Urban Renewal + Adaptive Re-Use.

The environmental argument for urban renewal through architectural projects should be self-evident. Yet Melbourne, typical of many other cities is expanding its territorial reach into fertile agricultural land, into more bush-fire prone areas and natural habitat for flora and fauna through a combination of population growth and associated urbanisation.

Architecture is a set piece of the city and great cities are informed by its natural setting – think of Venice, Sydney or New York. Melbourne’s terrain and landscape is a gently undulating topography with a complex network of rivers and creeks that lead to a protected bay. However, its topography can be misconstrued as flat and uninteresting. The landscape itself is not that difficult to change – and in effect it has become a blank canvas for speculative intervention driven by land economics. The basis of the city is not to create architecture as such – but rather to create social framework its population. There are no obvious landscape or ideological challenges that seeks out an architectural expression.

Architecture becomes its own manifestation of the city – apart from its natural setting (see St Patrick’s Cathedral, Storey Hall). Each separate parcel of land offers the opportunity to create a speculative vision of the world – manifested through architecture. It is the evolution of building style and technology that become dominant threads in a bid to out-do previous incarnations of the city.

There is a sense that the city can continue to expand stems from no clear natural boundary at work in Melbourne and a road network that reaches further into the hinterland. The premise for Melbourne it seems was set early that the long straight roads and rail system emanating from its centre that was an optimistic grab to take more land. Now as the city stretches further – the sense of a centre applies less and the shape of the city takes on formlessness. Gridlock (see Eastern Freeway every morning) is an increasing feature of the city – hampering the connectivity to different places.

It interests me the importance of the centre in the psyche of Melbourne – that somehow no matter how far we travel from the CBD we instinctively know the relative distance from our destination (Thornbury is the next suburb after Nortchcote). During holidays and weekends we move the other way and we travel away from the city to rediscover the landscape wilderness – the more pristine the better. Transport is all about funnelling numbers from far-flung places to a central destination then back out again.

Other than for the availability of fresh water and harbouring at a particular junction of the river – there is nothing remarkable about where Melbourne’s CBD is located. Nonetheless, the decision to align the original grid city to the river created a relationship between natural and built form. However, beyond the CDB there was no clear relationship between urban fabric and setting – a self referential system of streets and roads was overlaid onto the the ground plane and extended to each direction.

To appreciate the landscape of Melbourne’s terrain one needs to travel along the rivers and creeks. Such a journey reveals a more spatially interesting place that the grid city suggests. The intricately curving lines of the rivers is made possible by a gentle terrain, the interconnection of creeks – interspersed with wetlands and incidental views to present a place of greater intrigue than is immediately obvious. It is surprising that Melbourne’s city planners were not the least bit interested by the shapes of the landscape. There is little urban design influence that architecture can really have unless a building happens to be close to an intersection of crossing streets and an accidental axis created.

Meanwhile new outer suburbs offer prospective owners with the promise of space, security and happiness. The reality is that we are buying into the destruction of our environment. These are places with poor infrastructure that is becoming increasingly difficult for families on moderate incomes to afford. There is a realistic suggestion that with decreasing access to resources especially fuel these suburbs could become the future ghettos of Melbourne.

My belief is that the expansion of Melbourne has exceeded its physical, environmental and possibly its population limit. That is if we want to maintain an ecological balance between city and its surrounding landscape, and not see the continuing resources drain (water, agriculture and youth) from rural Victoria. Our need to expand the city seems to be derived from the notion that we need to remain competitive on a global stage – then we need to continue to grow our population, resources and hence our city. Melbourne no longer competes with regional cities such as Geelong or Bendigo – but with Singapore, Boston and Sydney for its position in the global context.

It is frustrating that there is a lack of real political will to change the continuing expansion of cities either through consolidation or greater densification. However, we see that we must take up the challenge to undertake urban renewal projects and seek to create a greater concentration of resources in existing suburbs of Melbourne. RENOVATIONS, REFURBISHMENTS and RE-USE of existing buildings is difficult, unfashionable, expensive and sometimes dangerous work – but we see this area as being vitally important contribution in reducing more land being consumed around the urban fringe. It is also frustrating that inner city councils continue to prolong planning applications through a complicated process and adherence to prescriptive measures of RESCODE and odd local overlays. Inadvertently, these councils are contributing to the sprawl by making consolidation and renewal more difficult and financially less viable.

We cannot alter the grid system to better reference the prevailing natural landscape nor as architects can we stop the sprawling of Melbourne’s suburbs. However, in my experience, through architectural spaces there is an ability to connect people – with their physical environment and reveal something of the subtlety that makes Melbourne’s setting special. This is possible in even the most constrained of site whereby the building becomes an extension and part of the urban framework. We believe it is possible to subvert the rational grid and find ways to connect interior spaces to the natural and physical environment. Diagonal views to landscape elements and allowing Melbourne’s moderate weather patterns to be felt from the comfort of interior spaces.

My interest in architecture is to find ways to connect buildings to the landscape setting and relate interior spaces to external elements. What has interested me is that quite often the most ordinary buildings can be transformed into something beyond expectations. Terrace houses, warehouses, Californian bungalows shopping centre car parks sit quietly in their place and perform their task without fanfare. Humble buildings that we pass without as much as a second glance can through careful intervention are transformed into something that can serve future generations. It is the existing building’s voice that can guide new architecture to different planning arrangements and different typological outcomes, that has been an unexpected highlight for me.

Seeing a vestige of an idea hidden in existing shapes, details or arrangement and extrapolating meaning from beneath the surface connects the present to the past. Drawing and extracting something to emerge from its unheralded state to find different arrangements, unexpected views and connections that might shape the way we occupy space.

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“The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When forms exhaust their variety and come apart. The end of cities begins. In the last pages of the atlas there is an outpouring of networks without beginning or end, cities in the shape of Los Angeles, in the shape of Kyoto-Osaka, without shape.” Italo Calvino – Invisible Cities.

“You have to go through, suburban shop centres, pedestrian walking. . . are meant to make things better but it’s just emptier, scarier, night time . . . where is everyone?” Suburbia – Everything But The Girl.

“The new normal is a much harsher and less forgiving reality” Christopher Deere

“All that seems to matter is to make it through another day without seeming to slip backwards.” Christopher Deere

“The problem we face is that this rationale – save the world by commissioning a new eco-home – exemplifies the current state of our consumer culture, a culture predicated upon the belief that personal betterment can be achieved via consumption.”

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