From my source on the inside comes this crumpled, faceted tower project by GSD student Jesus Vassallo:

“The 15 storey-high tower is built as a continuous in situ concrete shell, wrapped in a ventilated polycarbonate façade. Some of the facets are replaced by glazing where it is necessary to provide light to the units. The building touches the ground in three points that become the accesses, housing the elevator, staircase and mechanical shafts. When these three hollow pillars come together, a large space is generated, providing a lobby and space of social relationship for the inhabitants.”

It is a somewhat geological tower; a stretched mineral.

The compression of scale at the lower levels, its apparently small footprint, the system of placing openings and the gently undulating roof present a series of subtle moves within the immediate gesture of the facetted concrete tube.

Although, I have to say, cladding anything in polycarbonate never did anyone any favours. The beauty of the model in these photos comes from sheer planar character and the subdivision of those planes into standard polycarbonate sheet sizes and their sub-structure would render the tower a very different beast indeed.

How many toolbars does your CAD package support? Microstation has many many many toolbars. And those toolbars have subtoolbars. So I tried opening them all:

There are a whole lot more left unopened as Microstation started complaining and telling me that it could open no more.

Click image for full res version.

Well I thought I would break with my rule of not talking about my day to day work for da man to show you some photographs of the L5 Building at the University of NSW as it is the first project finished by our team since I have been there. I should stress that I had an extremely small role in this project - doing bits here and there when needed and really had nothing to do with its overall rad.

It is a building that is characterised by a rigourous and relentless order. This is partly in response to highly ambitious programmatic requirements whereby as much is squeezed into as little partly due to its urban condiditon.

It sits on Anzac Parade, one of Sydney’s major arterial roads, and a robust, tough, structural facade gives the building an urban scale, rhythm and order. The march of the facade is mediated by an inversion of the classical order - shortest on bottom, tallest on top and by the alternating inflection of the glazing.

At the entry the facade is pulled back and a large stair leads up the public courtyard. The courtyard is the organising device that ties together the building’s three distinct occupants; teaching spaces in the podium below the courtyard (they’re students, stick em undergournd!), academics in the shorter tower to the rear and the National ICT Australia research group in the tower on the street.

Where possible the seemingly unattainable goal of moving academics - who are unable to be geniuses without four wall surrounding them - out of offices and into open plan has been partially achieved and sets a new precedent for the university.

Plan at Courtyard Level.

Section.

The people responsible (as I think, off the top of my head, in the order they enter my head):
Andrew Cortese, Ian Goodbury, Namste Burrell, Barbara Vourakis (the design powerhouse whose work managed to convince the university to put aside its campus wide graphical guidelines in order to be replaced by Helvetica Fat), Lawrence Nield, Matthew Bennett, Craig Burns, etc.

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All photographs shown above by John Gollings.

First up. I have moved my RSS feeds to feedburner so that I have a better understanding of who reads the site. So. If you are subscribed to the old feed then I would appreciate it you replaced it with the new one in the menu on the right there. The old one still works though, so no pressure.

For those still confused about RSS but would like notification of new posts, there is now the option to sign up to email updates. Rad.

Secondly. For those of you new to the site, I thought I would round up a selection of posts from the archives to give you a flavour of what goes on around these parts:

Thom Mayne Wins Pritzker, Explodes Into Many Pieces

Daily Masterpiece. Where Matt and I hurtle around Switzerland, France and Italy trying to see as many significant buildings in as short a time possible. Hilarity ensues.

Conceptual Forms. Hiroshi Sugimoto photographs plaster models of algorithms.

Miss March. She’s Statutory.

The East Darling Harbour Competition. A run down of the shortlisted entries in this significant Sydney design competion. And where the team of Richard Rogers and Martha Schwartz breached anonymity guidelines but were not disqualified.

Barcelona. Just Say NO. Gravestmor’s twelve step program to a Barcelona free life.

KO. The double suckerpunch of cruel, cruel modernism.

Peppermint Bay. I like this building.

I am Index.

Axonometric Bug

Notes on the Denial of Perspective. Bad title, popular post.

Where grave crimes are visited on an innocent vase.

The Other CAD Package. Where six hot (virtual) babes are let loose in a the Farnsworth House.

Hands Up Who Hates Patch Fittings

So, How Much to Sleep With a Pritzker?