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The buildings Australia missed out on

Jul 23, 2014
Caught Unawares. Minifie van Schaik 2013, Sydney. Digital Reconstruction by Ben Juckes. Courtesy: felix

Caught Unawares. Minifie van Schaik 2013, Sydney. Digital Reconstruction by Ben Juckes. Courtesy: felix

The Australia exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale showcases 100 years of fascinating missed opportunities.

The Augmenting Australia 1914-2014 exhibit features 11 historical and 11 contemporary buildings which were designed, but never built.

They include a building with “skin”, a massive 200ha-wide glass dome in Victoria, and an Aztec pyramid atop the nation’s central monument.

Here’s a selection of the most surprising designs, complete with their own CGI fly-throughs.

How to skin a building

This design clothes a 1960s educational office block in a high-tech “skin”. This would have allowed the building to transform automatically in response to the weather.

“It’s one of those biophilic buildings which actually responds to the climate,” says professor Philip Goad, one of the exhibition’s creative directors.

LAVA, Tower Skin, Sydney. Digital Reconstruction by Keith Reid and Scott Horsburgh. Courtesy: felix.

Tower Skin. LAVA, Sydney. Digital Reconstruction by Keith Reid and Scott Horsburgh. Courtesy: felix.

“When it’s actually very, very sunny, it will shade it more, and when the light’s dim, it will open up more.”

Despite the idea being conceived in the late 1970s, wrapping buildings in “skins” could represent the future for renewal of large-scale buildings.

“It’s increasingly how many people believe that skins of buildings will develop in the future,” says Goad.

Living in the dome

It’s a science-fiction concept which inspired films such as The Truman Show and books like Stephen King’s Under the Dome, but a massive dome could have become a reality for Melbourne in the 1970s.

The dome was proposed in 1965 by Romberg & Boyd Architects to house the Australian exhibit for the 1976 World Exposition.

“It would have been something like a couple of hundred hectares, I think,” says Goad.

Australian World Exposition. Image: Robin Boyd (Romberg & Boyd), Melbourne. Project 1965. Digital Reconstruction by Tim Mettam, Elliot Lind & Leo Showell. Courtesy: felix.

Australian World Exposition. Robin Boyd (Romberg & Boyd), Melbourne. Project 1965. Digital Reconstruction by Tim Mettam, Elliot Lind & Leo Showell. Courtesy: felix.

The exhibit itself was planned as a microcosm of Australian life under glass.

“It had little ideal Australian landscapes, a little ideal Australian suburb … complete with a little ideal Australian footy ground,” says Goad.

“Like putting the expo into a giant space bubble.”

Melting the Sydney Opera House

This “ironic project” sought to take one of Australia’s most recognisable landmarks and transform it into something new and strange.

“It’s like taking Sydney Opera House and then manipulating it, stretching it, turning it inside out and, in many respects, saying ‘this building has become an icon; why don’t we actually see if we can operate on it, and disturb it’.”

The building was designed at a time when the technology to construct it simply didn’t exist.

Caught Unawares. Image: Minifie van Schaik 2013, Sydney. Digital Reconstruction by Ben Juckes. Courtesy: felix.

Caught Unawares. Minifie van Schaik 2013, Sydney. Digital Reconstruction by Ben Juckes. Courtesy: felix.

“We can build it now,” says Goad.

“The thing is, we couldn’t have conceived it back then because we didn’t have the digital techniques to make those sort of shapes, but now we can do it.”

The building’s concept was inspired by a children’s book, whose name is too racist to mention. But the story was of a little boy chased by a tiger; the two ran around the tree so fast that they melted themselves into butter.

A very comfortable treetop protest

This design is for the serious, discerning environmental activist.

It’s habitable cubby house in the sky designed to sway in the wind with trees in need of protection.

“There’s a desk, there’s a mini-kitchenette, there’s lighting, there’s solar collectors on the roof, and I think there are chemical waste toilets, too,” says Goad.

Styx Valley Protest Shelter, Tasmania, Image: Andrew Maynard Architects, Project 2008. Digital Reconstruction by Mark Parsons. Courtesy: felix.

Styx Valley Protest Shelter. Tasmania, Andrew Maynard Architects, Project 2008. Digital Reconstruction by Mark Parsons. Courtesy: felix.

Goad says the protester’s abode would have to be installed by crane. The building itself would cling to swaying trees using extendable “arms”.

“A bit like how a monkey climbs a tree – the arms go out, these attach themselves to the tree trunks, almost telescopically, and that’s how it would work.

“Whether you could actually do that, I don’t know.

“Contemporary architects are also thinking that their buildings can be part of an activist agenda.”

Aztecs on Capital Hill

This monumental building would have brought Mayan architecture to the heart of a supreme Australian cultural institution.

The Capitol was designed for Canberra by Walter Burley Griffin to be built where new parliament house currently stands. It would have been a grand national archive of Australian achievement and history.

“It was going to be the centrepiece of Canberra. And instead of Australia’s parliament house being the centre, this was an archive for the people.

“What it would have done symbolically is, unusually for Australia, put culture ahead of power. And that would have been brave.”

The Capitol. Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Canberra. Competition (1911-12) Project 1914. Digital Reconstruction by Craig McCormack. Courtesy: felix.

The Capitol. Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Canberra. Competition (1911-12) Project 1914. Digital Reconstruction by Craig McCormack. Courtesy: felix.

Increasing transparency at the Lodge

This would have been a very different type of Lodge.

Rather than a prime ministerial residence, the Lodge on the Lake would have been a massive greenhouse with buildings on the inside.

The design is “equivalent to making buildings out of terrariums”, says Goad.

“It’s a huge, breathing glass house, which covers over a series of buildings underneath it.”

Lodge on the Lake. m3architecture, Canberra. Competition Entry 2013. Digital Reconstruction by Mark Parsons. Courtesy: felix.

Lodge on the Lake. m3architecture, Canberra. Competition Entry 2013. Digital Reconstruction by Mark Parsons. Courtesy: felix.

Olympic-sized dinner plate

This aerodynamic-looking structure is what might have been built if Australia had not used the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the 1956 Olympics.

The cantilevered dinner plate structure would have been buried deep in the ground to create its spectacular “floating” effect.

Olympic Stadium. Harry Seidler, Princes Park, Melbourne. Competition Entry 1952. Digital Reconstruction by Daniel Giuffre and Paul Sawyer. Courtesy: felix.

Olympic Stadium. Harry Seidler, Princes Park, Melbourne. Competition Entry 1952. Digital Reconstruction by Daniel Giuffre and Paul Sawyer. Courtesy: felix.

The design features a towering, cigar-shaped pole on one end, to string metal wires across the diameter of the stadium and support its canopy roof.

“It would have been like a sort of flying saucer in Princes Park.”

According to Goad, the stadium was inspired by the Maracanã Stadium in Rio De Janeiro, which just completed its term as the venue for this year’s world cup.

“It would have been this quite extraordinary modernist monument, using great structural expression.”

You can experience the full exhibition using the Augmenting Australia mobile app.

The Australian exhibition at the Venice Biennale is an initiative of the Australian Institute of Architects.

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