ARCHITEAM MEDAL WINNER

ARCHITEAM MEDAL
All entries are eligible to win the ArchiTeam Medal and an award must be given in this category. This is the highest award and judges may award this to an entry of general excellence, or for something more specific, from any category.

Winner: Gilby + Brewin Architecture – Spring Bay Mill

Judges Citation: 
Located an hour East of Hobart, Spring Bay Mill is the outcome of a successful long-term collaboration between a visionary client and Gilby + Brewin Architecture. Previously one of the world’s largest woodchip mills, the locations multistage master plan includes a cultural events venue and the ongoing regeneration of the 40-hectare sites former Indigenous ecologies.

The first stage of the project includes the adaptive reuse of the existing industrial building fabric to create three main event spaces. The Banksia room, a 250-seat function space has repurposed the former administration building, The Tin Shed has transformed a former bark stripping shed into a 230-seat performance space; and the new Amphitheatre has ingeniously reimagined the old slew crane footing into an open-air performance venue and giant sundial.

In addition to the events spaces, the Ridge Quarters provides new group accommodation for the venue, gently curving and referencing the scale and materiality of the former industrial structures on the site. Gilby + Brewin’s careful, contextual, and considered design approach demonstrates, through minimal intervention, the potential of regenerative architecture. The jury agreed this important project provides some key lessons for the broader profession, promoting environmental, social, and economic sustainability and is a deserving recipient of this year’s ArchiTeam Medal.

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SUSTAINABILITY MEDAL WINNER

SUSTAINABILITY MEDAL
All entries are eligible to win this Medal and an award must be given in this category. This medal is to be judged on the above criteria as well as showing sensitivity to sustainability principles. This can be quite general – from innovative re-use of an existing structure through to a more complex response to sustainability.

Winner: Gilby + Brewin Architecture – Spring Bay Mill

Judges Citation: 

Gilby & Brewin’s Spring Bay Mill project, located on the east coast of Tasmania one hour from Hobart, is notable for the breadth and depth of forensic investigation into what a large-scale regenerative project can be. 

The staged transformation of this vast site into a malleable events venue embraces principles of loose fit, long life and low energy, with a clear commitment to engendering positive environmental, social and economic outcomes for generations to come.

Existent underpinnings of extraction, damage and callousness at this former woodchip mill have been intelligently subverted through adaptive building, industrial plant and material re-use, delicate prefabricated construction techniques, and simple interior environmental systems based on orientation, shade and natural ventilation.  Care and attention to detail also reverberate through the considered selection of robust materials and finishes, and future leaning decisions such as the consideration of solar generation, battery storage placement and rainwater harvesting. 

This exceptional project represents a blueprint of architectural and process-design excellence for post-industrial sites, and for the jury, is the unanimous winner of the 2022 ArchiTeam Sustainability Medal.

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Jan Juc Studio
Eldridge Anderson Architects

Judges Citation:

Jan Juc Studio is modest, considered and very beautiful. Designed for themselves, the architects have crafted a house that clearly reflects their ideas about living and a desire to connect strongly with the surrounding environment. The simple form of the house helps mask a more radical plan focussed on flexibility where privacy and connection are carefully balanced.

The veil of operable screens and doors enable the house to adapt to the conditions of the day or season, modifying and manipulating the skin of the building to reveal glimpses of inhabitation. The singularity of the timber screens strengthens the clarity of intent, a permeable perimeter that provides protection while maintaining a direct connection with the landscape and reinforcing the concept of living on a platform in the bush.

Finely detailed and carefully constructed, this house is restrained and rich, achieving a rare, timeless quality.

Light Scoop House
Molecule Studio

Burnley
Sonelo Architects, in collaboration with Ample Architecture

Jan Juc Studio
Eldridge Anderson Architects

Burnley
Sonelo Architects 

Canning
Foomann Architects 

Light Scoop House
Molecule Studio

WINNER
Residential New - Over $1Mil

West Bend House 
MRTN Architects

Judges Citation:

The West Bend House is a sophisticated and beautifully crafted response to a complex brief. With a modest footprint for a family of five, the floor plan is articulated to accommodate flexibility for various life-stages. The house allows for opportunities for working from home, independence and social gatherings of various scales. 

The interiors are warm, rich and feel incredibly liveable. Detailing of the robust materials is well resolved and builderly, allowing for the house to age gracefully and stand the test of time.

ESD and sustainability is thoughtfully considered through correct orientation, distribution of thermal mass where appropriate and satisfying key objectives of incorporating renewable energy sources, up-cycled and recycled materials, rainwater harvesting and energy efficient fittings and fixtures.

The garden has been beautifully orchestrated, incorporating a generous rear garden and taking advantage of a deep front set-back and an intimate courtyard connecting the two pavilions.

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Bermagui Beach House
Winter Architecture

Bellbird House
Bower Architecture & Interiors

Bellbird House
Bower Architecture & Interiors

Bermagui Beach House
Winter Architecture

West Bend House 
MRTN Architects

Beach Slice
Steffen Welsch Architects

Hawthorn I
Agius Scorpo Architects

Judges Citation: 

Hawthorn I by Agius Scorpo Architects is a deft reinvention of the backyard home.

Designed as a freestanding studio for the clients’ teenage son, it creates a separate dwelling, shed, and pool, while preserving the garden and an existing tree, all on an exceptionally tight budget.

Eschewing the temptation to simply add a box on the back, this exceptional project weaves its way around the backyard, opening up new aspects and spaces in a constrained footprint.

This project demonstrates playfulness and control. The pitched attic bedroom presents a striking object, a clear form, carefully detailed with fins to shade the sun from the north. While the curved timber walls recede to the background, appearing as a bulging fence, connecting to the domestic context.

Small gestures like the bench seat integrated into the fins lend it a relaxed sense, inviting a newspaper and a coffee, while the white datum line connects the various parts together.

Above all, this project points toward new ways of living in the suburbs, by creating a new dwelling within an existing block, and new spaces for multiple generations to live together.

Arthur
Oscar Sainsbury Architects

Hawthorn I
Agius Scorpo Architects

Arthur
Oscar Sainsbury Architects

Mischa's Place
Circle Studio Architects

Pergola Extension
Krisna Cheung Architects

Periscope
Architecture architecture

Judges Citation: 

Situated on a tight 84m2 site, this addition ekes enormous spatial variety and delight from a conventional domestic brief and an unassuming frontage.

It does so through cannily letting the house stay small, while enlarging it. A full width skylight has been inserted mid-plan: this element deftly organises both plan and section, lights the middle of the dwelling, and marks a passage. It is a beautifully executed idea, which together with the adjacent perforated and mirrored screens, dissolves the solidity so often found at the centre of a narrow house.

Careful, unfussy joinery, often doing two things at once, cannily makes space for objects, cooking and washing, but leaves space for living and for a garden. At the upper level, elements lift to connect the bedroom to outdoor space, to planting and to the volume made by skylit passage – again, an unusual openness in a constrained setting. The scale of the existing cottage is celebrated rather than transfigured. It seems like a very good place to be.

Weather House
Mihaly Slocombe Architects

Periscope
Architecture architecture

Ponds
WOWOWA

Weather House
Mihaly Slocombe Architects

Northcote House
Mitsuori Architects

Higham Road House
Philip Stejskal Architecture

Judges Citation: 

The humble little cottage has been respectfully reconsidered in the new alterations and extension. The existing weatherboard frontage remains the hero on the streetscape with the new elements as crafted bookends on either side. The new works never dominate but weave their way in and around the site carefully considering the heritage of the original house and the complexities of the topography. 

The materiality of the alterations and additions are exquisitely detailed and connect to the existing lightly and with deference. New formal elements such as the Lookout take on multiple functions as a screening device, while providing long views to Fremantle harbour, but also a point of focus within the central courtyard.

The architect demonstrates their exceptional skills in planning, detailing, responding to the site and listening to their client through this complex, subtle and sophisticated project.

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Wakanui Trail House
Ben Callery Architects

Carlton North Residence
Project 12 Architecture

Wakanui Trail House
Ben Callery Architects

Higham Road House
Philip Stejskal Architecture

Carlton North Residence
Project 12 Architecture

Spring Bay Mill
Gilby + Brewin Architecture

Judges Citation:

The Triabunna Woodchip Mill exhibits an exemplary architectural response that clearly implements the strong intent of its client.

A group of environmentalists purchased the property in 2011 with the intention to not only cease the industrial operations of the mill; but to refocus the use of the site as a venue for both cultural and environmental events.

A series of spaces have been carefully interwoven into the existing infrastructure of the site, paying tribute to the mill’s past life and architectural language. The design response deliberately reflects the historical use of the site in order to highlight its rejuvenation and use as a platform for the client’s environmental and cultural advocacy.

The site’s intent has been equally supported by landscape interventions that stitch the various parts to define a collective whole.

Cowes Primary School – New Gymnasium
Project 12 Architecture

Hampton Park Secondary College Senior Learning Centre
WOWOWA

Spring Bay Mill
Gilby + Brewin Architecture

Cowes Primary School – New Gymnasium
Project 12 Architecture

butcher shop convert
tsai Design

Hampton Park Secondary College Senior Learning Centre
WOWOWA

M1_The Deck: The Infrastructure Open-Air Museum Park
Fairbank and Lau

Judges citation:

M1_The Deck: The Infrastructure Open-Air Museum-Park by Fairbank and Lau is a positive and provocative concept for the undercroft of the M1 freeway in South Melbourne.  

This site was once largely dominated by light industry, a forgotten end of the city. But in recent decades, Southbank has been redeveloped, along with dozens of residential towers housing tens of thousands of people. And yet this area is lacking in public space, gardens, and culture.  

Fairbank and Lau’s proposal shows how the huge area underneath the freeway could be transformed from a dusty and dark forgotten space, into a generous and playful public space for the local community.  

This proposition is in the true spirit of the unbuilt project, in that it shows the unrealised potential in the centre of the city, and helps us to imagine new possibilities for the future. 

Black Diasporas
Culture as Creative 

Judges Citation:

Black Diasporas Naarm, by Culture as Creative - an immersive, multi-dimensional exhibition experience conveying stories of individuals of African ancestry living in Naarm (Melbourne), through the form of oral narrative.

Held at No Vacancy Gallery, QV, Melbourne the exhibition design revolves around a cleverly articulated sequence to demarcate the areas of Enter (introduction via print media) Envisage (projected individual film-based narratives), Narrative (introspective deep story listening) Collective Memory (recorded stories of exhibition attendees) and the final element Sense(s) of Place (telephone booth story recording by attendees).

A sophisticated use of multiple media in conjunction with lighting & sensorial/tactile design provides the viewer with an exceptionally engaging experience.

Also evidencing a strong commitment to sustainable practices through simplicity in form, and material re-use and re-purposing, the exhibition is an exemplar of what can be achieved with a minimum of means.

Ultimately the success of Black Diasporas Naarm is in providing the community with an opportunity to engage in critical dialogue, and a deeper understanding of humanity, experience and place.

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Lost Lands Found Fence
Public Realm Lab

Black Diasporas
Culture as Creative

Lost Lands Found Fence
Public Realm Lab