a Sydney-sider, had to do – Edgar’s Creek is a small 17 kilometre tributary which joins Merri Creek at the Melbourne suburb of North Coburg.
The Post-Virus Workplace
The lockdown triggered by the Covid-19 crisis has resulted in most white-collar workers – at least, those who haven’t lost their jobs altogether – working remotely from home, estimated by demographer, Bernard Salt, to be at least 35% of the workforce. For many this is both a disruption and a novelty. Disruptions can often lead to new ways of thinking and innovation. Novelties, however, tend to wear off.
The Post-Virus Workplace
The lockdown triggered by the Covid-19 crisis has resulted in most white-collar workers – at least, those who haven’t lost their jobs altogether – working remotely from home, estimated by demographer, Bernard Salt, to be at least 35% of the workforce. For many this is both a disruption and a novelty. Disruptions can often lead to new ways of thinking and innovation. Novelties, however, tend to wear off.
Walan Brisbane By bureau^proberts
Walan Brisbane, a new development on the Brisbane River by architecture studio bureau^proberts, pushes multi-residential typologies into new waters.
Couldrey House Is Not Your Typical Queenslander
Architect Peter Besley challenges the way houses have been designed for Brisbane’s sub-tropical climate with Couldrey House. Think of the Brisbane house and you will think ‘Queenslander’. Like other tropical and sub-tropical housing types it is lifted up off the ground and employs shading and cross-ventilation to cope with a hot and humid climate. But architect Peter Besley notes that the climate is changing and becoming more hot and dry.
Different Housing Typologies To Improve Our Way Of Life
Is the housing crisis more an opportunity than a threat? An expose on emerging and existing housing typologies in a changing social and economic landscape. In fact, the housing crisis is an international phenomenon very much to do with the rapid growth of cities. This growth strains available property resources, forcing prices up and making property less affordable to a growing number of people.
Remembrance Of Our Regional Hero
Born in Ipswich, Queensland in 1934, the architect and one-time jackaroo, Gabriel Poole has died at the age of 85. A man of great humility, Gabriel transformed not just architecture in Queensland, but in Australia, as he pioneered a ‘regional’ architecture which responded to the climate, materials and culture of its place, not to mention the specific character and needs of the people who would live and work in his buildings.
Remembering Gabriel Poole: Regional Hero
The architecture of Gabriel Poole can be summed up in one word: responsive. Born in Ipswich, Queensland in 1934, the architect and one-time jackaroo, Poole has died at the age of 85. A man of great humility, Poole transformed not just architecture in Queensland, but in Australia as he pioneered a ‘regional’ architecture which responded to the climate, materials and culture of its place, not to mention the specific character and needs of the people who would live and work in his buildings.
Neeson Murcutt Reframes The Past
Being a good neighbour doesn’t mean not being able to enjoy your privacy, as this house in Sydney’s beachside Bronte demonstrates. We decided to wrap the place in landscape,” says architect Stephen Neille of Neesun Murcutt.
Ross Gardam: Emotion by Design
Ross Gardam is softly spoken, but with a subtext suggesting he has always known where he’s going, where he’d come from and why. That’s probably not entirely true, but he certainly gives the impression that every step he has taken in what has been a successful and highly productive career has had its place in the larger scheme, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Ross Gardam: Emotion by Design
Ross Gardam is softly spoken, but with a subtext suggesting he has always known where he’s going, where he’d come from and why. That’s probably not entirely true, but he certainly gives the impression that every step he has taken in what has been a successful and highly productive career has had its place in the larger scheme, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
Sydney XXXL Book Review: What's Sydney's Problem?
Sydney can seem an untameable beast. Sydney XXXL, a new book by architect Ed Lippmann, looks at the city’s past present and future. Ed Lippmann is a highly regarded Sydney-based architect with a portfolio extending from residential to major commercial projects such as 8 Chifley Square in Sydney’s CBD, done in partnership with Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners. Indeed, Richard Rogers contributes a foreword to this book.
An Arranged Marriage
Quizzed about whether the success of his partnership with Kirsten Stanisich is because they are similar or different, Jonathan Richards comments that they are quite different. “I didn’t ever go to Kirsten and say, ‘Hey do you want to start a partnership?’ We just found ourselves together. It’s like an arranged marriage. A company just joined us and said, ‘You guys will work well together’.” He says they are good friends and with an equally good working relationship.
The 'Woke' Workplace: CBA Axle Building
South Eveleigh is part of what was originally called the Australian Technology Park. Positioned on the periphery of the Sydney CBD, adjacent to Redfern railway station, it is the site of the old locomotive workshops. Over recent years these buildings have been re-purposed to house tech companies and start-ups. The site is actually divided by the railway lines.
Paul McGillick’s Closing Comments On House Of The Year
The 2019 House of the Year has now run its course with the Awards announced at Stylecraft’s Sydney showroom on Thursday 31st of October. This second iteration of HOTY was pared down slightly from the inaugural version in 2018 – from 25 to 20 houses, which meant that each of the selected houses could be given more space and every project could appear in the print edition of Habitus.
Indesign Luminary: Diane Jones
Diane Jones is softly spoken, considered in everything she says without ever sounding pedantic or guarded, and reveals a frame of reference well beyond the field of architecture. Although she carries the title of executive director at PTW Architects (formerly Peddle Thorpe Walker) in Sydney, she insists she is just one member of the leadership team. This highlights the priorities of this remarkably successful architect, but also how important integrity and ethics are to her.
Koichi Takada designs National Museum of Qatar
A recent success story of Australian architecture has been the rapid rise of Koichi Takada Architects (KTA), headed up by Japanese-born and trained Koichi Takada. Unlike many practices, KTA made a relatively quick transition from individual residential to large-scale projects. That the practice negotiated the steep learning curve was no doubt due in large measure to Takada’s relentless work ethic, instilled in him by his rigorous, and sometimes brutal, Japanese training.
Rising expectations: The rise of vertical schools
I did my first degree at the University of Western Australia where we spent much of our time strolling through the gardens or lolling on the river bank. Later I did something similar at the University of Sydney. But this Oxbridge model was not, even then, universal. Think University of London, New York University or closer to home, UTS Sydney and RMIT Melbourne. These urban campuses are multi-level, indeed high-rise, and treasure any open space they can get, especially at ground level.
Uninterrupted Concrete Poetry By PopovBass
A classic exercise in refuge and prospect, this house by PopovBass on a stunning coastal site is also a celebration of concrete’s domestic potential. Gordons Bay is a delightful bay and sandy beach carved out from Sydney’s characteristic coastal sandstone cliffs. It lies between Bondi and Coogee and the walking trail which links those beaches lie unseen below this PopovBass-designed house.
One Of Australia's Leading Architects: Rachel Neeson
Recently announced as a 2019 INDE Luminary, Rachel Neeson has overcome personal tragedy and paved the way as one of Australia’s leading architects. Even Rachel doubted if she could carry on the Neeson Murcutt practice following the death of Nick Murcutt in 2011. “I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own,” she reflects. This is despite the fact they discussed all the design decisions together. But she had tended to be in the back room doing the documentation, with Nick the public face of the practice.
INDE.Awards 2019 Luminary: Jon Goulder | Indesignlive.hk
He is 47 years of age and with his track record of exhibitions, prizes and outstanding furniture (and now lighting) products, others might be tempted to take their foot off the accelerator and settle back to enjoy the high profile. But Jon Goulder is driven by the sense of continuing evolution and acquisition of knowledge. He loves the challenge. “Furniture,” says Goulder, “is a great challenge in terms of weight, scale, structure, materials, longevity and originality.
INDE.Awards 2019 Luminary: Rachel Neeson
“I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own,” she reflects. This is despite the fact they discussed all the design decisions together. But she had tended to be in the back room doing the documentation, with Nick the public face of the practice. But do it she did, hauling the business back from the brink. In fact, she re-invented the practice.
INDE.Awards 2019 Luminary: Rachel Neeson
“I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own,” she reflects. This is despite the fact they discussed all the design decisions together. But she had tended to be in the back room doing the documentation, with Nick the public face of the practice. But do it she did, hauling the business back from the brink. In fact, she re-invented the practice.
The game changer: Rachel Neeson
Even Rachel doubted if she could carry on the Neeson Murcutt practice following the death of Nick Murcutt in 2011. “I wasn’t sure I could do it on my own,” she reflects. This is despite the fact they discussed all the design decisions together. But she had tended to be in the back room doing the documentation, with Nick the public face of the practice. But do it she did, hauling the business back from the brink. In fact, she re-invented the practice.
The New Approach To Showroom Design
The new showroom is no longer a shop, but a journey and a destination. Paul McGillick enjoyed the experience first observed in Copenhagen. A shop is a place where goods are prominently displayed and then sold to interested customers. The traditional furniture showroom, like private art galleries, is really only a glorified shop. Any extra caché it has, derives from the quality and selective nature of the products. But the showroom is undergoing a metamorphosis.
INDE.Awards 2019 Luminary: Jon Goulder
He is 47 years of age and with his track record of exhibitions, prizes and outstanding furniture (and now lighting) products, others might be tempted to take their foot off the accelerator and settle back to enjoy the high profile. But Jon Goulder is driven by the sense of continuing evolution and acquisition of knowledge. He loves the challenge. “Furniture,” says Goulder, “is a great challenge in terms of weight, scale, structure, materials, longevity and originality.
The late bloomer: Jon Goulder
He is 47 years of age and with his track record of exhibitions, prizes and outstanding furniture (and now lighting) products, others might be tempted to take their foot off the accelerator and settle back to enjoy the high profile. But Jon Goulder is driven by the sense of continuing evolution and acquisition of knowledge. He loves the challenge. “Furniture,” says Goulder, “is a great challenge in terms of weight, scale, structure, materials, longevity and originality.
Learning to share: Introducing the new generation of co-working
The Australian workplace is forever buzzing with new catchwords to label the latest shifts in workplace design. True, Australia is widely regarded as among the most innovative countries in the world when it comes to workplace design. But this disguises the fact that it often entails little more than a fresh set of fittings, furnishings and finishes, turning the office into a kind of business class airport lounge.
Butcher Shop Turned Family Home By Ian Moore Architects
How a 19th century butcher shop became a contemporary home without losing its original character. Ian Moore is an architect known for his black and white palette and glass louvres, but his aesthetic is, as he says, basically about “keeping it as clean and simple as possible”. In the case of the alterations and additions to this inner suburban Sydney house, the interventions are so subtle that it is not immediately apparent that anything has been done at all.
Introducing Indesign #76 – The Workplace Evolution issue | Indesignlive
The re-thinking of workplace design over the last three decades certainly reflects a recognition of the importance of innovation, resilience and agility in a fast-changing and increasingly competitive business environment. But, of course, it also reflects the emergence of new kinds of businesses, technologies and community values. Among the many extraordinarily innovative new workplaces that have emerged, there have also been a lot that amounts to little more than a decorative make-over.
Indesign Luminary: Jon Johannsen | Indesignlive – Connection to design
Jon Johannsen is a tall, wiry and obviously very fit man who completely embodies his Danish ancestry. He has been in practice as an architect for more than 40 years, a timespan that includes working for a host of outstanding architectural firms (as well as his own long-established practice) and a wide span of very different projects. We could say the same of many other architects, but two things make Johannsen special.
An Xbox shaped building: CSIRO Canberra by BVN
“The building is like Venice,” says architect and BVN principal, James Grose. He is referring to how, on the outside, Synergy at CSIRO has many address points and never reveals all of itself at once. On the inside, it is stimulating visually, never repetitive and replete with intriguing openings and corridors which disguise their end-points. Be that as it may, this is deliberately a very Australian building.
Indesign Luminary: Mark Landini | Indesignlive – Connection to design
You might have a sentimental attachment to the 19th century Paris arcade, but retail design – the mix of interior and graphic design – is, says Mark Landini, a relatively new phenomenon. He should know because he’s been there almost since the beginning. Italian in origin but English by upbringing, Landini became a musician after graduating from Middlesex Polytechnic.
Ministry by design: fjmt's Salamanca Building
Designing any workplace – especially one providing amenity and space for a modern Parliament and its Parliamentarians – is never a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s always a case of horses for courses. Naturally, if the horse is designed by a committee it may prove ungainly, so the challenge is always to ensure that the end result is fit for purpose. Designed by fjmt, the 11-storey Salamanca Building is Hobart’s latest office tower, offering the opportunity for state-of-the-art design.
Habitus House Of The Year: A New Celebration Of Regional Excellence
For ten years, Habitus has shone a much-needed spotlight on the unique architecture, design, and art of the Indo-Pacific. Produced in the region but beloved around the world, Habitus has emerged as the leading global destination for design hunters in search of unique, inspiring projects that challenge conventional ideas about residential architecture and design.
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