Best Heritage Restoration and Repurpose

Barcelona2015-23-euroawards

Recinte Modernista de Sant Pau, Barcelona - a hospital designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner and built between 1901 and 1930. It was a fully functioning hospital until June 2009, and now has now been restored for use as a museum, library, and cultural centre.

Best Railway Station

Joint Winners - Rotterdam Centraal Station by Bentham Crouwel, MVSA and West 8, 2014, and Oriente Station, Lisbon, by Santiago Calatrava, 1998.

Best Combined Apartment Building & Covered Marketplace 

The Rotterdam Market Hall by MVRDV, 2014. This remarkable building combines apartments, a covered food market, a supermarket, Rotterdam's largest car park and what is probably the world's largest mural. Check out the inside...

Best Small Project

Barcelona15-378_copy-euroawards The Barcelona Pavilion  by Mies van der Rohe, 1929. Built as the German Pavilion for the 1929 International Exposition in Barcelona, it was disassembled afterwards, and Mies fled Germany to the US not long after that, on the way to becoming one of the 20th century's most influential architects. The Barcelona Pavilion lived on, in memories, drawings and photographs, becoming a powerful icon of Modernism and the International Style. In the 1980s the Barcelona City Council commissioned architects Ignasi de Solà-Morales, Cristian Cirici and Fernando Ramos to rebuild the pavilion. The new version was completed in 1986, an exact replica on the original site. 

Best Restoration of a Really Really Old Building

_DSF0145-euroawards The Temple of Athena Nike, Acropolis, Athens. First built around 420BC, the temple has been dismantled or destroyed several times. In 2000AD the Acropolis Restoration Service commenced a project that involved completely dismantling and removing the building, then reassembling it with a new floor. The project was completed in 2010 - some of the more important frieze carvings are now in the new Acropolis Museum. 

Best Covered Flea Market

Barcelona15-167-euroawards

Mercat dels Encants, Glòries, Barcelona by b720, 2013.

Best Bridge

Rotterdam15-231-euroawards

The Erasmus Bridge, Rotterdam, by Ben van Berkel, 1996

Best Atrium

Barcelona15-259-Edit-euroawards

The Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), by Richard Meier and Partners, 1995. I do like a good atrium. This one was a delight on a sunny summer's day. 

Best Heritage Interior

Barcelona2015-42-Edit-euroawards Casa Batlló, by Antoni Gaudi, first constructed 1877, then refurbished to the current design in 1904. I had experienced this famous house in 2005, dodging all the other tourists touring the site at the same time. This time David Cardelus arranged for the two of us to get access at 7am, two hours before the doors opened to the public. Bliss.  (By the way, I reckon Gaudi is better at houses than he is at big churches.)

Best Really Big Building

Rotterdam15-240-euroawards De Rotterdam by Rem Koolhaus, 2013. Some say it is the largest building in the Netherlands. 3 large towers, 44 storeys each. 

The spectacular new building made for the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) has gained a large amount of attention, but to date not many people have been inside and there are few images available of its interiors.  There are plenty of exterior views around, including one by me which seems to have taken on a life as the hero image of the building used in the many articles about it in the architecture media, for example ArchDaily in early December.

I was commissioned by the builder, Hindmarsh, to photograph their project team inside the building in late December, and to create some images to be used for a project completion gift to the team. Although the building had been 'opened' by the politicians, inside it was still very much a construction site, and many views were compromised by ongoing works. We did get these however, which provide a teaser about the spaces inside, some of which to me are breathtaking. This is the most beautiful and inspiring work place I think I have ever been in. 

Update: Following a commission by Aurecon, the engineers responsible for the facade and the structural components,  and for most of the building's services, I have many more photographs of SAHMRI -  there is a selection here.

East side view, showing how the facade meets the top level work areas and the roof.

The West atrium from the top level. East atrium, showing the relationship between the facade and several levels of workspace.

SAHMRI, east atrium, showing the stair case, work levels and facade.

Port Willunga, twilight, beach, sunset, waves

The housing is interesting - almost all of it is double storey buildings, each having multiple flats or apartments, but with no internal stairs. Each flat has only one level - if you live on the top floor you have external stairs straight down to the street.

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There is a lot of good street art, and, refreshingly, hardly any of it has been defaced by moronic  tagging. 

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There are always people on the street, in and out of the corner shops and cafes, so the area has a safe, friendly feel. When we were there there one of the main streets boasted an extensive outdoor exhibition of photographs by Montreal photographer Jean-Francois LeBlanc. 

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A right angle triangle motif dictates the cladding of the building and both the exterior and interior detail, right down to the bike racks.

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The interiors are beautifully finished, with lots of timber
and some pressed metal sheeting.

untitled-1_Enf-Edit-Blog It is the mix of indoor and elevated outdoor informal spaces made from bold breaks in the facade  that make this building a treat for its users.  This space is behind the RMIT sign shown on the first photo, about half way up the building. The view is straight down the north end of Swanston Street, with the RMIT Design Centre down the road on the left, and the Melbourne City Baths on the right.

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This photograph was used as the poster for the Awards presentation. 

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A long lens used from the top of the adjacent sandhills allowed me to show the house's relationship with the nearby River Murray and Hindmarsh Island.

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The use of wood inside and outside this house is a stand-out feature.

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Steve Grieve, the architect who commissioned the photography, particularly liked this photograph. "A triumph" he called it.

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And this is my favourite from the shoot, again with a long lens from a fair distance, which allowed description of the location of the house, but it is the play of light and dark tones I really like in this.

My contact at the agency told me that the photographs were for a brochure, and generously offered to send me a copy. It arrived yesterday -  206 bound A4 pages,  that's a book where I come from, I think something was lost in translation - and all but two of the photographs in it are mine. Now my German is far from flash, so please don't ask me what the book is about, but I do like the pictures!

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Love a double page spread, especially when it's my photograph...

_MG_8809-EditC This was chosen as the hero shot of the building. I had taken it a couple of years ago for myself, and it won the job for me, popping up in the German agency's Google search on '400 King William Street'.

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This shot from the roof ended up on the front cover.  Good view of the Federal Court building from this angle and in this light. 

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I was asked to photograph some beautifully designed interiors. 

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The brief I was given called for 'images showing reflections of clouds on the building'. Clouds are fairly difficult to wrangle, so it took a few visits to get them lined up in the right place at the right time.  The client liked this one. 

_IGP2759-Edit My favourite photograph of Victoria Square is also in the book, taken in early 2010 when I had access to the top of ANZ House to photograph a water tank installation. 

_MG_0797B&Wv2 The Rotunda wing of the Finnish National Library, built 1902-1906, designed by architect and professor Gustaf Nyström.

_MG_0729 The remarkable timber panelled lift lobby in the Porthania building, University of Helsinki, designed by Aarne Ervi, completed  in 1957 and recently restored by Finnish architects NRT.  The next two photographs are also from this beautiful example of Finnish modernism. 

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Town planner, architect, furniture and homeware designer Alvar Aalto has perhaps done most to put Finnish design on the map.  The next three photos are from his famous Academic Bookshop (1962), right in the centre of Helsinki and still jam-packed with books and people buying them.  The first shows the sky lights, supposedly referencing the shape of open books, which allow natural light to flood the whole building.  

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Relaxing in the Alvar Aalto Cafe, Level 2, Academic Bookshop. Hopefully this gives a bit of an idea of how those skylights make this interior such a delightful place to be. 

Alvar Aalto Cafe, Level 2, Academic Bookshop, Helsinki (Alvar Aalto, 1962)

_MG_0815 Beauty and function combine in these door handles at the entrance to the Academic Bookshop - architecture for the high and the low...

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Finally, the cafe at Finlandia Hall (Alvar Aalto, 1971).  I want those chairs!

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The hotel is part of a major redevelopment of the area, not yet complete, with a number of other new buildings also echoing the design themes of traditional Zaandam in a light-hearted, modern way.  The master plan for the area is by Sjoerd Soeters of Soeters Van Eldonk architects, who also designed the buildings in these photographs - the railway station, the city hall and council chamber, and a bus station.

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The hotel's conference centre and a pedestrian walkway (on the other side) straddle a major road to link the railway and bus stations to the hotel and the retail district of Zaandam.

Some of the traditional wooden house facades found in the Zaandam area. 

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Andrews Farm wetland

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Walking the dog, Unity Park, Pooraka

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Munno Para wetland                                                                                          Dry Creek behind Yatala Prison

Wallbridge & Gilbert engineers commissioned me to shoot this fairly major piece of infrastructure with the brief to "make it look like a bridge, not a tunnel".  Apparently all the images they could find emphasised the 'under' rather than the 'over'.  I was pleased with this result.

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Bakewell Bridges

A bit more challenging was the requirement from Wallbridge & Gilbert to show that the Bakewell Bridge over Henley Beach Road was in fact two bridges, one for road and foot traffic and the other for trains.  I had to talk my way up to the top of the 4 storey tower on the heritage building nearby to get this shot.

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Built by Hindmarsh, designed by Grieve Gillett, this student apartment block successfully combines high density, low budget housing with a considerable amount of style.  

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The apartments, all lit up, from the fire escape of the North Terrace Freemasons' Grand Lodge. 

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From the Freemasons' backyard  - showing off the colour of the balcony ceilings. 

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The foyer, lifts and office.

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Another view of the foyer office.

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Part of the communal laundry

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The wall on the northern boundary features a a trio of pixellated flying ducks by architect Michael Buchtmann, shown here from the 1st floor communal area. 

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Each of the apartments has its own balcony. 

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The apartments are modest in size,

well equipped with the basics,

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and feature superb views of the Adelaide CBD from the higher levels. 

21st Century Art Appreciation

The celebrity paintings in the Museum of Modern Art get a real workout. 

The Chrysler Building

It was a beautiful image of this extraordinary monument to art deco that first got me inspired about photographing buildings, so of course I had to try to make my own.  It took a while to find a good vantage point, but when I did I got reasonably lucky with the light.  Three handheld frames from a long lens, stitched together in Photoshop.  (I love my 80cm high print of this!)

This is detail from the lower section of the building.

The High Line

This was originally an elevated railway line built in the 1920s to ship goods in and out of New York's West Side warehouses without bothering the street traffic.  The trucking industry caused its decline, along with the rest of America's rail system, and in 1980, with a final delivery of 3 carloads of frozen turkeys, it was closed.   After years of agitation, litigation and attempts to demolish it by developers who had bought the cheap land underneath, the High Line is now a fabulous raised park, with some stunning design and great views into New York.  Photographer Joel Sternfeld's documentation of the disused line and its natural flora helped build public support for the project.

A warmish Saturday evening - the High Line was very  busy.

    The old and the new are on display from the High Line                                                                         Free sunset here tonight!

The Cast Iron Buildings of SoHo

These fascinating buildings are a feature of the SoHo district in southern Manhattan. Built in the late 1800s, pre-fabrication of cast iron elements that were bolted in place was the cheapest way at the time to build with decorative facades.  I don't know what it is about the windows that cause the intriguing distortions in the reflections. 

Note the hexagonal slots for tightening the bolts (the other knobs are decoration).
I wonder if the panels came in a flat pack with a big Allen key?

Meanwhile, back on the SoHo streets:

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