News & Developments: Mawson Lakes

[SRW]

Pity that the design includes it hovering above a car park...

[Omicron]

The basic design is very late '50s International-style, isn't it? In that sense, I think it's marvellous. A shame, as SRW points out, that it also reflects '50s urban planning with the dull carpark surrounds, although at least the ground-level cafe is a start.

[contractor]

Too many architecture books for you guys (No carparking issues back then)

[monotonehell]

The basic design is very late '50s International-style, isn't it? In that sense, I think it's marvellous. A shame, as SRW points out, that it also reflects '50s urban planning with the dull carpark surrounds, although at least the ground-level cafe is a start.

OMG I thought the same thing, how very Brazil before the bust. Although the Brazil designs were about allowing direct pedestrian ground level access rather than a carpark.

[Wayno]

a slippery dip from the balcony to the lawn please...

[AtD]

"We shall integrate closely with the surrounding street scape by removing ourselves from it entirely"

Bah.

[rhino]

The basic design is very late '50s International-style, isn't it? In that sense, I think it's marvellous. A shame, as SRW points out, that it also reflects '50s urban planning with the dull carpark surrounds, although at least the ground-level cafe is a start.

Exactly what I thought. I like Mono's description too - Brazil before the bust.

[Prince George]

It all comes back to Le Corbusier, he was already charting these waters in the Villa Savoye back in 1929:

It was, however, Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye (1929-1931) that most succinctly summed up his five points of architecture that he had elucidated in the journal L'Esprit Nouveau and his book Vers une architecture, and which he had been developing throughout the 1920s. First, Le Corbusier lifted the bulk of the structure off the ground, supporting it by pilotis--reinforced concrete stilts. These pilotis, in providing the structural support for the house, allowed him to elucidate his next two points: a free façade, meaning non-supporting walls that could be designed as the architect wished, and an open floor plan, meaning that the floor space was free to be configured into rooms without concern for supporting walls. The second floor of the Villa Savoye includes long strips of ribbon windows that allow unencumbered views of the large surrounding yard, and which constitute the fourth point of his system. A ramp rising from the ground level to the third floor roof terrace (the fifth point) allows for an architectural promenade through the structure. The white tubular railing recalls the industrial "ocean-liner" aesthetic that Le Corbusier much admired. As if to put an exclamation point on Le Corbusier's homage to modern industry, the driveway around the ground floor, with its semicircular path, measures the exact turning radius of a 1929 Voisin automobile.

(from http://www.essential-architecture.com/A ... H-Corb.htm, but it seems to have been taken in turn from Wikipedia)

[contractor]

Prince George is right, Le Corbusier was designing these buildings that 'touched the earth lightly' in the 1930's. Any reference made to the 1950's is 20 years late! Yet I have not seen one of these built in Adelaide, 80 years on, could we finally get one?

[Prince George]

Prince George is right, Le Corbusier was designing these buildings that 'touched the earth lightly' in the 1930's. Any reference made to the 1950's is 20 years late! Yet I have not seen one of these built in Adelaide, 80 years on, could we finally get one?

Well, the Grenfell Centre -- our late-to-the-party tribute to the International School's glory days -- has a glass lobby that gives the "hovering over the earth" feeling.

[Aidan]

Hopefully this one gets off the ground and maintains the integrity of the orginal design.

Located on Elder Smith Drive it will consist of:

- 4 levels
- 12,888 m2 NLA
- 300 car parking spaces
- 2 café spaces

Why are you so keen on the integrity of the original design?

The long overhanging truss section will make it significantly more expensive to build than if it were supported at the end. It would make sense if there were some good architectural reason for it (such as if it extended over a lake) but extending over a car park??? That's just silly IMO.

[contractor]

I guess when these buildings were designed back in the day, the architect had the luxury of a steady stream running under the building. Architects don't seek to save costs unless instructed to so why compromise on the design? I can see your point about it being over a carpark, there is a basement carpark too so not sure how that's going to fit in the scheme of things.

In comparison to the awful designs popping up in Mawson Lakes, I would have thought this would be a welcome relief!

[monotonehell]

The basic design is very late '50s International-style, isn't it? In that sense, I think it's marvellous. A shame, as SRW points out, that it also reflects '50s urban planning with the dull carpark surrounds, although at least the ground-level cafe is a start.

Exactly what I thought. I like Mono's description too - Brazil before the bust.

This was the style I was thinking of, but there's a whole part of Rio that is full of this elevated style, to give pedestrian right of way beneath (not for cars!):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/47333265@N00/2634233542
Definitely 1950's architecture, le Corbusier lifted a few houses in the '20s, but this area of Rio is whole office blocks and apartment buildings.

[Prince George]

Definitely 1950's architecture, le Corbusier lifted a few houses in the '20s, but this area of Rio is whole office blocks and apartment buildings.

That would be the same Rio de Janiero that Corbu visited in 1929 -- when he proposed for them a new urban design that he claimed to have drawn up from the plane -- and that he returned to in the mid 30's to consult with Oscar Niemeyer (his most famous pupil) et al on the design of the Palace of Ministry of National Education and Public Health -



That building's design in turn was following the principles that Corbusier had demonstrated in the Pavillion Suisse built in 1930-32:



When it comes down to it, the whole international movement was largely a series of commentaries on the gospels of Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe.

[contractor]

....and so the tsunami started, 1930's in europe, through to Brazil in the 1950's where it was brutalised, then slowly washing onto the shores of adelaide in 2010, albeit in a more refined form, to Mawson Lakes.... much to Omicron & Monotonehell's astonishment