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Architecture

This Month

With a 236-square-metre footprint, the average size of an Australian house in 2020, this country has the biggest houses in the world.

How much does that big house really cost you?

A new exhibition challenges thinking about houses at a time when Australia’s homes are the biggest in the world.

  • Michael Bleby
Just 10 metres wide: The Ferrars & York apartment building occupies a 610-square-metre site between a  tram line and a main road in South Melbourne.

How to build housing on urban wasteland

An apartment building sandwiched between a road and railway line has set a new standard for what can be done with once-derelict sites.

  • Michael Bleby

October

An atrium inside 1 Elizabeth, the new headquarters for Macquarie.

Macquarie’s new home is one to admire for its smarts

The investment banking and trading giant’s new office at 1 Elizabeth Street in Sydney brings building materials, and a metro station, to the fore.

  • Matthew Drummond
Nina Maya designed the wellness space at GWS Chairman Adrian Fonseca’s Bellevue Hill home.

How the wellness revolution is transforming luxury property

Integrated spa facilities and health-enhancing spaces on par with the world’s best hotels are the new norm in high-end house and apartment projects.

  • Bonnie Campbell

Plan to save Frank Lloyd Wright’s only skyscraper isn’t going well

Once a buzzy hub of business life, and briefly occupied by Phillips Petroleum, the 19-storey tower has struggled for many years to find an anchor tenant.

  • Annie Aguiar
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September

Each of the six homes occupies three levels, with a top, middle and bottom level sunk below the ground plane and having a courtyard entryway.

An old London bridge? No – it’s a new housing development

In Camden borough, a row of tall brick arches gives the impression of a Victorian viaduct. But they’re something else altogether.

  • Richard Conway
Catching winter sun, avoiding summer glare: Emily Walter in her 8.2-star Canberra home.

The $660k home that has no heating or cooling costs

Higher thermal standards make homes more comfortable and cheaper to run. And they don’t have to be that much more expensive to build.

  • Michael Bleby

August

John McAslan

Keep building ambition, says key architect behind Sydney Metro

UK-based John McAslan says Sydney Metro was a smoother ride than London’s recent Elizabeth Line.

  • Matthew Drummond
A render of the four-bedroom, three-level townhouse at 11-11A Old Berowra Road in upper north shore Sydney’s Hornsby, which sold for $1.8 million off the plan.

Couple buys $1.8m home – and still ends up sharing with parents

Many multi-generational families want to live close to each other. But worsening affordability has reduced spending power – and that’s changing housing design.

  • Michael Bleby
Cathedrals of the 21st century: Victoria Cross Station on the new Sydney metro.

How Sydney Metro’s architects made train stations people actually like

The “cathedrals of the 21st century” have united Sydney’s tastemakers and commuters, who marvelled at their new Metro line this week.

  • Michael Bleby and Campbell Kwan

July

The Lacrosse tower on fire in Docklands in 2014.

Architects, fire engineers, building surveyors fingered over cladding

Victoria’s combustible cladding crisis shows the permit system failed to ensure compliance with building rules, a new government agency report shows.

  • Michael Bleby

New Michael Kirby building takes law students ‘into the light’

The new Macquarie University Law School, designed by architectural practice Hassell, brings the legal faculty to the centre of the campus and into the light.

  • Stephen Todd

Meet the man at the helm of design icon Molteni&C

Vincent Van Duysen, the visionary creative director of Italian design powerhouse Molteni&C, opens the door to his personal spaces.

  • Stephen Todd

The Sydney-born solution to NYC’s paragon of inefficiency

Architect Ben Berwick’s modular glazing system for saving energy costs is more than window dressing.

  • Matthew Drummond
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Sydney’s new aquatic centre was worth the wait

It’s won the Sulman Medal for public architecture and the hearts of locals with its empathetic design and impressive facilities.

  • Stephen Todd
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The most glam Olympics of all? Parisians are unimpressed

Plonking games venues among the city’s iconic monuments is an unprecedented experiment that will look grand on TV but its setup in causing street-level chaos.

  • Hans van Leeuwen
The three-bedroom townhouse at 3/29 Wheatleigh Street in lower north shore Sydney’s Crows Nest sold by private treaty for $2,915,000.

The unusual move that made this seller $4.8m

Most people with a large block to offload would do just that, but this vendor developed it – and made a much bigger profit in the process.

  • Michael Bleby

June

Sarah Kay takes over as Woods Bagot CEO from 1 July 2024.

‘Huge demand’: Australia’s largest design firm expands worldwide

Architecture practice Woods Bagot is focusing on growing demands for luxury and non-traditional consultancy services for design firms.

  • Michael Bleby and Patrick Duffy
The $10 million renovation by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer of Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Campbell House private office in Sydney’s Woollahra won the top NSW award for commercial architecture. 

Cannon-Brookes’ $10m office reno tops architecture awards

The focus on giving new life to old buildings is crucial at a time when preserving embodied carbon of existing buildings is an increasing priority.

  • Michael Bleby

The slick design on show inside Martin Place’s new metro

Designing the station below the city’s “civic heart” was a three-dimensional puzzle, says its architect. Which makes the feeling of calmness inside all the more remarkable.

  • Stephen Todd

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/topic/architecture-jaj