Seems like there are still bunch of you visiting my little website every month, despite zero updates in seven years (hey, what can I say, I’ve been very busy). So as a thank you, I published a post sitting in draft for years! If you’re an Utzon fan, go now and check it out as I’ve included a full transcript from his 1968 recording.

While I was under the hood here, I figured a total redesign was needed. To do that, I had re-learn WordPress as the backend had changed so much. Hope you like the new look?

There is in fact nothing I would like more than to come back and finish the Opera House as it conceived – Jørn Utzon, February 1968

Utzon and the Sydney Opera House : statement in the public interest by Elias Duek-Cohen (1967)

A significant book to me for a few reasons; it’s a contemporary (1967) book about Utzon and the Opera House, it has lots of illustrations, and sadly the author, Elias Duek-Cohen, passed away in 2014.

1968 Utzon Transcript

Slipped inside the cover of the book was a folded colour foolscap page with a typewritten transcript of a recorded message by Utzon! Not sure if this was inserted into every book at the time or placed there by the former owner in the late 1960s.

Anyway, with the power of Apple’s on-device neural network here’s the full transcript with the original formatting retained…

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

Transcript of a tape recorded message from Mr JORN UTZON
played at a lunch hour Public Meeting in the Sydney Town Hall on Mon. 19th February, 1968

This is Jorn Utzon speaking to you from Hellebaek, Denmark, on the 4th of February, 1968.

I am sure that many of my friends are here, also, I know that all of you are deeply devoted to the Opera House idea. So it is not so difficult that I am here with you now.

I have been asked a number of questions, which I would like to answer now.

* The first question is this :

Would you come back and finish your work here ?

The answer is: "Yes, certainly! There is in fact nothing I would like more than to come back and finish the Opera House as it conceived."

* The second question is :

Is it necessary that you come back ?

Also here, the answer is : "Yes!"! The building as it stands to-day on Bennelong Point 
has aroused world interest, it is a great success. What is because this building is an honest building, it is a truthful building, it fits like glove to name on Bennelong Point. It is conceived from inside out, it is purely functional.

The movement of the audience in the building is reflected in the movements of the structures: every portion of the building, for instance, the Minor Hall, the Major Hall, the Stage Towers, are clearly expressed in the elevations. It is not possible to consider the existing building as an empty shell under which you can do what you like!

I must come back and follow up what is begun.

* The next question, question number 3, is :

Have you got the answers on the two halls - on the multi-purpose hall ?

Again I must state as strongly as possible that it is a crystal-clear answer: "Yes."

I have got the Major Hall as a multi-purpose hall solved, and the final solution here houses the spectators, wanted: the audience, in comfortable seats, as the Government and the acoustical performance, or behaviour, of the hall is perfect. This behaviour - acoustical behaviour - has been studied by Professor Cremer in Berlin in several years in collaboration with me.

The same goes for the Minor Hall; and I asked, a few days ago, Professor Cremer, "Would you like to come back and continue your work?" He stated that he considers these two halls, Major and Minor Hall, among the outstanding halls in the world when it comes to the acoustical behaviour. Professor Cremer is, as you know, a world expert with a great number of the finest halls ever made behind him.

* The fourth question then is this :

Is it possible for you to come back ?

This question has two sides. The technical side I can answer: nothing has been added to the building in the meantime from I left till now. So, it is possible to continue where I left.

But the other half of the question I cannot answer.

But I stretch my hand forward to you, Mr Davis Hughes, and appeal to you to have faith in me, to have faith in my methods and ideas.

And also I appeal to you, the Parliamentarians in Government and the Parliamentarians in the Opposition, and I appeal to you, the whole team working on the Opera House, and, last but not least, I appeal to you, the citizens of Sydney :

Have faith in me, have faith in my ideas and my methods!

I have proof for my ideas and my ability.

The proof lies there in front of you in form of a marvellous building, the proof that I can carry out my ideas to the last detail from the very beginning.

Thank you very much for listening.

Enlightening to read his words as he reflects a few years after he was pushed out in 1966 by the NSW Government of the time. He clearly wants to return…

There are plenty of others (you know, proper authors) who’ve written about his unceremonious exit as the architect of the Sydney Opera House, so I’d encourage you start here and then head here for more.

If you’ll excuse me, I’m off to start reading the rest of the book…

(ps. as far as I’m aware, I’m not related to Lionel Todd, of the consortium Hall, Todd and Littlemore, who had the enormous task of taking over from Utzon. Read more here about the process)

Resources

• Library catalogue details for the book – if you want to track down a copy for yourself
• Elias Duek-Cohen’s obituary and one on the UNSW site that mentions the book.
• The Opera House Project for contemporary transcripts and audio
• The Man Who Wasn’t There an almost 4,000 word piece by Sylvia Lawson on the ousting of Utzon

Recently the house came up for sale

as the music-obsessed, mathematician owner, Jim Stewart, passed away. So now we can drool in high-definition glory with this slick video produced as part of the marketing campaign:

The house is massive – over 1,500 square metres (17,000 sq ft) massive! The house comes with an equally massive CAD$19.5 million price tag set by Sotheby’s. Didn’t seem to matter as the house was sold in September 2016.

Whilst a look at the Integral House during Winter is fascinating as the house is exposed, here’s an alternate look through during a warmer time of the year when the house nestles into the foliage of the ravine site:

For a longer inspection of the Integral House this video by Azure is worth your time also.

House Location

[Source: feature header photograph]

The entire Grand Theft Auto V (GTA V) model took at total of 4 years to build between 2008 and 2013.

First, Rockstar built a ‘white box’ city model (a 3D working model with no textures) that took between 9-12 months to build up but it was the constant iterations and tweaks of the model – based on playability – by up to 1,000 developers (preproduction, modelling, coding, art direction, creating textures, test plays etc.) that took the bulk of the time. Roclstar could invest so much time as the development and marketing budget for GTA V was reportedly £170 million or US$265 million.

The process of making GTA V is covered in detail in a series of articles on Develop, starting here: Inside Rockstar North – Part 1: The Vision. In the fourth part, Aaron Garbut (Rockstar North art director on GTA V) outlines the timeframe developing the game model/map:

…we have six to eight people on the design for around nine months to a year. At that point we have a pretty solid blocked in map.
(source: Inside Rockstar North – Part 4: The Art)

Garbut also explained the iterative process refining the model:

We have a chunk of preproduction where a subset of the art team lay out and build a white box city. We get the roads feeling good, the vistas working well and look at the skyline and landmarks. We spend a long time driving and building and tweaking and getting everything in place and feeling balanced, making sure the districts we have chosen will blend together naturally and as a whole create the feeling of the city.

(offline, cached source: Rockstar North’s Aaron Garbut on the making of Grand Theft Auto V | Edge Online)

Part of the game’s success is no doubt due to Rockstar’s obsessive refinement of the model. It is wonderfully detailed with all sorts of nooks and crannies (I’m still finding them after over 2 years of playing the game) and a distinctive character. Leslie Benzies, president of Rockstar North says:

That last five to ten per cent of work on the game makes a huge difference. This level of perfection is not seen or understood in the majority of the industry. We can all make a car drive down a street in a game, but can you do it in style?

There are also some good answers elsewhere on Quora that explain the (likely) production process in some more detail: How are large, open world games, like GTA V made?

Travelling back a bit further in the GTA universe, Building Liberty City gives a good overview of how GTA went from flat-world to all the glory of three dimensions in GTA III (2001). From there, via the refinements of Vice City (2002), San Andreas (2004) and GTA IV (2008), GTA V took a world of three dimensions to a wonderful and detailed new level of realism.

To see for yourself, click through for high resolution PS4 (1080p) and PC (4K) versions.

Read my original answer on Quora. You can also follow me on Quora.

* My answer assumes that the term ‘map’ in the question refers to the entire virtual world of the game, ie. the model, and not the ‘texture maps’ of materials applied to the model.

So when I chanced upon a new website about Kiley created by The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) recently, I was reminded again why he is such a ‘landscape legend’.

All photographs above from The Landscape Architecture Legacy of Dan Kiley website.

The TCLF has, with the help of both commercial and educational sponsorship, established a survey of 28 of Kiley’s significant projects, all with new photography commissioned specifically for the online ‘exhibit’ (as they call it) and a touring exhibition during July and September 2014. There’s also a decent biography and a series of recollections by other landscape architects – including one of my other heroes, Peter Walker talking about the Miller Garden (1955):

I considered him my most important mentor… He introduced me to the work of Andre Le Nôtre. In my judgment he is the greatest landscape architect in the last half of the twentieth century. – Peter Walker

The website (and guide book) are part of the TCLF’s annual spotlight in their ‘Landslide’ series with a mission to “to draw immediate and lasting attention to threatened landscapes and unique features.”

The new TCLF website is undoubtedly the definitive online Kiley resource.

Contribute

If you want to contribute to the TCLF’s programs and initiatives, head this way. It is a not for profit organisation so relies on support from the public to stay afloat.

“The term… promises efficacious and accelerated construction and we can all accept that time is money. But, is it reasonable to expect that fast track construction will always live up to these optimistic prospects?” – Arthur O’Leary FAIA (Fast Track Construction: Is It Too Good To Be True? Can It Really Deliver?)

Yep. Good question Arthur.

In my experience the answer is: sometimes. But to know how and to see some built examples, read on. 

Fast track is construction industry-speak for a procurement method to deliver projects in the shortest possible timeframe. The methodology can be applied to all building typologies but has particular implications for lab buildings. You may know it as design and construct or D&C.

Essentially the technique – if you could call it that – is to overlap the design and construction phases of a project to reduce the overall time, and therefore cost, of a project. The other primary benefit to the client is that they can move in earlier. There are of course other benefits, such as reducing risk, but that is the subject for another day.

Also, the term ‘fast track lab design’ should not to be confused with ‘lean laboratories’, although the concept of seeking cost and time efficiencies is common to both.

The methodology originated with contractors constructing primarily commercial or spec office buildings, however more recently it is being applied to more complex building types. And laboratory buildings have not escaped untouched.

Programme

Traditional programmes are fairly linear in nature with minimal overlaps (number of months indicated at top):

The architect designs and documents first, then the contractor constructs. What isn’t shown above is the full length (in months) of the construction period as it is contingent on  project size and complexity. In recent laboratory projects I’ve led, the construction phase has varied between 12 months to 30 months.

In a fast track situation, the various programme ‘streams’ or phases are overlapped and assume concurrent work on different phases:

You will notice immediately that several phases relating to the procurement phases are brought forward in the process; early works, tendering and most importantly, construction. The degree of overlap is the primary challenge for an architect as design is an iterative process so the relative luxury of revisiting things later in the design phase is often not possible.

Considerations in fast track lab design

Honing in on the specific impacts of overlapping design and construction that apply to the laboratory building typology, here are my key considerations:

Complexity. Labs are highly technical complex spaces with both specific servicing and spatial requirements. With compressed fast track timeframes; details can be missed, thorough coordination of services may not be complete and clashes arise.

Structure. Structural considerations (esp. loading and vibration) are paramount as over designed structures will result in more costly construction (eg. more concrete) and potentially take longer to construct than a more appropriate structural solution.

Equipment. Establishing allowances for major equipment or large instruments such as NMR or MRI need to be made early as possible in the process. Determining any potential future installations will allow the spaces to be appropriately master planned.

End users. Unknown or changing user groups to those may ultimately occupy the labs. Consequently, there is a risk of providing a entirely generic lab that doesn’t actually suit any occupant. Modulate the lab design to meet the requirements of the immediate user consultation process and seek any further client input if the ultimate users of the spaces are unknown.

Flexibility. Understand the subtle differences and implications of flexibility /adaptability / convertibility / expandability. It is critical that adaptability (short timeframe operational changes) and convertibility (medium timeframe conversion of lab spaces to different functions) are understood as they will have the largest impact on a fast track delivery.

Experience. Ensuring that the Managing Contractor, and especially, subcontractor have experience and expertise in delivering complex, highly serviced fast track projects is fundamental.

Early works. Understand the value of early works as it almost mandatory in fast track projects, however, also appreciate the serious implications of digging before everything is known and/or the design is complete.

Value management. Carefully monitor the outcomes of any value management (VM) or value engineering (VE) sessions as items examined are often broad ranging but lacking in detail. Longer term consequences or interrelationships are not always clearly understood at the time, especially in relation to labs due to the complex servicing.

Right-size services. Monitor the information gathering and user review processes for the over provision of services or indeed, the under-provision of services. Both can have a massive impact on cost, construction delays and client/user satisfaction.

Prototyping. Although time is always pressing for fast track projects, don’t cut corners for labs. They allow the client, architect, and contractors to assess. Ensure that the purpose of the lab prototype is clearly understood by all. Mock-ups of partial lab bench/services spines may be an alternative if cost and time does not permit full prototyping.

BIM. A lot of hype about the advantages of an integrated 3D model but the reality on lab projects that is still an evolving element across the wider team. Data interchange between operating system platforms and CAD software is fraught with issues.

Document control. The production and distribution of information (drawings, reports, schedules etc.) is an ongoing task. With trade packaged documentation and partial documentation sets, monitoring document versioning is critical. Leverage the use of project management systems (eg. Aconex).

Lead time. Identify as early as possible in the design process any long lead time specialist materials, finishes or fitments that need to be procured for the project.

People. A result of a compressed timeframe is continued pressure on the individual team members. This can be stressful and lead to simple errors or oversights by experienced people. Expect errors and omissions but mitigate them by maintaining a multi-level quality checking system (self-check, buddy check, senior architect verification) for all drawings. Also ensure that team members take leave at regular intervals but not all at the same time!

The need for genuine collaboration

Under a fast track programme, a genuinely collaborative design and construction process is essential.

Evident in the most successful fast track research buildings is a collective team effort between client, architect, engineers, and contractor all swimming in the same direction. Strategic objectives are aligned.

However, it is a requirement of fast track lab design rather then a serendipitous event. The main reason is time. There is simply no time to waste on conflicting objectives, petty politics or hidden agendas. You just have to manage the level and type of collaboration within the project circumstances or boundaries.

Based on my experience in delivering  projects within these parameters, some suggestions for facilitating collaboration in fast track projects include:

• Implement a tripartite strategy for dealing with issues; proactive (avoiding issues), reactive (trouble shooting) and collaborative (resolving issues).
• Undertake an upfront design framework; collaborate with services engineers on broad strategies very early in the process
• Likewise, when the time comes undertake detailed collaboration workshops with sub-contractors (final design, supply, installation).
• Provide the architect with open and direct access to the client regardless of the engagement method. The ability to present and discuss person to person is essential to avoid anything ‘lost in translation’.

Armed with these strategies, the next time you are faced with a seemingly impossible programme for a laboratory building it hopefully won’t be so daunting.

Endnote
This is an adapted version of my presentation at Science Industry Australia’s Laboratory Design Conference held in November 2013. Hope you enjoyed this article. If you did, leave me a comment below or send a message.

On the assumption that ‘best’ infers design excellence, then I’d suggest some buildings featuring Corten by fellow Aussie architects – Wood Marsh and Nonda Katsalidis.

Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (1998) by Wood Marsh

MONA Museum, Hobart (2011) by Fender Katsalidis

and a (relative) oldie but a goodie:

Beach House at St. Andrews (1992) by Nonda Katsalidis

View my answer on Quora

As a Principal of a firm of 80 architects undertaking medium-large projects I can give you a few perspectives based on my typical day. Apart from longish hours (architecture is still labour intensive… but that’s another answer for Quora) and an espresso or two, my day usually comprises of three key activities:

• reading & writing (via email or project management software)
• collaborating (talking with colleagues, meetings)
• designing (sketches, making decisions, problem solving)

Some other days involve site inspections to a project under construction, inspections of prototypes, or inspections at manufacturing plants (precast concrete, curtain walls etc.). Depending on the project these inspections might even be overseas. In my case, that has meant travel around the country, to China and even the UK.

The nature of your activities really depends on your level of professional experience and the type of projects undertaken by the practice. However the basic elements are the same, the proportions of time just change. For example, a typical day of one of my recent graduate team members would probably look like this:

A lot less reading and writing as drawing/modelling on CAD typically fills most of their day.

Unlike the romantic vision of an architect sitting around all day and sketching in a Moleskine, the reality is markedly different… except perhaps for some of the ‘stararchitects’.

So, despite the fact that only about 5-10% of your time is actually spent designing, pretty much every other activity or decision contributes to realising a project in some way.

View my answer on Quora

Above: Natural edges are rich with detail and stepping scale; Macro, Meso, Micro.

Similarly, edges in the built environment can offer a richness to the spaces adjacent by shaping the human experience through a variety of design ‘moves’ and/or architectural details such as a feathered edge, protection from the sun or a place to sit.

With this in mind, what I’d like to focus on is the interstitial both at the edges of buildings and site as well as the spaces immediately adjacent.

Typically, if not already briefed, at FJMT we tend to weave public space into our projects where possible to help ‘ground’ them to the site but also to connect them right into the context. I’m not talking in an esoteric way about repaving footpaths here (which we also do) but actually making new public spaces of some measurable benefit to the community or perhaps a campus.

Sometimes there’s a clear visual and physical delineation between the building and the related external space, in other projects they tend to overlap and combine, however most commonly we find they tend to inform each other.

Many years ago in a volume of the magazine Places – by the way, the archive is available to download – there was a great definition of these three approaches, or ‘modes’ as the author (Reuben Rainey) called them, in the relationship of architecture and landscape that captures a way of considering the interstitial space.

These modes are: Contrast, Merger and Reciprocity.

I’ll just briefly explain them and then you may want to consider these modes while viewing the selected buildings below. The first mode, Contrast, is fairly obvious and is considered where architecture is juxtaposed with the natural or cultural landscape. Acting as a counterpoint, the building exerts an visual and physical influence of the immediate context through a combination of scale, profile, colour and finishes. There is no transition into landscape at all so that the intrinsic qualities of each are accentuated via Contrast.

Above: Selected built precedents contrasting with the surrounding context.

The next mode, Merger, is the polar opposite and is where architecture blends or appears integrated with the natural or cultural landscape. Reuben notes that in this mode the building form may reflect the surround topography or even be placed underground to entirely merge with the landscape.

Above: Selected built precedents merging into the landscape.

Reciprocity is the third mode and most commonly found. Architecture influences, modifies and shapes the landscape and landscape influences, modifies and shapes the architecture. Each mutually benefits which tend to lead to richer, more complex buildings and spaces. The Reciprocity strategy may be as direct and formal as an extension of the building grid into the landscape or more subtle where the external space transitions into the building and interlocks the interior and exterior.

Above: Selected built precedents in which the architecture and/or landscape are interdependent.

Of course, in the complexities of design there are contradictions. These three approaches often appear together in one building to accentuate each element in response to formal considerations or perhaps react to functional or climatic conditions. From the examples illustrated above, it could be argued that Fallingwater simultaneously merges and contrasts with the site context. Nevertheless, these modes are readily identifiable if you pause and look closely.

Endnote
This is a modified excerpt from my presentation at the Australian Institute of Architects Design Now mini-conference held in December 2011. Also, I’m planning a follow-up to this article with a focus on some of the projects I’m involved with at FJMT… ps. Happy New Year!

Further Reading

• For more on macro/meso/micro scale have a look at the classic book Responsive Environments (1985) by Ian Bentley et al. Here’s a recent video of Ian Bentley exploring parts of the Responsive Environments book.
• The macro/meso/micro concept equally applies to structures, chemistry, economics, and sociology (eg. Applying Sociology within Various Society Levels).
• Rainey, Reuben, 1998 Architecture and Landscape: Three Modes of Relationship (PDF), Places Vol. 4, No.4.