I've been working with Büro North and Squint Opera to visualise our own proposition for Melbourne's heat damaged and conceptually flawed Southern Star Big Wheel. We suggest a Wind Driven Solar Sail Powered Wheel as a hub for a new fleet of Flying Steam Powered Punk Trams which alleviate congestion in a newly greened Melbourne!
Paris based Artravel magazine have published, as their cover story, my photographs of Yarra House by Leeton Pointon Architects + Susi Leeton Architects in their 5th Anniversary issue. Artravel, published bimonthly, devotes itself to the world's best contemporary design, decoration and interior architecture. Seeing the magazine has reminded me of the shoot...starting at dawn and finishing 14 hours later, well after dark, enduring +40°C heat in one of Melbourne's heat-waves - but it was still a pleasure!
Melbourne Rectangular Stadium is under construction on Olympic Boulevard in the 'Sports and Entertainment' precinct of inner Melbourne. Commissioned by Wallpaper* to photograph the construction for their awards edition, able intern Nils Koenning and I scaled 5 tiers of scaffold and shot the pitch with one of the stadium's geodesic panels being craned into place. The Stadium with its distinctive bio-frame structure and geodesic dome roofs was designed by Cox Architects. Rectangular stadium was awarded Wallpaper* magazine's 'Worlds best building site' in their 2010 Design Awards announced today, you can see my finished photograph over a double page spread in the Wallpaper* February Design Awards special.
I've just photographed what is perhaps my favorite building, the Casa da Musica by Rem Koolhaas/OMA for the 'Music Houses' book - the world's most remarkable buildings for musical performance. Intellectual rigor meets sensual beauty in an original form. Whilst photographing the Casa was pure pleasure I wish I'd seen more of Porto than it, the airport and my hotel.
Published bi-annually by Swiss watchmakers Patek Philippe exclusively for the owners of their watches, Patek Philippe Magazine expresses a unique philosophy: 'The publication is designed to feature all aspects of excellence with brilliant images and eloquent stories...the magazine is a standing invitation to explore beauty and timelessness'! Flattering indeed that my image of ARM's 1010 building was chosen for their 'Pictorial' feature which focuses on a single image which causes a 'double take' in the viewer.
I've just finished shooting for the new Wallpaper* City Guide to Sydney. 3 days, 20 locations and a trying time with Qantas! Photographing bars, shops and hotels we discovered lots of good; from The Rum Diaries to Via Alley, Saint Augustine Academy to the Diamant Penthouse. The shoot was produced by the super organised Eriko Shimazaki and I was lucky to enjoy the assistance and companionship of Nils Koenning. Now I'm exhausted and glad to be back in Melbourne, not a day off for 4 weeks with back to back shooting in 6 countries and 10 cities to date! Wish I'd a Wallpaper* City Guide for everywhere I've been!!
Today I attended the opening of the National Museum of the XXI Century arts by Zaha Hadid Architects. Exploring the interface between architecture, landscape and art the MAXXI is a complex, dynamic and fluid set of spaces devoted to contemporary creativity. Wonderfully I'd been invited to the opening and commissioned to photograph this incredible building. I'm grateful for the assistance of Gianandrea Barbero who apart from a pretty good job as a tour guide, he is from Torino, was able to convince some lovely Romans into letting us photograph from their top floor apartment overlooking the MAXXI.
As guests of RBA Architects we attended the National Architecture Awards last night at the Melbourne Recital Centre. RBA didn't get an award for their shortlisted project Singapore Cottage but several other buildings I photographed did. The venue, the Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre Project by ARM – was awarded the Emil Sodersten Award for Interior Architecture and the Frederick Romberg Award for Residential Architecture - Multiple Housing went to Wood Marsh and Sunland Design for the 22-storey Balencea Apartments on St Kilda Road in Melbourne. A Commendation for Interior Architecture went to the Jane Foss Russell Building, University of Sydney, NSW by John Wardle Architects in association with Wilson Architects and GHD. Congratulations to all the winners!
AR Residential 09/City Living has hit news-stands with a PB photograph of Melbourne based KUD's Perforated House on the cover. Also featured in this issue are my photographs of Andrew Maynard's Vader House and Balencea Apartments by Wood Marsh and Sunland Group.
ArchiCAD 13 Starts Shipping Today. GRAPHISOFT announced today that the next version of its award-winning Virtual Building™ modeling solution has started to ship on both Windows® and Macintosh®.
My photograph of the Melbourne Convention Centre by Woods Bagot & NH Architecture covers the software box and appears as the start up splash when the software is launched. I have to admit that I love the idea of annoying thousands of architects around the world with my image every day as they start work.
Short-listed for this years World Architecture Festival awards are 3 Australian projects that I’ve been fortunate to have photographed. And in double fortune I’m going to be in Barcelona again this year for the WAF – last year I attended the inaugural event.
The shortlist includes;
Melbourne Convention Exhibition Centre by NH Architecture and Woods Bagot, the Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre by Ashton Raggatt McDougall and Elwood House by NMBW Architecture Studio. Follow the links to see the projects on this website.
The WAF runs from 4-6 November 2009. See you in Barcelona!
Gianandrea Barbero references Hitchcock in his photograph of me photographing at Writing Architecture held this weekend past (15 & 16 August 2009) in Brisbane, a “symposium on architectural criticism and the Written Representation of Architecture Theory. Convened by Dr Naomi Stead, School of Architecture at the University of Queensland.”
Theory’s back! The symposium, dense with ideas, had the gathering so compelled that the cerulean skies and a lizard warming 29 degrees were eschewed for a poorly lit and ventilated theatrette in the basement of the IMA. Fertile ground to ferment, literally, ideas of new Architectural criticism!
My new site was designed by the wunderkinds at Studio Round with input from architect/photographer/editor Astrid Meyer and myself. It was built by Simon at Peptolab, to whom nothing seems a problem. And thankfully architect/photographer Gianandrea Barbero has spent days uploading via the CMS system and there's much more to come! The site can be searched and has a client log-in area to facilitate image transfers and enhance workflows. There will be regular news updates if I get my act together. Let me know what you think!
Three years in the photographing, this monograph detailing the design and construction of the new Melbourne Convention Centre has just been released. NHArchitecture in joint venture with Woods Bagot designed the Convention Centre. The book, published by URO Media, edited by Andrew Mackenzie and beautifully designed by Studio Round, grapples with the broader questions of public architecture and the process by which it is procured. It also has some beautiful photographs of the finished building!
The Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Chapter Awards were announced on July 10th. I was privileged to have photographed some of the winning projects including ARM’s Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre project which took home the Victorian Architecture Medal and the named awards for Interior Architecture, Public Architecture and Urban Design. Also captured by my lens was the winner of the named Heritage Architecture award: Roger Beeston’s (RBA Architects) Prefabricated (Singapore) Cottage. Architecture Award winners I’d photographed were Leeton Pointon Architects and Susi Leeton Architects’ Yarra House (Interior Architecture), NMBW Architecture Studio’s RMIT Building 45 (Public Architecture Alterations and Additions) and Wood Marsh Architecture’s Balancea (Residential, Multiple Housing). All these projects can be viewed on this website. Congratulations to all the award winners!
More awards, congratulations this time in Western Australia. Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects was a multiple awards winner, honoured with the Scoop Publishing Award for Residential Architecture (Alts & Adds) for Swan Street Residence which i'd photographed...on a very hot day! And in the public category Hassell won an Architecture award with Dalyellup College in WA's southwest photographed on not such a hot day. You can see the projects featured on this website - follow the links or search.
NSW Chapter Awards of the Australian Institute of Architects were announced on June 18th. I was lucky to have photographed one of the winning projects the Jane Foss-Russell Building at the University of Sydney by John Wardle Architects in association with Wilson Architects and GHD. The new building creates a gateway to the University and houses a Library in it's undercroft, a Public Plaza over and a building for Student Services, there's also a bridge that diagonally traverses City Road linking the Camperdown and Darling Street Campuses. The building was awarded in both the Public and Interior categories. Congratulations to everyone involved!
Thinking Images - Naomi Stead considers the exhibition by Peter Bennetts, Recent Architecture Photography
"Bennetts’ exhibition ‘Recent Architecture Photography’...the image of Ateliers Jean Nouvel’s Torre Agbar in Barcelona is remarkable, with the sleek and slick tower appearing to rise from a weedy and rubbish-strewn vacant lot. But in all of the exhibition, the most thought-provoking and perhaps disturbing images are the least visually beautiful, and certainly their subject is not high-style architecture. The only black and white images in the show, they demonstrate the outer-suburban daily reality of a large proportion of Australians. This batch of sobering ugliness, at the back of the exhibition, shows that here is a photographer who can take more than just a gorgeous picture. He can also observe conditions in the built environment and present them as images, silently but pointedly, in order to make us think."
Along with my camera (it's on the table!) I was invited to a discussion (and lunch) on the future of graphic design. Hosted with panache and aplomb by Studio Round and debated by Kate Rhodes, Warren Taylor, Geoff Nees, James Cameron and Matthew Herbert with me chirping from my precarious perch above the table. The ideas were literally manifest on the table paper. The cover image and story was originally produced for the new views exhibition, held at the Melbourne Museum 15 November - 15 February 2009.
The Peter Bennetts Photographer logo and business card has attracted its fair share of comment and compliments. There’s nothing better than handing over a business card and watching the perplexed recipient holding it up to the light and turning it over…and over…and over. Its ingenious design was from the hand of the talented Stuart Geddes of Chase & Galley and references a Compur shutter - a mechanical shutter similar to the ones with which I photograph (and that makes the click and whirrr on this website's splash page).