KTA

Leading the conversation was Victorian Government Architect Jill Garner and Andrew Mackenzie from City Lab. The event brought together design experts from a range of professional backgrounds to explore the value of good design, weighing in on its measurability in creating sustainable, inclusive and engaging environments.

KTA Principal, Kerstin Thompson joined Richard Leonard (Hayball) on the panel, applying this theme to education projects.

Over 200 people attended the fast-paced talk which covered themes of health, education, public space, transport and neighbourhoods.

An audio recording will be available shortly via MPavilion.

This achievement honours Kerstin’s outstanding contribution to the advancement of the profession though active involvement within the institute, education and literature and public service.

Kerstin was the creative director for both the institute’s 2005 National Conference and the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale. She is currently an Adjunct Professor in Architecture at RMIT and Monash Universities and a Professor of Design in Architecture at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand.

Since founding KTA in 1994, she’s been dedicated to promoting quality design through the work of the practice, and within the wider community through her roles as Panel member on the Office of the Victorian Design Review Panel and Board Member for the Melbourne Housing Expo.

The internal configuration between private and residual areas provides contrasting qualities of space: intimate rooms are defined by concrete blockwork sections, with larger opaque walls arranged around and between, attributing to a greater sense of openness, breeze and transparency.

In-keeping with modest and rural sensibility, the material palette is robust and direct – concrete slab, Besser block and timber highlights.

The design encompasses a loose ensemble of two pavilions arranged within the site’s existing clearings to accommodate the clusters of surrounding trees. Both pavilions are distinct in scale and launch seawards from the higher portion of the site, capturing views of the coast and adjacent trees. The concept seeks to integrate the home and landscape – connecting the interior to the outdoors and allowing for climatic and seasonal variation.

Concept sketch by KTA.

A recent AFR piece by Michael Bleby highlights KTA’s Riversdale design as work that reflects next year’s Biennale theme ‘Repair’ – encouraging designers and the construction industry to work more sustainably and think differently about land use.

“There is definitely value in working with the natural environment rather than against it.”
—Louise Wright of B+W Architects

Image render by KTA.

Facilitating the school’s shift towards a more integrated arrangement of academic, teaching and research spaces, the design transitions students and teachers to an agile work environment. Acknowledging the historic fabric of the wool store and work of previous architecture practice McGlashan Everist, the adaptive reuse of existing conditions has been achieved through a process of edits.

View all shortlisted projects here. Winners announced at 2017 IDEA Gala Party in November.

Image by Paul Katsieris.

Burden of Landscape: Regardless of where one sits on Australia’s architectural spectrum there is nevertheless a shared compulsion to respond to a selected notion of landscape. Whether the preferred reference point is the romance of untouched bush, the suburban vernacular or indigenous ‘country’ (to name but a few), many of us explain our work in terms of its resistance to or embracing of a select understanding of landscape.

Image: Warrandyte Police Station

“…Thompson’s cellar door deliberately retreats from the public building profile and vast manicured landscape to orchestrate visitor control in a highly detailed sunken space where light and materiality provide a luscious interior.…” — Commercial Architecture Award Jury

Pictured is our Seaberg project, a nurturing yet robust house that presents an alternative model within this much-loved typology.

Congratulations to all 2017 Victorian Architecture Award winners. We look forward to the National Awards in November!

A take from Robbie Rowlands’ exhibition launch, as part of our Broadmeadows Town Hall redevelopment. The three-day exhibition, titled ‘Crossing the Floor’, featured site-specific video and sound works developed through the research period, and a delicately cut section of the supper room floor revealing the subsurface of the hall’s fifty-year history.

We look forward to sharing more on BTH as the project begins to take shape in the coming months.

The two-part design consists of a subterranean space for a 380 sqm gallery and a 140-metre-long bridge-like structure that will house a creative learning centre, a visitor hub and a 32-room accommodation facility. Read more about the site and planned design at Architecture AU, Financial Review and Green Magazine.

KTA is currently working on the Business Case and Design for Castlemaine Art Museum and a gallery and broader facilities for Arthur Boyd’s Riversdale Estate in Shoalhaven.

We’re also one of five firms shortlisted for the Shepparton Art Museum Design Competition (SAM), the winner of which will be announced next month. Read more here

Do less, achieve more. So writes Marcus Baumgart in Issue 58 of Artichoke in his feature on TarraWarra Cellar Door and interview with Kerstin about the project. Have a look-see.

Perfect beach weather, isn’t it? Here’s an image from our recently completed project on the Mornington Peninsula. Seaberg restores something of the ease of flow and material lightness long associated with, but now somehow lost from, the Australian beach house. Using living areas and the main bedroom suite as household core, and an extra couple of outhouses, freestanding but just touching by virtue of the pergolas, the ensemble hangs together in a loose arrangement to accommodate the many combinations of family life. Modest in scale and rectilinear in form the house recalls the kinds of smaller seaside dwellings that were once common to this part of Victoria’s coastline. Here’s to the return of the beach house that actually feels like one.

In the summer 2017 edition of architectVICTORIA, Kerstin explores through a series of KTA projects ways of thinking about landscape through the various lenses of context, spatial continuum, territory and ecology. Far from being simply a garden or a background to the main event (that being architecture), landscape can and should be a critical reference point for the beginning of any design. In doing so, the best architecture draws on local conditions to amplify and enhance one’s experience and enjoyment of place.

Since its completion in 2001, KTA’s Napier Street Housing has been widely recognized as an exemplar in urban design, first by the Victorian Government and more recently by South Australia’s Office for Design and Architecture. The latter have included it in their Residential Design Guidelines to demonstrate principles of good design and support better outcomes in higher density development in metropolitan Adelaide. The project also features in Among Buildings, a new publication from Uro, which features poetry by Michael Roper and design by Stuart Geddes.

As you can see, construction is well underway at the Victorian College of the Arts where the Former Mounted Police Stables are being converted into the campus’ new School of Art. Once complete, the school will provide a range of flexible teaching, learning, performance and exhibition spaces for students and teachers while also preserving the cultural heritage of a building that holds fond memories for many a horse-loving Melburnian.

An iconic landmark that draws visitors from afar or a welcoming space for the community it represents: what will the new SAM be? We’ll find out on April 27 when the winner of the Shepparton Art Museum Design Competition will be announced. In the meantime, the entries of five shortlisted firms including Denton Corker Marshall, John Wardle Architects, KTA, Lyons and MvS Architects are on public display with council seeking public feedback before February 5. Read more about the designs in ArchitectureAU.