Stick-on Architecture

As human beings, we’ve become awfully proficient at building buildings, particularly large scale buildings. Sometimes the bigger the building, the easier the construction. Putting aside the intricate complexities of modern engineering, you only have to glance up at any recent highrise construction to understand the basic techniques involved. First you build a concrete footprint for the building, then you build the metal frame to hold the floors, then you add on a protective glass shealth or facade to stop the weather getting in. Bang, you’re done. It’s a reasonably fast, efficient and streamlined approach. It’s also deathly dull. Developer-led (as opposed to architect-led) construction favours the cheap and easy approach. There is now little mystique behind large scale construction. With engineering at the fore, for many modern buildings, the facade becomes it’s only form of decoration.

It’s taking far too long for London’s architectural decision makers to recognise this fact. You can see a number of smaller scale developments (usually mixed-use or residential) around East and East Central London where random architectural elements are just stuck on to the exterior of the building with little thought for their purpose or look and feel. You get the over all impression that English Architects and developers need to rediscover ‘decoration’.

Architects in Melbourne realised this in the late 90s and have been experimenting with embellishing the shell of their buildings with various patterns and different types of cladding and materials ever since. The most notable early examples include RMIT’s Building 8, completed in 1993, by Edmond and Corrigan and Ashton Raggatt McDougall’s renovation of Storey Hall in 1996 [a-r-m.com.au]. Lyon’s Architects have picked up the baton in recent years with a breakthrough design for Victoria University’s Online Training Facility [lyonsarch.com.au] and similar experiments such as BHP Billiton Global Headquarters [lyonsarch.com.au] with it’s deceptively straight forward glass cladding that buckles and warps at street level.

This trend has continued, although many of these Architects and their contemporaries now use the buildings exterior shell to boast about it’s environmental credentials by using natural, sustainable materials such as wood and brick. We’ve talked about wooden buildings such as DesignInc’s CH2 building for the Melbourne City Council [architectureaustralia.com] and Ashton Raggatt McDougall’s 2004 revamp for Melbourne Central’s Swanston & Latrobe street entrance on Boicozine before. Lyons have just completed the build on a Nursing House in Mornington that puts a new twist on the wooden facade by creating bricks that mimic patterns found in wood [via dezeen].