Crown Resorts Limited (ASX: CWN) and its joint venture partner, Schiavello Group, announced today that award winning British architects, WilkinsonEyre had won the contest to design the proposed new Queensbridge Hotel Tower and precinct to be located in Melbourne’s Southbank area.

Crown and Schiavello conducted a global design competition which resulted in five architecture firms being shortlisted – WilkinsonEyre, Bates Smart, Hassell, Foster + Partners and Jean Nouvel. The competition jury selected the proposed design from WilkinsonEyre as the best proposal for the site and were unanimous in their decision.

Situated in one of Melbourne’s premier living and leisure destinations and one of Australia’s prime hosting areas for international meetings and events, the proposed Queensbridge Hotel Tower will comprise a 388room, luxury six–star hotel and approximately 680 apartments. The hotel will feature a truly unique special event space and a publicly accessible restaurant, lounge and garden terrace at the top of the tower.

The design also provides an active streetscape and public forecourt area with retail outlets and restaurants, which will become a new amenity for locals and visitors, connecting the ground floor of the building and hotel to the outdoors area.

In addition to the proposed landmark hotel tower, Crown and Schiavello are also proposing a major upgrade to Queensbridge Square improving the precinct’s attractiveness for local residents and visitors alike.

With its three Southbank hotels at nearly full capacity (over 90 percent occupancy), the addition of this luxury hotel will assist Melbourne to meet its future tourist accommodation demands, with Crown being able to offer over 2,000 guest rooms and suites, upon completion.

This luxury hotel addition coupled with the recently announced expansion of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre will reinforce the Southbank precinct’s position as Victoria’s leading tourism, meetings, exhibitions and event destination.

A sculptural pedestrian link will provide hotel guests with all-weather access from the lobby of the new luxury hotel to the Crown Melbourne Resort. The joining of this prestigious development to the Crown Melbourne Resort will reinforce Crown’s market leading position in Australia as one of the largest international tourism and business destinations.

WilkinsonEyre’s elegant solution for the Queensbridge Hotel Tower will be created by three interlocking sculptural forms providing a graceful and unique addition to the Melbourne skyline.

Crown Resorts Executive Director, James Packer, thanked the judging panel and congratulated WilkinsonEyre on their appointment:

“WilkinsonEyre have designed a beautiful and elegant building that is destined to be an important addition to the Melbourne skyline. Melbourne just keeps getting better as a city, but we can’t take this success for granted.”

“A new hotel is the next evolution of Crown Melbourne. I am committed to this city and committed to keeping Crown Melbourne at the forefront of Australian tourism. A new Crown hotel means more rooms for interstate and international tourists and that means more jobs for Victorians,” Mr Packer said.

Schiavello Group Chairman, Tony Schiavello thanked all of the participating architects:

“It was a very competitive design process, with some of the world’s and region’s best known architects involved. The calibre of all five firms in the process shows how special the city of Melbourne is and its’ prominence on the world stage. This site deserves a truly special building and our vision is to create a landmark building that has international appeal, timeless form and design.”

“We want to create a place that people are proud to call home,”

Mr Schiavello said. Crown Resorts CEO, Rowen Craigie added:

‘‘The new luxury hotel addition to Crown Melbourne will have significant economic and employment benefits for Victoria with over 3,000 new direct and indirect jobs during construction and over 1,000 new direct and indirect jobs on an on-going basis after completion. The development will also assist Melbourne in attracting more high net worth tourists, reinforcing the city’s appeal as a destination for important international conferences, sporting and cultural events.”

On winning the design competition, Paul Baker, Director WilkinsonEyre said:

“We approached this project with the ambition to create an elegant and timeless building that will become a new, world-class landmark against the Melbourne skyline. All across the world we are seeing cities embrace iconic developments as they vie for their share of international tourists.”

“We are confident that the design of the proposed Hotel and the ’one of a kind’ offerings like the ’Sky Bar’ at the top of the tower will be ‘must see’ destinations in Melbourne. We are delighted to have been given the opportunity to design what we believe will be an outstanding addition to the world’s most liveable city,’’ Mr Baker said.

The proposed Queensbridge Hotel Tower development remains subject to planning approval, project financing and the finalisation of long form joint venture documentation between Crown and Schiavello.

The building designed by Woods Bagot gives concrete expression to James Cook University’s aim to become one of the world’s leading research universities in the tropics.

As a repository of regional knowledge and research capacity, the institute will be perfectly positioned to make a significant contribution to the development of a sustainable quality of life for tropical communities. A truly imaginative and integrated design solution that was distinctive and uniquely desirable to the university’s community was paramount.

The design team, led by Mark Damant, in collaboration with RPA Architects, had an opportunity to create a building that represented its place and its context in a new and exciting way which has resulted in the delivery of cutting edge design elements. Attracting the best researchers was the central aim of the university, so it was crucial that the proposed building design would create an environment that optimised the working experience to a point where people would love engaging with the building. Read the rest of this entry »

The new Central Institute of Technology building on Aberdeen Street in Perth, to be officially opened this week, has been designed to become the centrepiece and “social heart” of the city‟s training precinct. The $62million 11,000 m2 building presents a striking, colourful, angular façade and grand entrance, and features state of the art teaching and learning facilities, flexible research spaces and a library.

The project brings together at the Northbridge site teaching programs for architectural, engineering and beauty technicians that were previously located on CIT campuses at Leederville, Subiaco and Mount Lawley. The building was designed by Melbourne-based architects Lyons, in partnership with Perth company T&Z.

Lyons director, Neil Appleton says a key element of the design brief was to connect the existing buildings on Aberdeen Street and the 1970s landscape to give the urban space a new focus.

“The idea of the social heart as a connecting device was a central design driver. We moved the library out of the basement across the road and next to the foyer in the new building, making it a centre-piece, clearly defining Central as a leading training institution committed to its city location,” Mr Appleton said.

Visually the building design was influenced by references to Western Australia‟s indigenous natural environment and the local mining industry – both elements of the building‟s educational function. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the 14 finalists for the 2011 Brisbane Ideas Competition (BIC) organized by the Heise Pty. Ltd. Group, Waterground by French firm Collectif MAP is a complete re-imagination of the Brisbane, Australia. Entrants were asked by Heise two quite broad questions, “What is missing from Brisbane?” and “What does Brisbane need for the future?” Heise hoped that the broad entry requirements would solicit broad entries, and judging by their 14 finalists the diversity exceeded expectations.

For their top 14 entries, Heise chose a great mixture of entries, ranging from studies and solutions for Brisbane’s pedestrian routes to proposals for towering water collection/sprinklers to be strewn throughout the city. Waterground however, is perhaps the project that would change Brisbane, the third largest city in Australia the most.

Waterground is a proposal to create a network of canals to run throughout the city off the Brisbane River, which runs directly through the city. Waterground would expand the network of the already well-known and widely used ferry service that already operates 26 vessels in its fleet. The project would use existing passages as well as construct new passages to create a more efficient water transport platform. Read the rest of this entry »

The Helix Bridge designed by Cox Rayner Architects is one of the few, if any, bridges in the world to be named after its structure. In addition to its uniqueness of structure and form, it was designed to respond to its particular setting at the opening of the Singapore River to Marina Bay, a large inner harbour on which much of the city is now focussed.

The concept derived initially from the desire to curve the plan of the bridge so that it sweeps down onto promenades either side. This ‘arc’ was also means of curving the pedestrian bridge away from an adjoining new vehicular bridge, also designed by the same team, while enabling the two to connect at a mid-point.

The brief required the Helix Bridge to be canopied for shade and shelter in the tropical climate. The notion of a tubular cross-section, which allowed the canopy and deck to be integrated, evolved from this requirement. The team found that a double spiral structure would utilise up to five times less steel than a conventional box girder bridge, and equally became excited about the prospect of such a structure making an iconic statement about Singapore as a ‘green’, walking city. Read the rest of this entry »

Italian architects AquiliAlberg unveiled their design for a new urban landmark in Perth, Australia. The project consists of a fluid folding surface that peels off from the ground to create three pavilions. The project is located at Forest Place, one of the most representative plazas in Perth and offers a new and exciting urban destination for the residents and visitors. The pavilions count with diverse seating and gathering areas as well as canopies and relaxation spaces. At night the project will be illuminated with multi-colored lights according to seasons, events, and celebrations. Read the rest of this entry »

The Cairns Institute, the new hub for tropical research is set to re-define teaching and learning in climatic conditions. Proposing a concept that will celebrate the rainforest setting, and enrich the place experience was a winning formula for Queensland based practices, Woods Bagot and RPA Architects who have been awarded the design of The Cairns Institute, headquartered on the James Cook University (JCU) Cairns campus.

A AUS$25 million project, the Institute, located in the north of Queensland, Australia, will be a research hub, housing specialists in the social sciences, humanities, law and business sectors to examine the issues of importance to people in the tropics.

Putting The Cairns Institute and JCU on the international stage to attract post-graduate students from around the globe; and to enable the university to draw a high calibre of researchers was key to the winning design. “Attracting the best researchers was the central aim of the university – it was crucial that our proposed building design would create an environment that optimises the working experience to a point that people would love engaging with the building,” Mark Damant, Principal, Woods Bagot said.

Cradled on three sides by rain-forested slopes, the landscape setting was inherent to the idea of a tropical campus – drawing the rainforest into the campus, enriching the urban campus heart, and in turn stimulating thought leadership from the students. “Intrinsic to our design proposition, was a concept that celebrated the rainforest setting and enriched the place experience. The proposed facade is layered and evolutionary – landscape is encouraged by shape – the building is blurred into the landscape itself,” David Derbyshire, Director RPA Architects said. Read the rest of this entry »

Towers designed to house and stand for institutions of finance have tended to portray notions of stability, order, growth and power. The unstable, unpredictable and cyclic nature of economics is rarely acknowledged, even though these qualities are an inherent part of the financial system.

This skyscraper designed by Jessica In from Australia seeks greater meaning in architecture as a reflection of current society, one that is, paradoxically, highly connected yet confused and troubled. A proposal for a financial centre in Melbourne, the design process evolved through extensive reading and exploration of several key themes – the unstable, endogenous nature of the financial system; emergent processes; the tower typology in buildings of commerce; and the application of computational design processes to tease out highly abstract concepts into physical form and spatial experience.

Defined economic conditions inform the degree of irrational ‘behavior’ of spatial generation. This is set against more tangible architectural parameters (site conditions, orientation, and program), and consideration at three different scales (urban/street, building, and human scales). Each ‘block’ of the tower is conceived of as an autonomous agent that has limited knowledge, but their aggregated actions produce a coherent design result. The process is repeated until an acceptable design is produced. Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Bosse has sliced up the Panton chair as part of the Re-loved: designer stories at the Powerhouse Museum from July 31  to October 10.

Bosse, director of innovative architectural firm LAVA, is one of several designers commissioned by the Powerhouse to use a pre-loved chair to tell a story about a piece of furniture they love. He chose a design classic that relates to current design and manufacturing techniques.

The gravity defying Panton chair c1967 by Danish designer Verner Panton was a radical departure from traditional design and manufacturing techniques. It anticipated the digital revolution by 30 years and is the first freeform, organic molded piece of furniture. “I’ve chosen to represent this shape as slices, similar to an MRI scan in order to make visible its complex 3dimensional geometry. The chair is metaphorically and physically carved out of a sliced box ” says Bosse.

“The project retro-digitises the chair design, although it was the chair that preceded the digital design revolution.”

“What made the Panton chair so spectacular when it came on the market and what makes it so interesting today in terms of design history is not only its shape, which is as extravagant as it is elegant, but also the fact that it was the first chair made out of one piece of plastic. Every chair at the time was about the assembly techniques of materials, compression, tension, and junction. Verner Panton exploited the possibilities offered by the new material in order to achieve a total departure from classical design thinking.” Read the rest of this entry »

Queensland, Australia-based, Riddel Architecture has completed work on a new high-end private residence constructed almost entirely from the house it replaced. Situated in Hill End, inner Brisbane, Australia, the Hill End Ecohouse was built from recycled materials, using 95% of the salvaged material from the 19th Century house that originally occupied its narrow riverfront site. The original house was built around 1930. The original owners watched the building progress with keen interest and conveyed to the current owners that the original timber was harvested and milled at Blackbutt, 165 km from the site. Read the rest of this entry »