Client: Private
Scale: 175sqm
Completion: June 2017
Builder: Xenia Constructions
Description:
This new day spa occupies a space fronting St Paul's Terrace on the ground level of Lend Lease's new "Kingsgate" office tower at the RNA showgrounds precinct.
With the treatment spaces tucked away behind a gentle layer of privacy, the primary space that opens onto the street makes the most of the available ceiling height with a generous vaulting ceiling which runs the full length of the space.
A lush green tiled floor builds up into a high skirting, and a band of natural spotted gum timber lining and dowel screens completes the tripartite sectional arrangement.
Photography: Toby Scott
Client: ARIA Property Group
Scale: 1,000 sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
An adaptive re-use redevelopment of a historic Art Deco apartment building on a very busy South Brisbane corner into a new bar/dining establishment, A new Corbusian slabs-and-pilotis construction is proposed as the site's new primary entry point fronting Fish Lane, Brisbane's most active and diverse dining laneway. A gold mosaic tile-clad vault caps the structure, with diminishing voids cut through the levels below to allow the golden shimmer to be visible from the moment visitors arrive at the laneway entry.
Client: ISPT
Scale: N/A
Completed: March 2018
Description:
Bespoke lobby furniture made in collaboration with Schiavello for Central Plaza Brisbane, originally designed in the 1980's by Japanese architect Kisho Kurakawa. The polished stone floors were intended to represent the Japanese game of "Go", and this furniture creates new pieces for the board.
Photography:
Client: ISPT
Scale: 6,000sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
This reworking of a particularly raw but refined 1970's CBD office tower pares back layers of recent refurbishments to leave the beautiful bone structure of tapered concrete columns and uninterrupted facade glazing to do the talking.
Overlaid onto this is the bare minimum of embellishment, intended to bring a sense of tactile deliciousness to surfaces that the hand can touch and the eye can wander over.
Client: ISPT
Scale: 22,000sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
Opening up a brand new pedestrian connection between Queen Street and Eagle Lane via a dining arcade, this redevelopment of an existing 7-storey office "mini-tower" annex to the much larger, 40-storey conjoined "Central Plaza", strips away all traces of 1980's polish (leaving the adjoining tower thoroughly intact) and leaves a raw but refined arcade dining environment that announces its presence at street and laneway frontages via large insitu concrete portals.
Client: ISPT
Scale: 550sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
The first Brisbane example of ISPT's "Dialogue" concept, this full floor fitout of the Central Plaza Annex converts a conventional office floor into a flexible meetings & gathering space for Central Plaza tenant organisations. Accessible via the sensuous copper stair (or lifts) from our laneway retail development at ground level of the same building, this new space is designed to create spaces scaled to feel perfect for gatherings ranging from a casual one-on-one chat to a 200-person function.
Client: Axis Capital
Scale: 1,500sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
A redevelopment of a Brisbane CBD office tower including a thoroughly redesigned ground level lobby and cafe, end-of-trip facility and lift interior upgrades.
The new lobby transforms what was formerly and austere and empty space into a lush, densely detailed environment full of intimate settings for gathering together or enjoying some quiet solitude in a semi-public space that is neither the office or the street.
Client: Lendlease
Scale: 1,200sqm
Completion: August 2015
Builder: Lendlease
Description:
Transforming the traditional relationship between office tower and street, this design for the ground level public spaces and retail areas blurs the boundary between inside and outside, public and private. A largely outdoor “foyer” space and deeply shaded outdoor dining areas are key features of this highly permeable ground plane.
These spaces provide outdoor dining, informal meeting and incidental interaction opportunities, with the objective of establishing a new precedent for subtropical commercial office development through the creation of memorable, enjoyable outdoor spaces that directly connect the building to its historic public context.
Client: ISPT
Scale: 1,200sqm
Completion: Feb 2017
Builder: Xenia Constructions
Description:
Reclaiming under-utilised basement floor area as new shower & change facilities for building users in Central Plaza, Brisbane, this end-of-trip facility pares back the existing remnant spaces to their raw, concrete-encased form and adds in only the bare minimum of new elements to create a atmosphere of austere but sensual luxury.
Human interaction with every item is considered in detail, with careful attention paid to every touch point and the daily process of cleansing the body and preparing for work or exercise.
Technological items such as in-locker phone charging, wi-fi and building information integration are all available but their presence is embedded within tactile, natural surfaces that are a delight to touch and effortless to use.
Photography: Toby Scott
Client: Private
Scale: 250sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
Importing the ideas behind Torre Guinigi from Lucca in Tuscany to Wilston in Brisbane, this house starts with an entry tower topped by a lookout with views of the city from under the shade of a tree's canopy.
The house then unfolds in stepped terraces down the north-facing hillside site, with a central courtyard between the double-height living spaces and the sleeping & bathing spaces in the rear portion of the house.
Cladding is lightweight, as dictated by town planning regulations, and is anchored off chimney-like heavy brick stacks.
Client: ISPT
Scale: 900sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
In an era where a basement "end of trip facility" is a fundamental requirement for any CBD office tower, this proposal takes over an entire above-ground office level and converts it into a wellness centre for use by building users and the general public alike.
A new stair links the upper level space to a busy street-level laneway, leading to a juice bar reception which opens onto a boxing gym and yoga studio.
Around the tower's core, shower, change and locker facilities are grouped so that they can be used by cycle commuters, evening joggers and gym users alike.
The design of the entire space emphasizes the raw concrete structure of the buildling, paring back finishes & embellishments in the same way that working out takes us back to our raw physical selves.
Client: Private
Scale: 60sqm
Completion: Feb 2014
Builder: Formula Interiors
Description:
A new store for designer optometry brand OPTIKO, this fitout in the historic Tattersall's Arcade in the Brisbane CBD looks to settle effortlessly into its old-world gentlemen's club location, as if it's always been there.
Referencing Sir John Soane's 1812 House Museum in London and Carlo Scarpa's 1958 Olivetti Showroom in Venice, the fitout mixes theatricality with familiarity, brought together with fetishistic detailing.
Photography: David Hanson & Chris Proud
Client: LaSalle Investment Managment
Scale: 800 sqm
Completion: In progress
Description
Client: Mantle Group
Scale: 1,000sqm
Completion: Mar 2016
Description:
The latest Pig'N'Whistle venue and the first on the Southside, this very sophisticated pub opens directly out onto a very busy corner with outdoor seating and lush landscaping right up to the footpath edge.
Inside, the vaulted ceilings simultaneously tie the whole interior space together whilst also having the effect of breaking up the large internal volumes into more intimate, human-scaled spaces that lend an aura of specialness to the space around each table.
The ceilings create a regular rhythm in the interior spaces that are very irregularly-shaped in plan, bringing order and a sense of familiar history that is carried in the vault forms. The spaces thus created are visually arresting but also easily approachable and instantly comfortable.
The bar itself is the centrepiece of the venue, crafted from brass and Pilbara marble in an intricate composition on a very large scale.
Photography: Toby Scott
Client: Private
Scale: 25sqm
Completion: May 2014
Builder: Formula Interiors
Awards:
Best Cafe Design Shortlist, Australian Eat Drink Design Awards 2014
Description:
Directly opposite our OPTIKO fitout, this new cafe/bar for the same client continues the same contextually-responsive design themes and seeks to establish itself as something of a rarity in the Brisbane cafe scene - a quietly elegant off-the-street destination with a classically continental approach.
Brass, marble, dark timber and studded leather finishes combine with handmade tiles, chamfered mirrors and low lighting to create a space that is designed for settling into by day and night.
The signage and graphics are an integral part of the fitout, and are the result of a close collaboration with graphic designers The Letter D.
Photography: David Hanson & Chris Proud
Client: Arete
Scale: 1,292sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description
A design proposal for the new Uber "Green Light Hub" in West End, Brisbane, utilising an extremely limited budget to maximum effect by concentrating the design effort around the public entry point, while the remainder of the spaces were to be ultra-basic, stripped back and raw.
The new reception point occupied an existing double-height space at the front centre of the building footprint and was treated as a single timber mass form where the arrival counter was integrated into the stair access to the upper staff level, and an accessible staff lift was edged with a lush planted timber screen. All other finishes were to be simple raw concrete with basic painted walls and economical loose furniture.
Client: LaSalle Investment Management
Scale: 2,000sqm
Completion: In progress
Description
Client: Private
Scale: 400sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
To be constructed using a prefabricated timber shed-frame system, this house for a large family on a magnificent semi-rural site is envisaged as a small village with a central courtyard and a series of distinctly different outdoor spaces on the outer periphery.
With a primary structure including all the main living spaces, the other structures that make up the village include a parents' suite, a pair of double children's rooms, a garage and a utility shed.
The "circled wagons" arrangement of the individual buildings creates a completely private yet completely open central space which forms the true living heart of an outdoor-oriented household.
Client: Private
Scale: 400sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
Situated on an expansive site of open eucalyptus forest between Brisbane and Ipswich, this house is designed to have a very direct relationship with the intensely-present elements whilst making its presence felt within an environment that could easily overwhelm a meeker intervention.
The house presents itself with a variety of personas as it is approached along the existing winding dirt track. As first glimpsed, the leaping roofline dominates under the vast sky and tree canopies. Circling around on the track behind the house, it protects itself from the intense southwestern heat with solid masonry walls, punctuated only by the single break of the front door and capped with the angluar cantilevering roof. Continuing around the northern, open forested side, the house opens itself out to the landscape, stepping gently down from an only slightly raised verandah to an outdoor hearth and a grove of native grass trees.
Client: Private
Scale: 275sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
Situated on a lush, cascading site on a quiet, close-knit street, this house itself cascades down site, forming elevated outlooks, courtyards and terraces as it goes.
Client: Pragmatic Traning
Scale: 3425 sqm
Completion: April 2016
Builder: Amicus Interiors
Description:
A very low-cost fitout for a beauty, health, design and IT vocational training company across two full levels of the brand new Kingsgate office tower in Bowen Hills constructed by Lend Lease. More details of our design for the ground level retail & public spaces environment on the project page.
Expansive open spaces are an essential component of the brief, allowing for classroom & studio training as well as common area gathering and recreation for large numbers of students.
The material & finishes palette is very simple & restrained, creating a simple but memorable backdrop for the busy activity of daily learning & socialising activities.
Photography: Toby Scott
Client: Private
Scale: 7,500sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
This small apartment tower, to be located in one of Brisbane's most underdeveloped inner-city pockets, takes its design cues from its context of historic warehouse-industrial structures mixed with more recent, taller buildings.
The podium design borrows heavily from nearby facades, with classic red brick and exposed concrete banding interspersed with occasional arched window heads and parapet details. An open brick screen conceals and ventilates the podium carparking located above a ground level which includes reception, cafe and bar/restaurant space as well as back-of-house functions.
The tower itself has an extremely simple language with regular steel mullions running full height to meet the sawtooth roof that shelters a roof bar overlooking the city, as well as service plantrooms to the rear. The sawtooth roof and raw tower expression both reference local steel warehouse typologies.
The tower accommodates 45 apartments and is 13 storeys high above street level, with 2 additional basement levels below.
Client: Brookfield Multiplex
Scale: 27,000sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
This 25-storey, 264-apartment tower on a prominent Brisbane inner-city corner site takes context as cue for its overall form and detail expression.
The tower is designed to be fully public at ground and mezzanine levels, constructed in rough brick to reflect the gritty & historic nature of the surrounding built form. Situated on a prime corner in a major entertainment precinct, it is permeable to the street for its entire frontage, offering opportunities for people-watching via lounge-able edges.
The tower form is a simple glazed functionalist extrusion, capped by a simple metal roof form that borrows from nearby light industrial warehouses.
Client: Queensland Ultimate Disc Association
Scale: 1,500sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
A concept for Australia's first permanent Ultimate Disc facility, this robustly elegant structure is intended to become the Brisbane home of the rapidly-growing sport of Ultimate Disc.
It is designed as a community facility, and as such takes economy and flexibility as its starting points. Oriented north/south, it has two distinctly different faces - one screened off from the western sun with a deep colonnade, and the other opening out to the playing fields with grandstand seating.
The expandable modular structure comprises 3 primary materials - raw concrete superstructure, white powdercoated steel elevated structure, and raw coreten steel infill walls & screens.
Client: Private
Scale: 450sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
This new house for a builder and his family on a gently sloping, eucalypt-wooded 5 acre site is designed as an extension of the landscape as well as an elevated platform from which its verdant, semi-rural setting can be observed and enjoyed.
The house is grounded into the site with a heavy brickwork base that makes its presence felt as it turns toward the sky as a chimney. The elevated portions of the house are anchored around this chimney, with a simple trussed roof covering over the entire open "C" planform in a single sweep.
Rather than being an object in the landscape, the house is imagined as a more habitable extension of the landscape itself, always directing itself outward for a man and a family that love to spend as much time as possible outdoors.
Client: Private
Scale: 50sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
A very small extension to an existing family house in one of Brisbane's more established northwestern suburbs, this project adds a third companion structure to the modest single-level house and detached garage that currently occupy the site.
The new two-storey addition completes a three-part composition of mini-buildings gathered around a north-facing courtyard, leaving room for the courtyard to spill over into the informal, rambling gardens that border the site on all sides.
While the new spaces include only a lounge room, bedroom and ensuite, with a dining room occupying what was formerly a deck, the end result is a transformed living environment that is felt throughout the whole house.
Client: ARIA Property Group
Scale: 30sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
A simple glass display case placed in a garden in front of an existing office building in South Brisbane.
A reflective polished stainless steel roof with fine perimeter columns addresses the street and provides shelter, while the glass box within breaks away from the street alignment to settle into its garden setting and respond to its micro-context of adjoining window openings and solid walls.
Absolute transparency is the primary concern, with the entire interior easily visible from the street. The physical entry point is defined by a single arch, also of polished stainless, completely unembellished and stripped back to its pure abstracted essence as signifier of an opening.
Client: ARIA Property Group
Scale: 280sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
Fish Lane in South Brisbane is rapidly emerging as a busy drinking & dining laneway, catering to a young, fast-growing population moving into the inner-city locale's many new apartment developments.
With this adaptation of an existing laneway edge condition, 3 meter-high existing brick walls on the kerb line are cut open to create windows onto the lane from a new dining courtyard that occupies the previously unused garden space between the walls and the existing multistorey office building.
These window openings are given a welcoming and recognisable personality by capping the modified wall with a white concrete lintel with arched heads over each opening. A flat steel sunshade slides almost invisibly between the wall and the lintel, adding texture, depth and sun protection.
The tall trees in the existing planted area are retained, passing through openings in the new vaulted roof that covers the kitchens and part of the dining courtyard. The rest of the courtyard is left open to the sky, partially shaded by the repetitive comb of exposed steel roof structure.
Client: Private
Scale: 450sqm
Completion: In progress
Description:
A very low-cost conversion of two 1970's brick-fronted warehouses sharing a single site in Fortitude Valley, this project rehabilitates the site and the existing buildings for human habitation through lush planting and simple design interventions.
The two warehouse buildings, one roughly twice the size of the other, are separated by a service laneway which is re-imagined as a productive garden and entry way to the small warehouse, reconfigured as a family home.
The large warehouse is adapted into a flexible office, events or showroom space, allowing living and work to occur side-by-side with a blurred but still clearly legible delineation.
Client: Lend Lease
Scale: 1,800sqm
Completion: April 2014
Description:
With major redevelopment planned around the historic Brisbane RNA Showgrounds over the next decade, developers Lend Lease wanted to start by bringing life & activity to the precinct by temporarily adapting existing structures for leisure, retail and office uses.
Shed 12 had served many years as the RNA's "chook shed", but as a fairly rudimentary structure it is not to be preserved long-term. With redevelopment planned for the near future, a proposal was made to adapt the 1,800sqm Shed as a mixed-use environment offering offices, co-working space, function rooms and a major new bar & restaurant.
As a temporary project, the intent was to keep materiality and detailing extremely simple and cost-effective, using bright colour and bulk form as the defining quality of the architecture.
Client: Private
Scale: 350sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
This fitout of an existing upper-level office space in a former Teneriffe woolstore strips the space right back to its original raw materiality, then adds in the bare minimum to define the functions of a solicitors' office.
The plan diagram is extremely simple, with the long thin space fronted by an open reception, which is separated from the main office space by a transverse-oriented boardroom and meeting room. Thus, the two primary functions of legal practice - client interface and focused work - share effortlessly discreet access to the shared meeting spaces.
Meeting rooms are formed simply by infilling between existing floor, columns and beams with frameless glass. There are almost no full height partitions, with offices defined only by a standard 2.4m part-height storage unit and a frameless glass divider from the main office space. Secretaries and graduates work in the open-plan heart of the office, where all the shared services such as libraries and staff hub are located.
Client: Private
Scale: 100sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
This miniature project takes a disjointed series of existing accidental spaces and carefully arranges them into a simple, cohesive whole, giving new outdoor life to a house on a sloping New Farm site.
A freestanding garage is converted into a part-time poolhouse with adjoining lawn, a deck is converted into a family living room, and an elevated pool deck is converted into a grounded terrace that binds the composition together.
Stepped levels are knitted together with the use of the simple device of a linear-banded elevation, allowing the relationship between various levels to become complementary and providing layers of openness and privacy relative to the needs of each space.
Client: Private
Scale: 150sqm
Completion: Unbuilt
Description:
The ceiling is the only interior surface in any building that remains largely uncovered by furnishings and decorations. Flat ceilings give nothing for the imagination to become attached to, for the reclined eye to investigate and traverse - the inverted landscape of daydreams.
A refurbishment of an apartment in a 1980's cream brick tower, this scheme is defined by the extruded triple-vault ceiling form that is adapted at an exact 1:1 scale from the entry arches of the building at street level.
The triple-vault form is modified further in plan, overcoming the typical "space sandwich" of the apartment volume by creating a unique spatial environment in each room. The vault form re-appears in every room in a different guise - as a portal, an ornament or the upper limit of a loosely defined sub-space.
The intent is to create an enjoyable and physically tangible sense of spatial variety, as well as an intriguingly-detailed ceiling over which the eye may wander at leisure. The result is a collection of rooms that each carry their own sense of atmosphere and intimacy, tied together into a recognisable whole by the simple but surprisingly varied triple-vault device.
Client: Open Competition
Scale: 5,000sqm
Completion: NIL
Description:
According to the late Ngunnawal Elder Don Bell, the true meaning of the word "Canberra" is "woman's breasts", referring to the twin mountains of Mt Ainslie and Black Mountain that define the plain in which Canberra was created. Despite this, Canberra is defined around just one primary axis established between Mt Ainslie and Parliament House.
This proposal seeks to re-establish a polyvalent relationship with the ancient Canberran genius loci by forming itself around the intersection of the two major axial lines to Mt Ainslie and Black Mountain, and then adding to this the third and fourth axial determinants of Red Hill and the sky, or Cosmos.
Australia is an ambitious, outward-looking island nation, and this proposal reflects our grounded, “down to earth” persona combined with global outlook in its siting and physical expression. The site itself is the landing point for a soaring structure that leaps out over Lake Burley Griffin and addresses the City of Canberra with a confident, welcoming disposition.
The siting of The Lodge allows the majority of the site to be preserved as landscape setting for perambulation and rehabilitation. The site divides into two equal sized settings on either side of the ridge. To the west, gathered around a private cove, is the “cultivated” landscape, whilst to the east is the protected “indigenous” landscape.
The great copper roof is the defining element of the architecture, as it is of our mineral-rich continent. The roof takes on the familiar gabled profile of historic local structures, including the original worker cottages at Westlake and the Yarralumla Brickworks. This roof form speaks immediately of “home”, but its scale and articulation give the building a sense of purpose and identity befitting its role as The Lodge.
At the primary entry, the great roof cantilever reaches out to a skyward mast from which the Australian flag is flown. The roof is truncated perpendicular to the axis linking the Lodge and Parliament House flagpoles.
Internally, the ground level is given over to public spaces, with the ballroom and dining room occupying the primary eastern and western wings over the Lake. The upper level features the PM's residence and office in separate wings. A great central atrium connects both levels with the sky and is envisaged as a “house museum”, displaying Prime Ministerial art and artifacts from Federation to present day.
Client: Private
Completion: Mar 2010
Scale: 1,100sqm
Builder: Kym Lynch
Awards:
2011 AIA National Awards - Brisbane Regional Commendation - Commercial Architecture
2011 AIA National Awards - Queensland State Award - Commercial Architecture
2011 IDEA Awards - Finalist, Commercial Interiors
Publications:
Artichoke Vol 32
AIA "Inspire 2010"
Description:
An existing warehouse abutting the main northern rail line in Fortitude Valley is re-purposed as a collection of flexible event spaces downstairs and shared creative studio tenancies upstairs. The primary task was to create a memorable identity and atmosphere for the building and its interior spaces whilst leaving things open-ended enough to allow for any sort of event or end use without significant modification or restraint upon theming.
Particular attention has been paid to giving the building a “blank canvas” exterior, communicating its intended persona, whilst ensuring the internal spaces have “strong bones” with scope for endless change accommodated within volumes that retain their integrity and spatial quality even when empty.
hotography: Scott Burrows
Client: Category of One P/L
Completion: Jun 2007
Scale: 750sqm
Awards:
2007 AIA National Awards - Brisbane Regional Commendation - Interior Architecture
2007 AIA National Awards - Queensland State Award - Interior Architecture
Description:
entral to this scheme is the unfolding of a continuous steel element which appears variously on floor, wall and ceiling surfaces throughout the building, linking together through tactile familiarity a series of otherwise very different areas. Internally, a large void has been cut in the existing upper level floor to create a central room which is the orienting space to which visitors return, often a little sleepily, from their various aesthetic treatments.
Photography:
Scott Burrows
lient: Private
Completion: Mar 2006
cale: 150sqm
escription:
A small renovation project on an existing 1930's house and gallery in Canberra, the scheme removes a bathroom, toilet and laundry which previously occupied the northeastern corner of the house and replaces them with new indoor and outdoor living spaces whilst adding no extra floor area. The primary organising and spatial device is a utility spine accessible from both sides which buffers the public living areas from the private sleeping areas.
Photography: Alex Chomicz
Client: South Bank Corporataion
Completion: Sep 2007
Scale: 15sqm
Description:
The initial brief for this tiny project was simply to enclose the existing mixing desk at South Bank Piazza in the most economical fashion conceivable in order to allow sound technicians to permanently and securely install their complex audio-visual equipment insitu. The potential mundaneness of this brief was countered by the shared enthusiasm of the architect and the client representatives, both of whom firmly believed that any addition to this iconic public place needed to reflect and enhance the significance of the Piazza.
Our primary constraint was that there would only be a 2-week break in performances in the Piazza during which the construction of this new sound booth needed to be completed. In order to achieve this we designed a "shell" form which could be pre-fabricated entirely off-site and installed in less than a day, with the infill at each end being constructed around this superstructure in the remaining time.
The actual shape of the shell is generated primarily by the practical requirements of maintaining sightlines, continuing the line of the tiered seating, and avoiding any horizontal upper surfaces which might allow a place for people to stand on or fall from. An element of theatricality is brought to the shell by the way in which it presents a completely closed carapace when unused but then slowly opens out using electric rams in preparation for use.
Client: Edwina Corlette Gallery
Completion: May 2008
Scale: 90sqm
Description:
A small, single shopfront volume is converted into a memorable
collection of three discrete rooms by doing nothing more than removing all existing finishes and positioning a small number of new plaster walls. The outcome is a generous, high-ceilinged main gallery which spills into a smaller display area and proprietor's workspace, with both of these providing access via breaks in enclosing walls to a largely separated and very intimate gallery. Floors and ceilings are pared back to the original grey concrete, and the smallest gallery space is animated by the copper pipework left exposed overhead.
Client: Private
Completion: Oct 2008
Scale: 120sqm
Publications: Habitus Online, Nov 20, 2009 - interview
'In August 2007, {...} architect Stephen Cameron acquired an old dairy grazing farm in Queensland’s Maleny, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland for renovation and a new way of life.
“Before that we’d been coming up this way for years on weekend holidays – the landscape is a spectacular combination of volcanic topography and subtropical forests, overlaid with the lush green expanses of post-colonial agriculture – and we wanted to make the experience of this high country a much more regular part of our lives.
“So, after years of searching we finally found ourselves the owners of this quite sublime property,” Cameron says.
He says originally there was no building other than a rotting shack but the beauty of the landscape had its own charms.
“What we really first loved about the property was simply its immense beauty. There is a previously cleared path that winds its way through the various micro-environments of the property, making it perfect for strolling around,” Cameron says.
Originally the Camerons had envisaged a project over a lengthy timescale but have since deviated from that out of a necessity to utilise the property immediately.
“It has proceeded very quickly and very directly more or less exactly to plan, that plan being to utilise a pre-existing and readily available construction technology (the ‘shed’) to make something that would allow us to pursue this living experiment straight away and at minimal cost,” Cameron says.
“By utilising the full volume rather than just the floor area of the steep-roofed vernacular shed form we’ve been able to make a living environment that, whilst being extremely compact, offers a sense of generosity coupled with layers of privacy – qualities that are ordinarily mutually exclusive in houses on this scale and budget.”
Various ‘greenovations’ have been incorporated into the design in support of Cameron’s ideas on sustainable architecture to keep everything “simple” and “robust” and include a simple, extruded gable form with long sides facing north and south to capture sun and scenery.
Other green inclusions such as walkways with translucent roofing also run the length of the house providing plenty of shade and protection from the heavy rain that falls in Maleny for a large portion of the year.
“Roof overhangs have become very unfashionable of late, but they are infinitely (more) superior than the alternative of complex multiple-glazed windows with zero overhang, and not just from a sustainability point of view,” Cameron says.
“Zero overhang equates to zero transition between inside and outside, leaving nothing but an abstract sense of abrupt separation between where one is standing (whichever side of the glass that may be) and the contents of the view through the glass, which is always reduced to the status of a flat image rather than a fully corporeal, conjoined reality."'
Portfolio includes projects that were under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working in other practices. SCA has no ongoing involvement with any of these projects.
Please click on the project thumbnails in the main navigation page or below for further information about all portfolio projects.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: Wesley Mission Brisbane
Scale: 43,000sqm
Status: Unbuilt
Description:
This proposed development at the major satellite hub of Chermside on Brisbane's north is for a 20,000sqm NLA office tower suitable for a large tenant organisation. In addition, a further 2,000sqm NLA is to be created as a new workplace intended for the client's on-site staff.
These areas are to be located in separate buildings which share common facilities, as well as ground level pedestrian access and on-site amenities.
The surrounding context includes an established aged-care and retirement living community which features a number of heritage buildings, including a chapel known as "The Sanctuary", and a generous garden known as the "Village Green".
In developing the site strategy for this development, the key objectives were to reinstate the historic visual link from Gympie Road to the Sanctuary; extend the Village Green into the heart of the site; protect Village Green from the harsh arterial road context; and to orient the built form in order to take advantage of local and distant views, as well as solar orientation.
The historic Wheller Gardens Settlement was predicated on the idea of semi-independent aged care based around small communities or settlements, set amongst pleasant gardens. By extending the Village Green deep into the new development, uninterrupted views of the Sanctuary are achieved across a landscaped green and additional amenity is provided for the occupants, visitors and staff on the site. The development is carefully crafted to give definition to the landscape, as is the outlook from the proposed creche, office and retail development, in stark contrast with the major arterial road adjacent.
The Village Green is wrapped in a protecting edge of creche, office and retail ensuring its amenity and further protecting the Sancturary with a physical buffer to Gympie Road. The environment becomes contained, peaceful and deliberately focused around the activities abutting the green.
Consolidating the primary tower to the south of the site opens views to the north and allows light gain deep within the floorplate. Views to the south of the site as far as Brisbane CBD from level 5 above and east to Moreton Bay and west accross the settelment are desirable. The program is wrapped around a central courtyard, establishes views through to the Village Green and Sanctuary beyond.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: AMP Capital Investors
Scale: 41,000sqm
Status: Unbuilt
Description:
Coronation Drive Office Park Building 7 (CDOP7) will deliver a major new workplace environment with a projected new population of over 2,500 workers to the CBD fringe business centre of Milton. Central to this development will be the creation of a new public realm at the heart of the Coronation Drive Office Park (CDOP) precinct, strengthening links with the broader Milton neighbourhood and the city of Brisbane at large.
This first stage of a masterplanned redevelopment of the entire CDOP precinct incorporates the delivery of an urban common activated by outdoor dining and public recreation spaces, located at the heart of the renewed precinct, creating a major new outdoor public place serving the local community and visitors from further afield.
CDOP7 is proposed to be a 12 storey, 32,092m2 GFA ‘A’ Grade (PCA) office building with ‘campus’ style 2,390sqm floorplates. The design of the new commercial tower is intended to have a timeless quality and to actively engage with the subtropical urban realm. The development will ensure that Milton continues to evolve as a fringe business centre within walking distance of the Brisbane CBD.
Significant design components of the development include:
_A new, 1,300sqm urban common
_Approximately 26,548 m2 of net lettable office space over 11 office levels.
_Approximately 1,150 m2 of food retail space at ground level
_Targeting 5 Star Green Star and NABERS ratings.
_An offset centre core that allows a flexible and efficient floorplate
_Ground level permeability with three distinct entry points - from Little Cribb Street, the new extension of Railway Terrace and the proposed urban common.
_A dedicated cycle store and end-of-trip facility for building occupants and CDOP workers, accessed separate from the new building via a ramp passing under the canopies of a copse of fig trees.
_Retention and integration into the precinct design strategy of all significant trees on site.
_The relocation of one significant fig tree currently located within the proposed CDOP7 footprint to a landscape verge adjacent the CDOP9 carpark on the southern side of Little Cribb Street.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: RSCM P/L
Scale: 450sqm
Status: complete
Awards:
2012 AIA National Awards - Brisbane Regional Commendation - Interior Architecture
Description:
Dining is not simply eating. Dining takes the necessity of food and, with great effort and expertise, converts it into an edible artform that satisfies our appetite for creativity, surprise, theatricality and adventure, all while seated in a comfortable chair, with friends.
To dine requires a room, whether indoors or out, which establishes the significance of the event and generates an atmosphere that contributes to the dining experience.
In this restaurant we have sought to create a series of rooms through a variety of definite and implied demarcations. Diners are allowed glimpses from their own room into the next, relieving the containment of a singular space and enabling chance encounters with diners from afar.
The site for this restaurant is a ground-floor tenancy in a riverfront office tower with a superb outlook over the Brisbane River and Story Bridge.
Externally, a heavy steel entry portal provides a dense transition from outside to inside, and new outdoor dining decks extend toward the river and offer expansive respite from the intimacy of the interior.
Internally, the new elements extend upon the existing column grid to create an undulating volume that runs across the full width of the existing space. This uneven space is then punctuated by three enclosed boxes, containing back-of-house uses, whose solidity overwhelms the previous dominance of the three rows of structural columns and creates the sequence of rooms required for the various modes of dining.
The brief required three key dining rooms – casual, fine and private – each of which was to be directly served by a food preparation space that would be an active contributor to the dining experience. Each of these dining rooms is separated, and connected, by the servant spaces where the food is prepared and plated, with these servant spaces located within the primary solid elements that generate the division of the overall volume into distinct rooms.
Photography: Roger DeSouza
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: Nielson Properties
Scale: 51,000sqm
Status: Unbuilt
Description:
With this design proposal, we were interested in the blurring of boundaries between inside and outside, new and old, natural and constructed, rough and refined.
As a building type, it is common for towers to have very distinct edges. In physical, cultural and economic terms, the boundaries between what the tower is and what it is not are usually very precisely delineated. However, the history of buildings in our region is a history of indistinct edges and broad transitions. The point at which a building ends and the landscape starts has traditionally been uncertain, and it is this undefined space that people have instinctively sought to occupy.
We sought to create a tower that could merge with the sky through translucency and ephemerality, and dissolve into the urban landscape by overlaying spaces that are public and private, cultural and commercial.
The proposal was for an office tower that, when viewed from afar, is intended to appear as a fine-skinned lantern, using treated glass to windows and external sunshades to give a consistent materiality, and generate depth and interest in the transmission of light and shade. We were preoccupied with the desire to create a tower that is elegant and restrained, with design effort to be invested in the subtleties of materiality and detailing.
The building is capped by a screen wall of translucent glass extrusions to create a memorable, ephemeral skyline silhouette, glowing from within with refracted sunlight by day and with LED lighting by night.
At street level, the same translucent glass extrusions trigger memories of the tower as first experienced from afar and offer a finely articulated streetfront screen to the podium levels. Lush planting is incorporated into these screens, giving a sense of verdant shade and coolness whilst also reinforcing the sustainability credentials of the 6-Star GBC building.
The podium strategy envisaged a generous, triple-height space to the ground floor foyer. This foyer is enlivened by a cafe that also fronts onto Herschel Street and the cross-block laneway, as well as the art installation, display and production spaces that occupy the upper balcony spaces overlooking the foyer. A grand public stair rises from the Herschel Street footpath toward a great public room incorporating bar and restaurant on the corner of North Quay, with superb views across and down the two reaches of the Brisbane River.
Above all else, this tower proposition offers large, ideally
proportioned floorplates that are focussed around access to
sweeping views across the river and hinterland. Access to
natural daylight and planning flexibility are also key
considerations, and a range of test-fit designs were developed that demonstrate the suitability of the base building design to a range of likely tenant uses.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: Nielson Properties
Scale: 400 Apartments
Status: Unbuilt
Description:
This residential tower proposal was intended as an exemplar of subtropical residential tower living.
The primary sustainability and lifestyle requirement for a residential tower in Brisbane is to have access to natural cross-ventilation through every apartment, and this was the starting point of the design manifesto. On every floor of the tower, apartments are designed so that they can be opened at each end in order to draw the readily-available breezes through and minimise the need for air-conditioning. Small screened spaces between lift lobby and front door allow for a greater density of cross-ventilated apartments, outdoor drying space (saving energy from clothes drying) and a gentler privacy gradient between apartment and lobby.
The building form is broken down or pixellated by the randomised use of common elements such as balustrades and sunshades, as well as simple offsets in window placement and panel jointing. The emphasis here is on elegance and restraint.
The planning of individual apartments is premised on the desire to allow views of the river and beyond from most apartments, and this was achieved in 80% of all apartments. Detailed planning prioritises living area and bedroom space over kitchens, on the evidential basis that large kitchens are less critical to inner-urban residents.
The podium of the building is screened with translucent glass extrusions interspersed with lush vertical planting, with steel boxes projecting through from the two-storey street-facing SoHo apartments behind. A large public outdoor dining terrace is envisaged above the corner of Herschel St and North Quay, offering expansive views across the river reaches and the Cultural Precinct.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: Charter Hall
Scale: 25,000sqm
Status: Completed 2013
Description:
A redevelopment of an existing riverfront Brisbane CBD office tower, this project seeks to reposition the existing building between PCA "A" and "Premium" grade, taking advantage of its proximity to the river and prestigious Eagle St location.
The project includes full refurbishment of every floor of the building, but the primary architectural components are at ground level.
The building has suffered from a lack of street presence since it was built in the early 2000's, and the key design strategy was to provide it with a strong new identity at street level that would also provide better legibility of the various street-facing functions.
There are four key frontages - the main lobby; a cafe; a laneway between the street and the river; and a retail shopfront. Each of these frontages has been given its on individual address, scale and relationship with the street via a deeply articulated awning structure that extends through as a ceiling into the interior spaces.
A stronger relationship with the river was also a natural focus, with a new river-facing deck being added to the rear of the tower to create a new riverfront dining location with an elevated outlook over the Brisbane River, Storey Bridge and adjoining Customs House.
Stage 1 works completed May 2013 include a Cycle Centre accessed from the Riverside walkway and new concierge joinery in the main foyer. Stage 2 works will include the new street awning, laneway, riverfront deck and public artwork components.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: Wesley Mission Brisbane + PBS Building
Scale: 16,000 sqm
Status: Unbuilt
Description:
A shortlisted proposal for a new northern metro workplace for Energex (a major utility organisation), this six-storey office building was designed to be a thoroughly modern, open and flexible 5-star Green Star, PCA A-Grade workplace.
Externally, there are three primary elements to the architectural composition – a timber-detailed base, a glazed prism and a layer of metallic screens that enclose and protect it. The timber base creates a strong tactile interface with the ground plane and landscape, while the metallic screens are detailed specfic to their orientation and offer a vernacular response to the Brisbane climate.
Rather than designing the building from the outside in as an “object” first and work environment second, the external envelope has been kept simple and refined in order to turn the primary spatial focus inward. A great atrium occupies the central area of the plan and is encountered as one moves through the building from the main entry foyer to the uppermost floor. The arrival point at each floor level opens directly onto the atrium, and it is located such that it is ringed and crossed by the primary circulation routes, including stair access between different floors. Natural daylight is admitted from the top of the atrium and, in conjunction with unrestricted daylight available around the edges, ensures that the workspaces have minimal reliance on artificial lighting.
Furthermore, the atrium is designed as a positive space rather than a negative void, and it offers a different experience on each floor level, aiding orientation and giving a sense of uniqueness within a large work environment. Primary breakout and meeting spaces adjoin the edges of the atrium, and it is criss-crossed by timber stairs and walkways offering ever-changing views and informal contact between disparate floors and workspaces.
* This project was under the design direction of Stephen Cameron while previously working at Hassell.
Client: University of Queensland
Scale: 500 apartments
Stauts: concept only
Description:
On a macro scale the overall form of this student accommodation proposal responds primarily to the site topography, which falls steadily toward the northern end of the site. Looking closer, the mass of the buildings are conceived as an additive arrangement of individual unit ‘blocks’ onto which are plugged simple steel balconies. The stacking of these blocks is varied across the site to respond to the existing context, provide views, and produce an interesting built form that becomes new built topography overlaying the natural terrain.
Rather than consolidate the apartments into a single, monolithic building, we have proposed a site planning strategy that is founded upon the desire to create village-scaled courtyard spaces scattered across the site, allowing for frequent small-group use and the development of a tangible sense of communal familiarity.
There are two types of courtyard:
_Primary courtyards that are of a more generous civic scale and form a continuous circulation route between the site’s three main access points
_Secondary courtyards that provide a more intimate-scaled outdoor space for informal outdoor leisure and recreation.
A single-loaded access strategy has been adopted, as it allows all apartments to have a northern or street-facing view, and it also ensures that no living room overlooks another. The variety of windows, balconies and walkways that open onto the courtyards also helps to activate and animate them throughout the day and night.
The detailed apartment planning sets out to create simple, repeatable modules that are cost-effective to fabricate and produce a high quality environment for living and studying.
