The White Hat City Design Newsletter

Archived Newsletter - 30th April 2010

Contents

An historic week
Australian Interior Design Awards
What Hat’s Seven Irreverent Laws of City Development – No.4
Renewable energy and aesthetics
Designing in 2 dimensions
The Windsor Hotel Redevelopment
Designing in 2 and a bit dimensions
Modular and prefabricated buildings
Reader Feedback
Postscript to Brutalism
Designing in 3 dimensions
What Hat’s Seven Irreverent Laws of City Development – No.5
Young architects
Previous quiz
Unitised Building
Designing in 4 dimensions
Green Roofs
Designing in 5 dimensions
The White Hat City Design Quiz

An historic week

Those of you in Melbourne who are able to get into the city this weekend will be able to witness what we at White Hat believe may well be seen as the birth of significant landmark in Australian city design. More information later in this newsletter.

Australian Interior Design Awards

The 2010 Australian Interior Design Awards have been announced, with the overall winner being a butcher shop. Now, we should warn our readers that photographs of butchers’ shops may contain images of meat, so we advise our vegetarians to look at photographs of vegetables instead at The White Hat Rat.

Now that the vegetarians are occupied the rest of you can go and look at the interior design of the award winning butchers shop at 2010 Australian Interior Design Awards.

For each of the winners you can see additional photographs by clicking on the thumbnails underneath the main image. In the case of the butchers shop it is likely to be a matter of taste as to whether you see the mismatch between the faux 19th century shopfront and the contemporary display area as a jolting mismatch or a playful mashup.

White Hat's Seven Irreverent Laws of City Development

No.4 – The candidate who will get elected is the one that can convince voters who do not yet own a home that he will make property prices come down while simultaneously convincing those voters who own a home or have a mortgage that he will make property prices go up.

Renewable energy & aesthetics

In Darwin, the developer (which is a joint venturer with the Defence Department) of the new suburb of Lyons wants to force all houses to have their solar water tanks at ground level (and thus install pumps) because of the aesthetic issue of too much clutter on rooftops.

All around Australia you will find similar competing issues of maintaining ‘neighbourhood character’ against sustainable town planning. Ask anybody and they will tell you they are concerned about the environment. Sometimes you have to delve deeper to find whether they mean ‘the’ environment or ‘my’ environment.

Designing in Two Dimensions - Drafting

For centuries any major structure or piece of town planning has been drawn out in two dimensions. The classic building plan may have a floor plan and two ‘elevations’ showing how the building will look from two sides. A competent engineer and builder can then take these two dimensional drawings and flesh out in their mind’s eye a concept of the final three dimensional structure.

These two dimensional drawings have served us well and by the late 19th century architects were sometimes using water colours on certain sections of the plan to indicate the proposed colour scheme. Spare spaces could be used to show detailed drawings of the technique required for a crucial piece of the building process. At their best these drawings sometimes straddle the areas of engineering drawing, art and marketing and as such can be quite valuable collectors’ items. Your local council is likely to have an impressive array of them archived away.

The busy architect was perfectly capable of drafting the detailed plans himself/herself but probably employed our outsourced a draftsman for the job having given them the rough drawings and the essential dimensions. This freed up the architect to concentrate on higher things such as aesthetics and spatial . . .

The not-so-busy architect also outsourced the drafting because, well, it’s so long since actually drew up a plan and the draftsman knows the details of council requirements and that frees up the architect for higher things such as swanning around, having an opinion on most issues, consuming quantities of red wine and subtly denigrating the work of busy architects. Still, he keeps a drafting table on view clearly visible through the front window displaying the last plans he drew up himself – his third year assignment twelve years ago.

The Windsor Hotel redevelopment

One of Melbourne’s significant 19th century buildings, the Hotel Windsor, is currently slated for restoration and redevelopment and has given rise to heated debate and political machinations. Those of you who read our Melbourne newsletter will have already read some of the background to this iconic building. Those who are not subscribers to our Melbourne newsletter may be interested in the observations of a private eye and his work experience student on the issues involved with this redevelopment. You can find them at The Hotel Windsor

If you don’t already subscribe to our weekly newsletter of ‘What’s on in Melbourne’ and would like to, just send us an email to nlsub@whitehat.com.au

Designing in Two & a bit Dimensions - tracing paper and blueprints

By the mid 19th century, architects and engineers were starting to draft their two dimensional plans on semi-transparent paper now popularly known as ‘tracing paper’. This had the advantage that plans could be superimposed on each other thus creating a crude three dimensional effect. For instance the first floor plan could be superimposed on the ground floor plan giving the builder visual clues as to what techniques to use.

However the chief reason for using tracing paper was for creating multiple copies. The original plan could be clamped to photosensitive paper and exposed to light. Where the light got through the tracing paper, the backing sheet changed colour, and where it didn’t (because of the black lines blocking the light) the paper remained white. The most common light-sensitive paper used for this process turned cobalt blue when exposed to light so the resulting copies were known as blueprints.

Meanwhile, the not-so-busy architect could head down to the library with his tracing paper and come back with some impressive ‘original’ designs or maybe even a prize-winning landscape painting.

Modular and prefabricated buildings

The use of prefabricated buildings has been around in Australia from the early days of European settlement. By the 19th century, sailing ships heading to Australia to pick up the wool clip may well have flat-packed panels of prefabricated iron houses on board. You can find surviving examples in South Melbourne (see Historic Houses in Melbourne).

There are also fine examples of prefabricated houses from Singapore to be found in the back streets of Collingwood.

These prefabricated buildings were not just restricted to housing. One enterprising bishop arrived with his own prefabricated church while a theatrical entrepreneur imported a prefabricated theatre which soon got the nickname ‘The Iron Pot’.

By the late 20th century, several generations of schoolchildren had spent time in ‘portable’ or ‘demountable’ classrooms. These typically arrived in halves on the back of and extra wide semitrailer, and were assembled onsite by tradesmen who had been drilled in educational theory. In particular, this included the educational principle that children are at their most alert if the buildings are assembled in such a way as to allow copious cold draughts through the joins. Many of these portable buildings were never ‘demounted’ and after the installation of some trellis and shrubbery became regarded as a permanent part of the school structure under much the same terms that a long term personal relationship is granted ‘de facto’ status. Given 5 changes of government and 17 changes of education minister, who is going to remember that it’s there anyway?

In countries where the climate creates a relatively small window for the ‘building season’, there are obvious advantages of creating most of the building in the controlled environment of a factory then bolting the modules together on-site.

In Japan, you can purchase a prefabricated house from Yamaha. See Yamaha modular houses.

While in Germany there also a number of options. See German modular houses.

In Scandinavia Ikea have been producing modular houses for quite some time and are even exporting them to Britain. Your house arrives in a flat pack on the back of a semitrailer with an indecipherable diagram and one Allen key. Near the end of construction you find there are two missing parts so you will need to go back and look at the diagram again. You can see examples at Ikea modular houses.

Reader Feedback

 “I work in urban planning. Thank you for your gentle humour which reminds us that while we should take our job seriously we should never take ourselves too seriously. Martin”

“Thank you for your article on Brutalist architecture in Australia. I know walk around several university campuses with new eyes. Jenny”

Postscript to Brutalism

In Hobart, the Brutalist government office block at 10 Murray Street overlooking Salamanca Place is to be demolished and redeveloped. It has never sat comfortable in that historic precinct and the new development may add to the community atmosphere. However, reinforced concrete contains a large amount of embedded energy, it is highly intensive of energy and greenhouse gases to break it up, and the resulting rubble nearly always goes to landfill.

Increasingly, city design is likely to involve attempting to balance aesthetic, social and environmental issues and create situations where there is no self-evidently ‘right’ answer.

Designing in Three Dimensions - CAD

By the late 1970s, computer hardware and software had progressed to the point where it was possible for architects to start designing in three dimensions straight onto the computer screen through Computer Aided Design (CAD).

These were wonderful times and produced some of the ugliest buildings in Australia with a much greater efficiency than earlier technology.

The experienced builder or project manager was still able to construct with his mind’s eye a three dimensional vision of the building from a set of two dimensional plans, but the new technology was a particular boon to a number of people. Interior designers could experiment with colours and textures. Emergency services could take a virtual walk through the building to spot potential problems. Landscape gardeners had access to detailed shadowing plans for different times of year and the large plotter with its multi-coloured pens darting around creating large scale plans gave the whole process an aura of science fiction. Surely this was as good as it gets.

White Hat's Seven Irreverent Laws of City Development

No.5 – If you want to have an influence on city design, don’t waste your time studying architecture or town planning or environmental sustainability. Become an actor with a recognisable face and the media will always treat your pronouncements on city design as having much more credibility.

Young architects

Those of you in Melbourne may be interested in attending the informal presentation and discussions held by young architects at the Loop Bar in Meyers Place on the first Monday of the month. For instance, last month Sean Godsell discussed his design of the RMIT Design Hub currently under construction at the end of Swanston Street.

No entry fees apply and drinks are available at the bar. We have had no confirmation of the May meeting so you may wish to check further if you are making a special trip.

Previous quiz

Our first answers came from Peter in Sydney so here they are:

Please note: This section of the newsletter has been removed as it forms part of a forthcoming publication.

Unitised Building

In Australia the architecture firm of Fender Katsalidis has taken a major step in the realm of modular building with a concept they call Unitised Building. The ‘units’, typically the size of a moderate city apartment, are produced with a wide range of options for exterior and interior fitout. They are then transported to the prepared site a set of apartments can be constructed in remarkably quick time with all the advantages of energy savings and quality control that factory production can confer. However the crucial point is that these units can be reused. If and when the building needs to be demolished the units can be unbolted, refitted or repurposed as necessary and used again. The implications for carbon footprint are significant.

Currently, the first building using this principle is called Little Hero and is being constructed in Russell Place in the centre of Melbourne... Currently there are several units in place. If you want to witness what we at White Hat believe may be seen as a significant event in urban design, we suggest that those of you in Melbourne head down there over the next couple of weeks. The units are proposed to be lifted into place between at the rate of about 3 a day. White Hat believes it could be at the rate of about 8 a day if disrupting traffic in Bourke Street were not an issue. But you will need to be quick. If all goes according to plan you only have a small window of opportunity to observe the build in progress - around two weeks for the units for all units to be lifted into place.

The rest of this article about Little Hero together with photographs can be found at The White Hat Guide to Little Hero

More information about coming projects of a similar nature in future newsletters.

Designing in Four Dimensions - extended CAD

While the architect was sitting comfortably is his/her tidy office three dimensional space under control, the project manager lived in a see of pegboards, calendars, whiteboards, contracts and hard hats while he attempted to make the build occur in the right time frame and the right order, True, project management software became an increasingly useful tool, but in the case of a large project it was still like managing a three ring circus with a large amount of information stored in the head at any one time

An important step forward came when CAD packages were able to cater for a fourth dimension – time. It’s all very well to know what the finished product looks like but how will it look on day 28 or on day 57. The impressive board table is made from one huge piece of wood. What is the best time and route to get it into the boardroom? The electrician looks at the plans and says he can save a tremendous amount of drilling if the core wiring goes in on days 38 to 42 before the large beams are in and then the next step can continue on day 70. The passive cooling bars have been delayed. What is the latest time they can be brought in without delaying the rest of the project?

Many construction workers will have horror stories about newly laid slabs of reinforced concrete having to be jackhammered up or carefully installed plate glass having to be removed because a wrong sequencing of events. Designing in 4D has greatly reduced these problems.

Green Roofs

There has been some buzz around green rooves of late. The typical business district of a city replaces the original vegetation and streams with non-porous surfaces, heat-storing rooves and often overtaxed stormwater drains. The resulting city centre creates its own microclimate which is often hungry of energy particularly in the area of air conditioning.

Proponents of green roofs argue that planting shrubs, trees and other greenery on the rooves of city buildings can provide a natural insulation, soak up CO2 and transpire oxygen and slow the runoff from torrential downpours. The main drawback is that in order to do it properly, the roof needs to be designed with the appropriate load bearing capacity. Recent experiences have shown that even some of our modern buildings do not have a roof capable of carrying a buildup of hailstones, let alone trees in which case painting them white to reflect the heat may be a better option than a tokenistic scattering of lightweight shrubs. Still, never underestimate the power of tokenism.

In our next newsletter we will examine some of our favourite examples of green roofs.

Designing in Five Dimensions - BIM

About ten years ago a fifth dimension was added to the modelling toolkit – money. With Building Information Modelling (BIM), cash requirements can be monitored. However, probably more important is the issue of information sharing. The philosophy of BIM is that all appropriate stakeholders have access to the live data at all times. Take the case of a large government project. The Minister for Major Projects can see what cost blowouts are expected as a result of a snap strike. Solar panels using new technology have become available and the engineers can determine if clearances allow them to follow the sun throughout the day. The interior designers are supervising a fitout in China but can continue to update their designs the main computer back in Australia. A landscape gardener is standing on the second floor of the empty shell holding a graphics tablet in front of her so that she can check the view as seen through the feature window of the lobby.

Older style project management often doled out information on a need-to-know basis. With BIM, the paradigm is reversed and so it might even be said to have added a sixth dimension of ‘transparency’. BIM requires serious computing grunt and high broadband speeds but designers know there is no point submitting a major public project to something like the Singapore Government unless it uses BIM.

Maybe we are not far from the time when the little viewing hole cut in the construction site fence is replaced with a large interactive touch screen.

The White Hat City Design Quiz

Building Materials

1. One metallic building material quickly forms a striking red ‘rust’ which then protects it from further corrosion. What is the name of this material and name two buildings which make significant use of this material.
2. For over 100 years, probably the most common exterior of humble Australian buildings has been zinc. Explain.
3. What naturally occurring Australian stone can be worked with a wood saw?
4. What type of ‘reject’ brick was often take up by the Arts and Crafts Movement for its ‘rustic’ (i.e. not appearing mass produced) appearance?
5. Name two buildings in Australia with prominent copper domes.
6. What is the material that Australians refer to as ‘reo’?
7. An ancient building technique which uses principles similar to reo What species of Australian tree received their name because they were well suited for this building technique?
8. Before the arrival of white man, some Aboriginal people had built permanent dwellings. Where were they and what were they built from?
9. Is it best to cut plywood along the grain or across the grain?

No prizes – just glory and a warm inner glow.