Accommodation provided is 6 floors of office space above a ground level of retail, café and entrance lobby. Two basement levels provide 84 car spaces. Total nett floor space is 9300m2. Floor levels are the same as the adjacent No.12 Mort Street and doorways on each floor link the two buildings together.

The building is fully air conditioned with air handling plant on each floor to allow flexibility for after hours operation. Glazing facing south is clear to allow maximum use of natural daylight.

Designed by Lawrence Nield & Partners Australia.

AS THE dark-glassed building slowly reaches higher into the sky, the newest corner of Docklands - Walker Corporation's $1.3 billion Collins Square development - is making its mark.

The 38,000-square-metre tower will be the home of the Australian Taxation Office, and it is expected to be finished by Easter.

It will be the first cab off the rank in what is now Australia's largest commercial development. Now 40 per cent pre-leased, Collins Square covers 180,000 square metres of net lettable area in five towers and 10,000 square metres of retail space.

It aims to be a bridge between Docklands and the rapidly developing north bank of the Yarra River. ''We are trying to create the new heart of Docklands,'' Walker Corporation chairman, Lang Walker, told The Age. He expected the whole project to be completed in five years.

Another tower covering 40,000 square metres for Marsh Mercer Companies is well under way, with completion expected by April 2013.

The 11,000-square-metre heritage-listed Goods Shed is also being refurbished to its former glory. Publisher, The Pearson Group, has leased the building for 10 years. Mr Walker said another tenant was likely for the clock tower facing Flinders Street.

With 180 metres of frontage on to Collins Street, Collins Square will have direct linkages to Spencer Street Railway Station, as well as trams, car and bus arteries.

Bates Smart has created a master plan for the project, which includes extensive retail and landscaped public spaces that will be protected from Docklands' sometimes woolly weather.

There will be intersecting lanes and large retail areas for shops, cafes, bars, restaurants and a gym.

The retail masterplan has been developed by the Buchan Group, with the development to eventually serve the estimated 48,000 people who live and work in the western Collins Street area.

The three other office towers will be respectively 30,000, 50,000 and 22,000 square metres. Mr Walker said there were a number of users who would be able to take up large slabs of office space.

"On the retail, we are talking to the supermarkets about being an anchor tenant," he said. "Once you get started on the project and people see what is happening, that brings more interest." Mr Walker said his company looked to pre-commitment before starting construction. "We are not a speculative builder. That's something we definitely do not do - take too much risk."

The restoration of the Goods Shed is well under way. The shed traverses the eastern boundary of the precinct and is being converted to retain the heritage-listed features of the 121-year-old building, including high ceilings, clerestory windows, exposed trusses, brick work and cast-iron columns. The interiors are being transformed into a light-filled, open office environment with the latest technology.

Basso Project Management and architects BVN are working closely with Walker on the conversion. BVN worked on the interior design of the northern, other half of the Goods Shed, which is owned by Lorenz Grollo's Equiset.

The original shed was cut in two to allow for the Collins Street extension. Equiset spent $65 million refurbishing the northern building, which now has a five-star environmental rating.

3D visualisation technology in the urban planning and design context came into use following a wave of innovation in the 1990s, which saw the convergence of gaming technology, geographical information system (GIS) specialists, architects and the proponents of building information modelling (BIM).

The development of computer graphics cards, in particular, enabled the real-time use of data to develop in a more serious way, according to Lynn Buckle, co-principal of 3D infrastructure and urban modelling specialists Dd3D Works.

The advances game developers like Electronic Arts and Ubisoft have made in immersion and usability are an exciting prospect for many. Of course, the levels of detail required for urban planning are much higher, but games engines are very useful at the conceptual level.

BVN Architecture’s Ben Doherty, a specialist in computational design, says online games engines cannot only make things look good, but also enable multiple ‘players’ to come together in the simulation, wherever they are physically, to discuss the design.

Arup GIS/3D real time specialist Ben Cooper-Woolley recalls how an Xbox controller was used during a highway design public consultation meeting. It was a powerful way to communicate as it enabled people to navigate to their homes to see how the design would impact them, he says.

The greatest strength of 3D visualisation is its ability to convey concepts quickly, and the time and cost saving benefits are astounding, says Ben Guy, managing director of 3D infrastructure visualisation company Urban Circus. In urban planning, coming to an agreement with planners on basic concepts for a site using traditional methods can take months or sometimes years, Guy asserts.

“It is taking a long time and it is not giving the property developer very much certainty before they spend the big dollars.” Yet 3D models can cut decision-making time down to days or even hours, he adds.

In Australia, Urban Circus, Simmersion Holdings and AMM have emerged among the leaders in the development of virtual cities and precincts, and governments at various levels have seen the benefits. Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu recently announced an international design competition for the restoration of Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station. Urban Circus is providing the virtual precinct framework, says Guy.

“This is an exciting development and this is where the technology is going,” he says. “In future architects will be able to download the virtual precinct, build up their design within that virtual model and submit to tender. As we move forward in the next decade or two, 3D virtual environments will be used and shared across projects.”

Government is gradually getting onboard with the Virtual Australia concept too. The University of Melbourne’s Cooperative Research Centre for Spatial Information recently launched a not-for-profit company called VANZI Limited – Virtual Australia and New Zealand Infrastructure. It aims to develop a platform for the interaction of spatial and engineering datasets to enable the construction of a 3D model.

Internationally, online seems to be the next frontier and has already seen patent battles between Skyline Software Systems and Google, Microsoft and Esri. Skyline holds patents to streaming 3D geospatial data online. Guy says systems like Google Earth may have high usability, but they do not have accuracy, reliability and fidelity. And while Skyline’s offering is geospatially correct and good for urban planning at a strategic level, Simmersion Holdings chief executive officer Bob Quodling feels that when you get down to the detail it is a bit wanting.

Peter Buckle of Dd3D Works says bandwidth in Australia is the biggest restriction for advanced 3D rendering engines going fully online because of the huge amounts of data they entail. But the National Broadband Network (NBN) is much anticipated, he says.

Online capability is certainly desired by councils, Buckle notes. But Quodling says his industry is just not there yet.

“People want to see a Google Earth interface but at exceptionally high detail, at ground level, with all the measuring tools and absolutely GIS perfect, in high fidelity and immersive, streamed to them on their iPad or their iPhone while they’re sitting at the coffee shop across the road from the city municipality. But it’s just not at that point yet,” he says.

However, the technology is in a state of flux and it may get to that point in five years’ time, he adds. The solution may come from the likes of Skyline improving immersion or from game developers looking to spatial data and database connectivity, Quodling suggests. For now, companies like Simmersion and Urban Circus are focusing on increasing fidelity, enabling connectivity to databases and including more GIS data, he says.

Data is the commodity

It’s exciting times for 3D visualisation technology. “But the limitation of any system is the quality of the data that goes into it, and sometimes we forget that basic point,” says Lynn Buckle.

Dd3D Works realised years ago that things were heading towards 3D GIS and built its systems to allow that evolution to take place. Initially it is a large investment, but over time it is economical, she says.

Cooper-Woolley says GIS-based design and analysis is taking a big step into 3D, and Arup is particularly interested in integrating data about a city with visualisation tools to create interactive, intelligent models.

“We are trying to create one asset and register a database for a whole area, for our projects but also building into larger city areas. So every area or project that we’re working on is creating one information resource that the different design packages can access and is portrayed through a virtual environment.”

Data is the key, but it is the biggest cost to creating 3D content, says Quodling. “Historically those that generate spatial data in Australia copyright the information and issue licenses on a case-by-case basis. That’s the real issue – the spatial data is not freely available.”

Different data formats are another issue, says Peter Buckle, co-principal of Dd3D Works, which is currently looking at data structures to enable faster access to the information.

“But we’ve found that a lot of the AutoCAD formats that are being used in the industry, particularly 3D Studio, lack sufficient resolution to go into a geographic system,” Buckle says. This is due to shortcuts being made in the past to achieve better performance out of the CAD systems, he explains.

Cooper-Woolley says data standards will help speed up innovation, and mentions the CityGML information model as an example. However, they must be uniformly applied and this requires greater collaboration, which is not happening, he says.

Some parties are looking to government to provide the solution. “The ideal outcome would be for government to retain copyright of the data and then make it available to companies to make derivative products from that raw data, enabling them to add value to it,” says Quodling.

Guy feels the government should make the development of virtual spaces an open process. Integrating software and technology is a key focus for Urban Circus.

“It is about enabling all industries and stakeholders to come together and get talking to one another, working across software and data formats, and enabling them to work faster and achieve greater productivity,” Guy explains. “But at the moment a lot of local governments are going with a single provider and locking others out.”

Some levels of government have recognised a need for greater access to data. For example, GeoScience Australia developed the National Exposure Information System (NEXIS) database for risk analysis, and Western Australia’s Landgate launched the Shared Land Information Platform (SLIP) Enabler in 2008.

A centralised GIS 3D database is where things are going, says Buckle. “Whether Australia is going to develop that technology to the level necessary, I don’t know. It needs money.”

A new fire-resistant timber community hall has risen from the ashes of the 2009 Black Saturday fires thanks to generous donations of time and money from numerous companies and individuals.

After the original Narbethong Community Hall burned down, the Narbethong Public Hall Committee contacted Emergency Architects looking for low-cost help with the rebuilding process. BVN and Arup were soon on board offering architectural and engineering services at no charge, and other consultants followed including SGM, Rodney Vapp & Associates, Contour Planning, Rodney Aujard & Associates, Douglas Partners Pty Ltd, Fitzgerald Frisbee Landscape Architecture. This large pro bono team worked in conjunction with the Victorian Bushfire Recovery and Reconstruction Authority, DSE, Murrindindi Shire and the Narbethong Public Hall Committee to design and implement the rebuilding of the hall. Many other suppliers donated, or provided at reduced costs, a range of furniture and fittings to finish the hall to the highest standards while the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund and McDonald’s provided major funding.

Full height glazing allows views in and out of the hall. Image:  BVN Architecture
 The original hall had its share of issues. It was a basic timber mid-twentieth century structure built fronting the busy Maroondah Highway with little connection to the surrounding landscape. Comprising a single large space, it lacked adequate heating, and facilities were limited and outmoded.

When faced with creating a new hall, the community asked for a building that expressed the heritage of Narbethong – a town that developed around the timber industry. Timber was therefore an obvious material choice but the challenge was that, due to its proximity to a bush reserve, the new hall was required to meet a high bushfire attack level to ensure its longevity.

A fire resistant solution was found in wrapping the floor-to-ceiling double-glazed exterior in bronze mesh, allowing the interior to be predominantly timber. The primary large gathering space is at the centre of the building, and has direct access to an outdoor gathering space to the north. The floor and ceiling are timber, and vertical timber blades define the curving walls that hide the kitchen and bathroom facilities, creating nooks for smaller group meetings. These blades are reminiscent of the beautiful trees found in the region. The building’s primary entry and new carpark are to the south of the site, while the more enclosed spaces – such as the kitchen and amenities – are located on the east and west facades to limit solar gain and reduce heat loss. Spaces can be individually heated and cooled. The corners of the building are kept clear to enable views into and out of the hall from all aspects.

Rebuilding the Narbethong Community Hall also presented an opportunity to create a new typology for community buildings. Typically, community hall buildings are closed structures. The new, larger Narbethong Community Hall is a highly transparent building that lets passers-by see the life inside and allows the hall’s users to connect with the surrounding landscape.

A new fire-resistant timber community hall has risen from the ashes of the 2009 Black Saturday fires thanks to generous donations of time and money from numerous companies and individuals.

After the original Narbethong Community Hall burned down, the Narbethong Public Hall Committee contacted Emergency Architects looking for low-cost help with the rebuilding process. BVN and Arup were soon on board offering architectural and engineering services at no charge, and other consultants followed including SGM, Rodney Vapp & Associates, Contour Planning, Rodney Aujard & Associates, Douglas Partners Pty Ltd, Fitzgerald Frisbee Landscape Architecture. This large pro bono team worked in conjunction with the Victorian Bushfire Recovery and Reconstruction Authority, DSE, Murrindindi Shire and the Narbethong Public Hall Committee to design and implement the rebuilding of the hall. Many other suppliers donated, or provided at reduced costs, a range of furniture and fittings to finish the hall to the highest standards while the Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund and McDonald’s provided major funding.

The original hall had its share of issues. It was a basic timber mid-twentieth century structure built fronting the busy Maroondah Highway with little connection to the surrounding landscape. Comprising a single large space, it lacked adequate heating, and facilities were limited and outmoded.

When faced with creating a new hall, the community asked for a building that expressed the heritage of Narbethong – a town that developed around the timber industry. Timber was therefore an obvious material choice but the challenge was that, due to its proximity to a bush reserve, the new hall was required to meet a high bushfire attack level to ensure its longevity.

A fire resistant solution was found in wrapping the floor-to-ceiling double-glazed exterior in bronze mesh, allowing the interior to be predominantly timber. The primary large gathering space is at the centre of the building, and has direct access to an outdoor gathering space to the north. The floor and ceiling are timber, and vertical timber blades define the curving walls that hide the kitchen and bathroom facilities, creating nooks for smaller group meetings. These blades are reminiscent of the beautiful trees found in the region. The building’s primary entry and new carpark are to the south of the site, while the more enclosed spaces – such as the kitchen and amenities – are located on the east and west facades to limit solar gain and reduce heat loss. Spaces can be individually heated and cooled. The corners of the building are kept clear to enable views into and out of the hall from all aspects.

Rebuilding the Narbethong Community Hall also presented an opportunity to create a new typology for community buildings. Typically, community hall buildings are closed structures. The new, larger Narbethong Community Hall is a highly transparent building that lets passers-by see the life inside and allows the hall’s users to connect with the surrounding landscape.

Flexible Space

Architect: BVN Architecture
Client: Energex
Location: Brisbane
Shortlisted: Australian Interior Design Awards, 2011 Corporate Design

More than 1700 Energex staff formerly dispersed throughout Brisbane, now work together in this open, collaborative work environment. The move aspired to encourage cultural change, improve productivity and efficiency and create a new direction for the organization. The design of the six-level headquarters on the edge of Brisbane’s CBD provides large, flexible workspaces, organized around a lift that opens straight into the workplace.

There are three atriums within the building that link all levels. Staff can see across the levels. Communal spaces, such as casual and formal meeting rooms, are clustered around the edges of the three atrium spaces close to sculptural staircases connecting the floors. Modular workstation can be moved and changed easily.

BMRI Youth Mental Health Building
BVN Architecture

Jury Citation
The Youth Mental Health Building delivers an impressive and gutsy street elevation that serves as a perfect reflection of its client’s ambition to be an alternative institutional health building. Calling for a combination of research laboratories, academic offices, clinical consulting spaces and a social drop in centre, the brief demanded inventive robust and economical architecture.

The new forms are inserted adjacent to, and over the top of, an existing two storey heritage façade, part of the gritty context of this previously industrial quarter in Sydney. This constraint has only benefitted the project’s final form, creating a provocative and mannered solution that addresses the street with originality and character. It presents an embodied representation of the complexity of social and clinical research and consulting facilities within. Inside, these functional areas are layered through floor plates with generous interconnecting stairs and hallways, including tall vertical spatial connections, links to street views and social spaces.

“With just 0.3 per cent of the world’s population, Australia generates between 3 and 4 percent of refereed research publication in health. Australia’s health and medical research sector has produced three Nobel Prize winners and five Australians of the Year in the past decade. In little more than a decade, Australian health research has led to the bionic ear, a cure for stomach ulcers and a cervical cancer vaccine.”

BMRI Youth Mental Health Building
BVN Architecture

Architect 
BVN Architecture - project principal James Grose; project director Ian Goodbury; project architect Andrea Fink; interior designer Alexander Suen

Structural Consultant
Connell Wagner

Services and Facade Consultant
Arup

Heritage Consultant
Godden Mackay Logan

Fire Engineer
Rawfire

Acoustic Consultant
Acoustic Studio

Planning Consultant
Cityplan

Building Regulations consultant
Steve Watson & Partners

Landscape Consultant
Sue Barnsley Design

Cost Consultant
Davis Langdom

Project Manager
AAP Corporation

Construction Manager
Buildcorp

Photographer
John Gollings

BVN Sydney Studio

Design Practice - BVN Architecture
Photography - John Gollings

A 1970's office floor is reworked in a daring interior that uses only the bones of the high-rise concrete building. The cladding on the supporting columns is removed, significantly reducing their bulk ad exposing the texture as 'found' detail. Ceiling grids and tiles are removed to reveal services, with new cable trays inserted like a racetrack.

ESD is not just about individual buildings, but it should look at the bigger picture. Caroline Munro reports on an education project that does just that.

One of the biggest issues facing the architectural profession is the redundancy of existing building stock, says BVN Architecture principal Bill Dowzer.

Many buildings now facing demolition are only 20 years old. “That has got to raise a whole lot of questions about how you design buildings for longevity into the future,” he says.

Dowzer admits that in many quarters it is considered easier to knock something down and start over again, but exciting refurbishments of older buildings incorporating the latest green technology and social design solutions are becoming more common.

Yet when it comes to ESD, implementing innovative green technology is just one step and earning a Green Star or NABERS rating is just the beginning. For Dowzer, the next phase of ESD is more about longevity – creating buildings that can not only adapt to change, but provide the infrastructure to enhance the lifespan of the buildings around them.

In an environment where the way people work, teach, learn ad engage with one another is changing constantly, many buildings and their infrastructure are in danger of becoming redundant. This particularly evident in schools, where the traditional classroom is often no longer flexible enough to enable modern methods of teaching and learning, says Dowzer.

BVN currently has a number of school clients who are facing this very dilemma.

Ravenswood School for Girls on Sydney’s North Shore was one of them, but its recently completed library has breathed new life into the older buildings surrounding it. Before the learning hub (as it is called) was constructed, there was no real entrance to the campus and the school was still lacking infrastructure, such as lifts. Now, the library serves as the linchpin, linking existing buildings and contributing to their longer term sustainability, says Dowzer.

He believes in the near future buildings will no longer be designed in isolation, but will form part of a campus or precinct master plan, sharing infrastructure and delivering much more sustainable solutions. These buildings will also be flexible, their spaces adaptable to changing needs over time. Ravenswood’s learning hub could be considered a scaled example of how that can be achieved.

“It’s not just about a new building,” he says. It’s actually about giving the site longevity by providing the infrastructure that’s going to let the site function with a longer lifespan than it may well have had.”
ESD principals were at the forefront of its design and the building had some clever and cost effective solutions, which have brought down the school’s operating costs significantly. Its water collection facility is used to water the surrounding landscape and flush the toilets, and the façade maximizes the use of natural light. It is a mixed-mode building, in that it is fully ventilated throughout the year while technology takes care of more extreme weather conditions.

“This radically reduces operating costs and during 80 to 90 percent of the school year the building is naturally ventilated,” Dowzer explains.

Yet it is the social infrastructure aspect of the building that most excited Dowzer. For example, Ravenswood’s learning hub has very few walls so the building can be changed depending on how the spaces will be utilized over time.

Externally, the building also solves some issues on the site, linking the existing buildings and providing a true entrance to the campus. Its roof doubles as a grandstand for sporting activities and the building itself has created additional sheltered areas below. Its café – a modern take on the old tuck-shop – actually invites the community in as parents are encouraged to have a coffee when they drop off or pick up their children.

Embracing the community and sharing infrastructure will push the development of green precincts and campuses as opposed to green buildings, Dowzer believes. Across Australia, building owners are recognizing the positive benefits and economies of scale of green initiatives and are keen to showcase them, he says.

“They’re not doing it in a way that is showing off. It’s actually inclusive, bringing people in and letting them share in the education process around the sustainability of the building.”

This was an important consideration in the design of Ravenswood’s library, he adds.

“We utilized the sustainability initiatives as an education tool. These are a series of screens when you come into the new learning hub that monitors the energy use of the building as well as the water collection on site.”

Dowzer admits that there may be some apathy towards green initiatives in some quarters, but a number of BVN’s clients have been real innovators themselves, he says, keen to share their ideas and excited to showcase the sustainability initiatives they have implemented.

A more social approach to ESD is already resulting in sustainable infrastructure on a grander scale, Dowzer notes.
“The generation of power or water retention and all of those sorts of initiatives are much stronger when they are done at a campus or city level than an individual building,” he says.

For example, Sydney is encouraging sewer mining to provide recycled water across the city, and the infrastructure for Melbourne’s Docklands is being designed for entire precincts, shared by individual developments. This shift in thinking is happening at all levels, including residential, Dowzer says.

“When people move into residential areas, more frequently they are buying into communities rather than buying into a building,” says Dowzer. “It’s absolutely happening and the future lies very much in how you share and how you bring things together to be able to get maximum benefit.”

Reform through Making

Sydney’s Urban Islands workshop, now in its fourth incarnation, aims to liberate architectural education from the shackles of the academy by bringing it to, of all places, the prison of Cockatoo Island. As Gretchen Wilkins reports, the program’s success can impart important lessons for the tricky business of resilient city-making.

Established in 2006 by a group of Sydney architects, Urban Islands is a two-week, international architecture workshop sited on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour. The project emerged in response to a collective sense amongst the organizers, Tom Rivard, Olivia Hyde and Joanne Jakovich, that conventional studio teaching was becoming increasingly constrained by the overarching university system, that is, tightly bound to calendar semesters, coordinated by pedagogy and a regular pool of staff. They sought to fashion a new model, which was (more or less) free of these constraints, an open network of students, staff and design methodologies situated somewhere between practice and the academy, linking northern and southern hemispheres, and offered periodically.

What better place to release architectural education from the tyranny of the university than Cockatoo Island, the site of decades of incarceration, forced labour, mechanized production and disciplinary reform? This seemingly unlikely, even ironic choice of site proved keenly appropriate, given the island’s history as host to a long series of institutions, each in some way predicated on an idea of reform through making.

Established as a penal institution in 1839, the first inmates of Cockatoo were put to hard labour quarrying stone and forging steel to build their own barracks, guard houses and staff residences. Later established as a maritime centre, they built the dry docks, workshops and factories where shipbuilders manufactured colonial, naval and commercial vessels. And when the maritime industry subsided, several buildings were appropriated for use as an industrial school for girls, where they practiced sewing and embroidery. Thousands of apprentices learned their trades through the industries located at Cockatoo including sheet metal workers, painters, electricians, plumbers and even draughtsmen.

Despite the immediate goals of these institutions – disciplinary or otherwise – each practice was predicated on an idea of making as a transformative act: social reform through prison labour, military reform through manufacturing, educational reform through industrial skilling. This fundamentally pragmatic model holds that the production of something – buildings, boats, blankets, whatever – is simultaneously the production of oneself. Reflection through action, learning through doing and behavioral psychology are all contemporary versions of this same idea, effecting change by doing, and often making. Urban Islands is of this ilk, as both an educational and an architectural model. But this type of practice also resonated at a much greater scale, such as in the production (and regeneration) of cities.

Over five years and four workshops, and now joined by Mark Szczerbicki, Urban Islands has taken shape as an independent studio program, working in collaboration with local and international universities and architectural practices. Students enroll directly in the program and ballot for one of three studios directed by invited international architects, while receiving academic credit through their home institution.

BVN Architecture, TTW Consulting Engineers and the University of Sydney are regular supporters, and the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust generously allows access to all the facilities at Cockatoo Island. The result is a collectively formed network, a public-private, local-global, cross-institutional, vertically integrated studio, whose staff, program and students change every year. In effect, Urban Islands is a university without the university.

The 2011 workshop featured Nat Chard from the University of Manitoba, Nataly Gattegno from San Francisco’s Future Cities Lab and Victor Marquez (Victor Marquez Arquitectos) from Mexico City, with students from Sydney and Melbourne universities and visiting reviewers from Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle. Previous workshops tool place in 2006, 2007 and 2009 and included international guests Iwamoto Scott Architects (San Francisco), PR ARCHITEKTEN (Berlin), Geoff Manaugh (Los Angeles), Morphogenesis (New Delhi), Mark Smout (London), Mette Thomsen (Copenhagen), studio SUMO (New York), Supersudaca (Chile), Jaime Rouilon (Costa Rica) and Responsive Environment (Tokyo).

The invited guests define the studio’s focus, which seems to naturally emerge as a hybrid of their own research and the intense environment of Cockatoo Island. For example, Chard’s students produced a series of exquisitely crafted devices, foregrounding an idea about the remoteness of island life. They honed in on very specific phenomena such as echoes, crevices, shadows and even the patterns of seagulls, and fabricated site-specific mechanisms through which these local conditions could be amplified or dislocated across time and space. Gattegno curated two projects in her group: one chartered soil conditions of the island and proposed a system by which future changes in toxicity could be visualized; and the other constructed a surface to literally produce light at the end of a tunnel. Marquez’s group curated a series of ephemeral installations that could change appearance by day and night. The final projects were reviewed in situ and representationally, and collectively fostered a much broader discussion comparing pedagogical approaches (across countries, universities and/or methodologies) and architectural practices.

The impact of the workshop on Cockatoo Island is already become tangible, if only subtly visible. When in started in 2006 there was no ferry service to the site, and the island had been dormant for over a decade, with only a series of disused factories, rusty tools and unprotected Cliffside pathways. Despite these hazards, the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust allowed the organizers free and unrestricted access to the site, which now, several years later, has proven to be a useful way for them to envision new types of programs as they develop a heritage plan for the island. Indeed, some key aspects of the workshop have set the tone, and  pace, for recent developments of Cockatoo Islands, characterized by short-term, slowly incremental or small-scale changes.

Opening to the public came with only the slightest amount of visible alteration, though with strong effect: the addition of a campground, a coffee shop and a very thin layer of largely self-guided program. A schedule of events, including the Biennale of Sydney and Nick Cave’s All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival, established a link back to the activities of the city. It also works to intensify public engagement, but in a way that is open and resists fixing a singular type, theme or market for future development. It’s the anti master plan, more legible and more effective the more ‘incomplete’ it remains.

Seen in a much broader context, the organizational structure of Urban Islands (and the ongoing development of Cockatoo Island) follows the momentum everywhere around us toward networks and away from centralization: cloud computing, workplace hubs, remote manufacturing. In any of these systems, the power is help in the components, not the larger form, which is constantly shifting. As an urban model, this is fundamentally resilient because it absorbs (and triggers) change at nearly any scale. Urban Islands works like this, gaining strength and identity through the links and people involved, without which it would have no form. As such, its closer in nature to an urban archipelago than an isolated island, forming as a cluster of bodies aligned along a particular (architectural) fault line.

Network, cluster or urban-archipelago structures suggest viable, if nascent, models for an urbanism that is by nature incomplete and polycentric, autonomous yet interdependent, potent but not necessarily volatile. This is a city comprised of many dispersed sites, both virtual and local, a larger collective of people and places connected across infrastructures already in place, and new ones yet to emerge. The shape of this city may change, like the network itself, but we can be certain it will look less like the large centralized metropolises and more like a network of ‘sister cities’.

Cockatoo Island inspires this sort of speculation about future city building, as it is an urban model that visibly connects the way we make things to the way we make places. As these production methods change, as industries transform and techniques expand, so does the city around them, sometimes incrementally, sometimes drastically. This may sound like an obvious correlation, but extreme examples of such a close link offer deeper insight, and caution. Detroit, Dubai and China’s mono-factory cities were all tooled for a singular type of output, and when that industry dissolved so did the city. Rather, contemporary production integrates across any number of techniques, a combination of processes only possible at this point in time: the industrial craft of Cockatoo, 20th century mass production, 21st century mass-customization, digital mass collaboration.

What is urbanism of this city? Like the Zen saying ‘how you do anything is how you do everything’, reforming the way we make anything will reform the way we make everything, and this is especially true of urban form.