Table of contents for INDESIGN #92 in INDESIGN

William Smart Guest Editor, Indesign Magazine Gillian Serisier Editor, Indesign Magazine Raj Nandan CEO and Founder, Indesign Media Asia Paci c COMPLEX SIMPLICITY Guest-editing this issue of Indesign was a delightful process of discovery and learning. The nal result though, isn’t exactly what we set out to achieve. Gillian Serisier and I began with a focus on the latest educational institutions, hoping to curate an issue focused on the latest thinking in the world of learning. Wood, brick and steel were represented in these buildings, giving a sense of permanence and responsibility to the work. Though aesthetically unde ned: somethinglikeacrossbetweenahotel, o ce and home, there was a notable classic maturity to these projects. The ones that are ge ing it right are extraordinary and this year we celebrate the incredible…

Decolonising cultural institutions includes consulting expert Indigenous knowledge-holders, employing Indigenous sta and even ensuring there is Indigenous information on wall texts. It also includes respect, reciprocity and an adaption of variable timeframes. How does this play out for one of Australia’s biggest and fastestgrowing collection institutions? Lisa Havilah’s approach is to upend hierarchies of knowledge in a real-world way. A good example is the gathering of the Powerhouse’s new First Nations team, who advise on acquisitions of First Nations materials. They have developed an innovative approach - a “deed of deposit”. This deed is a di erent kind of contract which means that ownership stays with Indigenous people. Havilah is testing out the deed of deposit by working with Gail Mabo to acquire her father, Eddie Mabo’s, collection. Through this…

People on the street looking into the windows perceive the readers inside like scenes from a movie – Yu Ting Within the glass casing Yu has designing a 10,000-meterlong bookshelf to construct the façade of his city. Always philosophically driven, Yu Ting, founder and Chief Architect of Shanghai based Wutopia Lab, regards his city’s culture and lifestyle as a starting point, using architecture as a tool to promote sociological progress within building practice. As such, he has taken a counterintuitive approach to the renovation of the landmark bookstore, as Yu explains: “In China, the number of people who maintain a reading habit is far less than those who do not read… Therefore, book cities need to be designed for more non-readers, enticing them to step into the bookstore.” The cultural…

Project Nanyang Business School – Nanyang Technological University Practice Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and RSP Architects Planners & Engineers It is not o en that an architect gets a brief to design a building with the focus on one particular material. This, however, was the requirement for a competition commenced in 2016 by Nanyang Technological University (NTU) for the new Nanyang Business School (NBS). The competition required architects to submit a design for a 40,000-square-metre business school constructed primarily out of Mass Engineered Timber (MET). “The building was to become a model of sustainable built environment in Singapore” shares Loh Kee Soon, a senior associate architect at RSP Architects, Planners & Engineers that won the competition together with Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects. The winning design now perches on…

In many ways this is the dream project, with the client coming to AIM with an amazing site comprising four large and two small tanks, and an open mind. The functional aspect of the brief required the site house a restaurant and clothing store, but the client was open to how the remainder was used and has embraced AIM’s suggestion of a cultural space and play area. Additionally, the Changzhou Government was in the process of transforming the surrounding land into a park, and AIM have added to this with textural ‘spots’ similar in scale to the tanks and a large playground web. Located on the Yangtze River just north of Shanghai, andonce entirely industrial, Changzhou is a city changing the way it is perceived through architecture. Facilitating this change…

Fieldwork architecture studio looks to the fundamentals of space to ensure that students and teachers can ndtheirindividualpathsand ourish. The Centre for Higher Education Studies (CHES), designed by Fieldwork in collaboration with Brand Architects, has received numerous education and design award accolades for its outstanding educational facilities, driven by leading pedagogical research. It has been heart-warming for us, as the architects, to receive positive feedback from CHES staff and students alike – many a estingtothesenseofbelonging, enjoyment, agencyand empowerment they experience within CHES. It also a rms our belief that contemporary education environments should acknowledge and respond to both the diverse learning needs of individuals, and their more simple human needs, too. The design of CHES’ teaching facilities allows for highly specialised high school extension and rst-year university subjects to be taught,…

Shanghai Book City Shanghai, China – Architect and Interior Design Wutopia Lab Principal Architect Yu Ting Project Architects Lv Jie + Lin Chen Project Manager Pu Shengrui + Li Hao Construction/Builder Shanghai Xinhua Media Co., Ltd. Mechanical Engineers Mao Yaqian + Wang Yiqin + Xu Zhifeng + Liu Ning, Ye Lin + Shi Jiaying Landscape Designers Zheng Zhicheng + Wang Can + Guo Yuqi + Zhang Jin Lighting Consultants Zhang Chenlu + Wei Shiyu WUTOPIA LAB wutopialab.com Finishes Custom aluminium panels, Shanghai Jieyu Architectural Design Co., Ltd. Custom prefabricated organic terrazzo, Shanghai Construction Fi hBuilding Group Co., Ltd. Custom prefabricated inorganic terrazzo, Shanghai Construction Fi h Building Group Co., Ltd. Golden Shell Marble + Jade + Copper-plated stainless steel, Shanghai Construction Fi h Building Group Co., Ltd. Custom laminated glass…

William Smart, Director, Smart Design Studio William Smart is the Founder and Principal of Smart Design Studio, established in 1998. His approach to design is holistic, combining both architectural and interior design with passionate a entiontodetail. Overthe past 25 years, Smart Design Studio has delivered a wide range of projects ranging from large-scale master planning, cultural buildings, o ces, workplacestoprivate houses and product design. Although varied in scale, the projects are united by an ethos of “Architecture fromtheInsideOut”. Smart Design Studio’s buildings have received critical acclaim. Since its inception SDS has received over 50 international and national awards for architecture, urban design and interior design. William is a recipient of INDI.Awards Luminary Award. William has also taught and lectured across Australia, published wri enworkandisanactive participant in the design community. A complex…

“We are here for Country. We focus always on Country.” Dr Shannon Foster, Traditional Owner and D’harawhal Saltwater Knowledge Keeper, states, “It is not about architecture on Country, it is architecture with Country; this is not a site, it is a songline.” Foster is a one half of the Connecting with Country spatial design rm, bangawarra, created in partnership with Wugulora academic Jo Paterson Kinniburgh in 2018. It was a chance meeting between Foster and Kinniburgh at Taronga Zoo that would initiate a passionate journey of truthtelling and a unique partnership to challenge colonial spatial practices and erasure of Country, ultimately resulting in a series of ground-breaking, transformational projects. Projects that embed the wisdom of Aboriginal ancestral knowledge and contemporary design practices into landscape and the built environment in an…

An enormous human heart perches upon the back of a tricycle held in place by rope. Made from breglass, this larger-than-life organ refl ctsonthedemandforhearttransplantswithslightlymore shady references to the human organ trade. This, from an exhibition entitled BLOOD. A compelling and repelling meditation on the very essence of human life. Meanwhile a squirm of mealworms industriously consumes polystyrene – a non-biodegradable material that is, miraculously, food for worms. (Mealworms can partially biodegrade polystyrene through its gut bacteria, turning plastic into compost). A perfect solution or ecological slavery? As the exhibition Disposable: Re-Imagining Your Waste so poignantly poses. These are just two of the wondrous pieces of science-meets-art that the Science Gallery Melbourne (SGM) sets out to share with its audience of 15 to 25-year-olds: young, curious minds waiting to be unlocked…

When the client approached Spacemen for their restaurant design, their immediate concern was to introduce Edward Tan, Spacemen Director and project lead, to the modern interpretation of the traditional Malaysian food the chef would be creating. This in many ways is normal with design following key menu directions, but here, the client required the primitive mode of wood- re cooking be the design driver. “They wanted something that’s very stripped down to a really primordial dining experience where everything is re” says Edward, who was asked to “imagine back to ancient times and how people cooked food over re in the cave.” Edward’s rst hurdle was convincing the client that though re could be used in some ways, as a restaurant within a mixed-business tower in Kuala Lumpur, they could…

Using translational design and cross-sector experience to deliver places of health and wellbeing for the next generation, BLP shapes education spaces with a deep understanding of pedagogy and the mechanisms of learning, teaching, and research. Collaboration is key and with each project we draw on paediatric and mental health expertise to design curated spaces for the health and wellbeing of our children, teens, young adults, and educators. Our experience creating environments that facilitate diversity needs in learning began with the ‘Inclusive Schools Hubs’ for the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA) completed in 2020. Designed as part of the Victorian Government Education State reform, the innovative pedagogics of the project support students with fl xible environments designed to enhance skills growth, creativity and knowledge development. Importantly, the project provides special needs…

Celebrating INDE.Awards 2024 In late May 2024 the incredible INDE.Awards 2024 jury gathered digitally and in person to deliberate the extraordinary shortlist and determine the Best Of The Best. The talent within the Indo-Pacific region was this week celebrated with a live and digitally broadcast evening of announcements at the VIP Gala event in Melbourne. This year was exceptional with more than 515 entries received from 16 countries across the Indo-Pacific. With a calibre of excellence across all categories the INDE.Awards is the go-to award program for determining those architects, designers, interiors specialist and product designers at the forefront of the architecture and design industry. We congratulate the winners of the 2024 INDE.Awards and applaud their exceptional abilities as they continue to elevate architecture and design to the highest levels…

Portrait of Hiroshi Sugimoto. With his photograph depicting the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on the wall behind him, Sugimoto in his New York studio is relaxed and tanned in a peach coloured shirt. His career has been extraordinary so far, but as he likes to point out, there is a lot more to come. That said, at seventy-six he is nding it more di cult to travel to continue his Seascapes series (1980–ongoing). This is also stymied by the lack of developing chemicals and the good photographic paper and negatives in the 8x10 format he likes. None the less, each morning Sugimoto can be found in the darkroom, “every morning is my dark life” he laughs. What makes the Seascapes series increasingly harder however is the changing…

As one of three buildings for the University of Tasmania’s (UTAS) Inveresk Campus in the Northern Transformation Program, Rivers Edge is most decidedly a standout in every aspect. Wardle was commissioned to deliver this, and three other buildings for the University as part of a master plan, however, the design and realisation of Rivers Edge as a learning and teaching facility, completely encapsulates the ideas of connection to people and place, history and landscape. Partner at Wardle and design lead on the project, James Loder and his team, have conceived a structure that provides state-of-the-art facilities where gathering, work and study perfectly co-exist. Rivers Edge is situated on a triangulated 1800-square-metre footprint, between other buildings, and spans four levels. While the site was challenging, the result is masterful, with six…

William Smart As an artist focused largely on public art projects for the last 35 years, let’s talk about the relationship between the built and natural environment that underpins your work. Jennifer Turpin My interest has always been in making art that responds to the environment – activated by elements of nature – water, sunlight, wind, tide. Creating an energy that has a rhythm – keeps pace with rhythms of nature or rhythms of the city – if the artworks are urban the work needs a pulse to tune us to the world around us. Things we take for granted, like the tide. WS How do you go from concept to ge ing a work built? JT Like an architect – always making models and tests. We’re* engineering inventors in…

Once a rolling wooded headland with cool breezes and good shing for the Gadigal people of the great Eora Nation, the Barangaroo Headland had almost been erased with vertical walls enabling docklands, but very li le of the natural in evidence. Oysters are now growing again, as are marine plants and a whole maritime ecosystem below the ju ing shelf of hewn sandstone blocks. Experienced as part of my early morning run through the city, the headland comes as a revelation of landscape architecture that is neither informed by straight lines nor entirely natural. Instead the JWP and PWP Landscape Architecture design is an arti ce that invites nature in, as Kiong Lee, JPW Director, explains. “One of the things we looked at initially was this idea of being naturalistic…