Projects
Architecture
Alibaba Headquarters, PR China
Hassell
27.07.10
HASSELL's new Alibaba Headquarters is a benchmark for the modern workplace in China. It's 150,000 square metres of flexible open plan office space within a campus style layout.
The design is based on the concepts of connectivity, clarity and community. The workplace has been designed to be a positive and healthy environment to encourage informal and creative meetings throughout the complex. Hubs, internal and external streets, bridges, roof terraces and strategically placed destination points contribute to the collaborative intent. The built form and the designed spaces are integrated so that each defines the other.
The Hangzhou context has been embraced with garden networks and the sunshading screens that represent Chinese ice-pattern window screens prominent throughout the region.
Hard work and fun times with HASSELL's Jackie, Amy and Mr Yang!
Architecture
Alfred St Apartments Sydney
BVN Architecture
21.06.10
Winner of the inaugural AARON BOLOT AWARD for RESIDENTIAL ARCHITECTURE – MULTIPLE HOUSING at 2010 NSW Architecture Awards.
Jury Citation:"...timeless plan that is considered at all levels. The simple and disciplined floor plan accommodates a flexible and differentiated apartment layout at each level. A rational and economic structure ensures the basement plan and foundations are simple and profound. They include a plan that does not require complex structural transfer beams. The corners of the building and every one of its junctions are well conceived, well detailed, and well executed with robustness and durability. In the rationality of this building, BVN has created a laconic and timely statement. We hope this assists in the prioritisation of orders of importance in future exclusive buildings; the plan and air and natural light are, as found here, more important than an emphasis on material inclusions, which we are thankfully spared in this clear and rigorous building."
ARCHITECTURE/INTERIORS
Kinky House
iredale pedersen hook
12.05.10
Conceived as a formal emulation of the hip roof of the existing heritage listed residence this substantial addition to a large home seeks to provide an alternative reading of its suburban context. Distinctive but complimentary materials: copper, recycled jarrah and calacatta marble, have been employed so that the addition both references and develops the life of the architecture. Concealed from the street, the new insertion transforms the nature of the historic domestic language into a dynamic and generous articulation of form and space, suitable for the life of its new family. All in it's a great set of alterations and additions to a Hawthorn mansion. The architects are iredale pedersen hook and the interior design is by Beatrix Rowe. Photographed for Vogue Living.
Architecture
Australian Pavilion
Wood Marsh Architecture
21.04.10
PLA soldiers having their photographs taken in front of the Australian Pavilion in the days before the Shanghai World Expo 2010 opens.
From 1 May to 31 October 2010 Australia's national pavilion will showcase Australian innovation, creativity and achievement to some 7 million visitors mostly from mainland China - an average of 38,000 people on each of the 184 days of the expo.
Architecture
Roslyn Street Bar/Restaurant
Durbach Block
13.04.10
Durbach Block Architects' four storey commercial building in Sydney's Kings Cross is a response to the particular character of this 'colourful' precinct. Known affectionally by locals as the 'Barcelona Building' its tiled 'Catalan' form could be seen as a benevolent angel. As a building it's an extraordinary gesture, an artwork that gives of itself whilst accommodating a commercial program of restaurant, bar and offices. In this pleasurable endeavour I was received warmly and amused by amiable locals and ably assisted by Katherin Lu.
Architecture/Interiors
Cubby House
Edwards Moore
13.04.10
Edwards Moore's extension and renovation of an apartment overlooks Fitzroy's iconic public swimming pool. It's an absolute cracker! The French Bulldog's name is Jimmy.
Architecture
ANZ Centre
Hassell
01.03.10
HASSELL's new headquarters for the ANZ Bank is a 'ground-scaper' housing 6500 staff in 10 light filled stories that surround a central atrium. Bovis Lend Lease were the developer and builder of the project. It was my pleasure be joined by Ken Maher, Rob Backhouse and Harley Vincent from Hassell and Nicole Ekert from Bovis Lend Lease for a personal introduction to, and tour of, the building. Indeed it was all pleasure photographing the project until my ALPA and Leaf Digital back went for a quick swim off a floating marina as a motorboat passed by!
Architecture
Corinella House
BKK
28.02.10
BKK's Corinella House sits on a peninsula in Victoria's Westernport Bay, with a view over mangroves, sand flats, sea and black swans to French Island. It's a particularly fine project, realised through that most fortuitous combination of rigorous architects, good builder and great client (also a particularly fine host!).
Future
Melbourne Future Wheel
Büro North
05.02.10
Collaborating with Büro North and Squint Opera we've visualised our own proposition for Melbourne's heat damaged and conceptually flawed Southern Star Big Wheel. We suggest a greek windmill inspired sci-fi future with 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!
Architecture
Casa da Musica, Porto
OMA
10.01.10
Perhaps my favorite building, the Casa da Musica by Rem Koolhaas/OMA photographed 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.
Architecture
Melbourne Rectangular Stadium
Cox Architects
09.01.10
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, you can see my finished photograph over a double page spread in Wallpaper* February Design Awards special.
Architecture/Interiors
Lyons studio
NMBW Architecture Studio
08.12.09
Lyons Architecture's new studio by NMBW is in an old department store in Melbourne's CBD. This masterful intervention leaves well enough alone while introducing fine detail and material concerns making for a dynamic and sustainable working environment for the whole Lyons crew.
Architecture
MAXXI, Rome
Zaha Hadid Architects
04.12.09
Italy's new Modern Art Museum, the 'MAXXI' - 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, arts and architecture. Flow form, the MAXXI is not object, it's more a field of buildings making an immersive urban environment. The intertwined galleries and stairs read as rivers and streams.
Architecture/Heritage
Barcelona Pavilion
Mies van der Rohe
05.11.09
The German Pavilion for the 1929 Barcelona International Exhibition, this is the building that spawned THAT column and THOSE chairs. It was demolished in 1930 but a replica was built in the 1980's. Normally I wouldn't endorse a replica but... I photographed it again this year with the category winners and jurors of this years World Architecture Festival enjoying cocktails and canapes poolside. As you would!
Architecture
Perforated House, Melbourne
KUD
19.10.09
This is not a terrace. This is more than a facade. Kavallaris's sustainable critique of a terrace house is a contemporary dwelling for a family - his family! As well as being the cover story of AR Residential 09/City Living you can see Kavallaris's house in Mark magazine No 23/December 09-January 10.
Advertising
Triptych
19.10.09
This advertising series was shot for Stable Properties 'Triptych', an innovative luxury apartment building under conderstruction in Melbourne's Arts Precinct. I photographed from the very top of the lift cores at dawn and dusk. The images themselves are made up from a number of photographs stitched together to make the final panoramas. Using an ALPA camera and the latest Leaf Aptus II 10, 56 megapixel digital back, the final image files were 3gb each allowing for the ultimate in reproduction - one usage called for 4m x 1m photographic prints!
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
Docklands Park
rush/wright associates
13.08.09
I'm currently working on a book celebrating rush/wright associates' 10 years of innovative landscape architecture. Much of the shooting is from helicopters with a technique I've developed using gyroscopes to photograph in the low light of the late evening. Photographing from a vibrating, moving helicopter presents a challenge, particularly when sitting harnessed out of the aircraft door in the rotorwash, hand-holding a 10kg+ rig!
Architecture
Melbourne Convention Centre
NH Architecture & Woods Bagot
10.07.09
For 3 years I've been photographing the Melbourne Convention and Entertainment Centre and adjoining Hilton South Wharf, documenting its construction through to the building's opening. As well as the book you can see the Melbourne Convention Centre and my images in AR 109 and AA Vol 98 No 3.
Architecture
Balencea
Wood Marsh Architecture
01.07.09
The latest St Kilda Road development by developer Sunland. Balancea is a seductive multi-residential project by Wood Marsh Architecture. Buro North designed the building's graphics and signage, you can see the logo sign and beautiful screens. I was commissioned for the art series that features on 11 floors of the boutique 23 story building. At the 2009 Australian Institute of Architects Victorian Awards Balencea was awarded an Architecture Award in the Residential, Multiple Housing Category.
Exhibition
Thinking Images
28.06.09
Naomi Stead considers the Sydney exhibition by Peter Bennetts, Recent Architecture Photography in Architecture Australia Vol.98 No.2.
Architecture
Nordpark Cable Railway
Zaha Hadid Architects
26.06.09
Nordpark is a vertiginous ski field perched above Innsbruck. Zaha Hadid Architects have designed four cable railway stations like melting glaciers, to link the city to the chairlifts.
These images are in the collection of the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York! Publications include Monument and Artichoke magazines.
Reportage
Tuvalu 1998-present
26.06.09
Tuvalu is a nation of eight tiny atolls in the Pacific Ocean. Look for the intersection of the equator and the date line and you'll find it. But not for long. Tuvalu's low lying atolls make it particularly vulnerable to sea level rise and the effects of climate change. I have been visiting and documenting the islands and their people since 1998.
Architecture/Hotels
St Falls/Quay West Falls Creek
Elenberg Fraser Architecture
15.06.09
Elenberg Fraser's second snowfield development (after Huski) is also situated in the ski resort village of Falls Creek. Saint Falls creates a new portal to the resort and has a form derived from the open wings of a Bogong Moth.
Architecture
Melbourne Recital Centre & MTC
Ashton Raggatt MacDougall
07.06.09
The Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC (Melbourne Theatre Company) are conjoined venues in Melbourne's Southbank Arts precinct. The Recital Centre has a form that is part packaging/part object and the MTC is all about the box...or is it?
This project scooped the awards pool for ARM at the 2009 A.I.A. Victorian Chapter Awards.
Architecture/Interiors
Cardigan Street House
FMD
25.05.09
In this wonderful renovation of a labyrinthine Victorian terrace Architect Fiona Dunin has used mirrors and planes to transform the Victorian stair into a periscope where glimpses to rooms beyond reveal beautiful details and light-filled spaces. And while mirrors create prismatic intrigue - you try and photograph them! You can learn more about Fiona and FMD Architects here.
Architecture
Yarra House
Leeton Architecture
23.03.09
Leeton Pointon Architects + Susi Leeton Architects won an Architecture Award for Interior Architecture at the 2009 Victorian Chapter Awards with this beautifully crafted house in Melbourne.
Design
Scanlan & Theodore
Herbert & Mason
15.03.09
Herbet and Mason's travelling pavilion/shop/gallery/object for Scanlan & Theodore. After a few deft moves it will join the permanent collection at the National Gallery of Victoria. And that's a model of the pavilion on the cover of Artichoke #26 'Round Round the Table' - when it was no more than a sparkle in Matthew's eye and a well loved cardboard and foam-core representation.
Architecture/Heritage
The Arts Centre, Melbourne
Roy Grounds
01.03.09
Roy Grounds' Victorian Arts Centre literally pierces Melbourne's arts precinct and gives seagulls a focus to wheel around!
Architecture
Dalyellup College
Hassell
17.02.09
Dalyellup College is a new school just outside the coastal south-west city of Bunbury in Western Australia. Hassell's design is a ribbon of contemporary architectural spaces around a protected central courtyard. Dalyellup College also received an Architecture Award in the Public Architecture category of the WA Chapter AIA awards. You can see it in Monument 92 August/September 2009.
Architecture
Jane Foss Russell Building
John Wardle Architects
06.02.09
John Wardle Architects in association with Wilson Architects and GHD's new building and bridge at the University of Sydney won an Architecture Award at the 2009 NSW Architecture Awards. I'd organised the street to be cleared of traffic...and then the green VW drives by. This project was published in AR #109, BOB (Korea) and ANC (Korea).
design
Green Void Sydney
LAVA
15.01.09
Green Void by LAVA is a spectacular and fun architectural installation at Customs House, Sydney.
Architecture
Vader House
Andrew Maynard Architects
09.01.09
Andrew Maynard Architects' Vader House sits behind a Victorian terrace in Melbourne's Fitzroy, a dense inner-city suburb. Everything opens/closes and turns off/on! Decking moves to reveal/conceal lawn or pool. Folding doors make the inside outside or is the outside inside? Electric glass becomes clear or opaque depending on your use of the bathroom. And the floor opens to reveal a cellar. Vader House was the homepage story on the Wallpaper* website, you can see it here.
Architecture
Swan Street Residence
iredale pedersen hook
30.12.08
In a sleepy Perth riverside suburb, iph's Swan Street residence serves as a shrine to everyday pleasure while giving a nod to the materials and forms of the early 20 century Arts and Crafts movement. Swan Street residence won the WA chapter of the Australian Institute of Architecture 2009 Architecture Award for Residential Architecture Alteration + Additions. Did I mention it was about 42 degrees when I shot it - phew! Swan Street was published in AR #110 'adaption'.
Architecture
Burj Dubai
07.11.08
The world's tallest building, the Burj Dubai, under construction in 2008.
Architecture
Torre Agbar
Jean Nouvel
21.10.08
Jean Nouvel's Torre Agbar in Barcelona, Spain. It houses the city's water company and fittingly has a geyser inspired form.
Architecture/Interiors
Fjäll, Falls Creek
Hecker Phelan & Guthrie
10.09.08
Fjäll (pronounced "fe-yall") is Swedish for mountain. Designed by Salter Architects and interiors by Hecker Phelan & Guthrie, Fjäll is ski lodge that blends rustic traditions with a contemporary designer finish. I was mostly ably assisted by Lars who's quick with a coffee but cooked us overnight turning up the thermostat because he was cold - you'd think a Dane would know...
Architecture/Advertising
Q1, Gold Coast
Sunland Design
08.08.08
Q1 on Queensland's Gold Coast was designed and developed by Sunland Group and is Australia's highest apartment tower. I was commissioned by Sunland to mark the company's 25th anniversary with a series of new images of their milestone projects.
Exhibition
Recent Work
01.08.08
Peter Bennetts Photographer - Recent Work, my exhibition for the Victorian 2008 State of Design Festival was held in the empty and now demolished Abaris Print-works building, A'beckett Street, Melbourne and curated by Fleur Watson. A big thank-you to Panurban, Sunstudios, Tarrawarra and Format furniture for generously supporting the exhibition.
Art
Outer-suburban realities
10.07.08
Critical photo essay on the sobering ugliness of the outer-suburban reality.
Architecture
RMIT Architecture School
NMBW Architecture Studio
04.06.08
RMIT's New Architecture School, housed in a recycled building, expertly fitted out by NMBW.
Portrait
Jean Nouvel
Jean Nouvel
03.06.08
This portrait was taken for AR while Jean Nouvel was in Melbourne. It was taken after a long lunch, involving a fair amount of red wine. While most of us might want a post-prandial sleep Jean can design a pretty fine building after a bottle of red wine.
Design
Carpet Couch 2
Phooey
30.05.08
It's a couch! It's carpet!! It's PHOOEY!!! (it's also the cover of Monument issue 87).
Architecture/Hotels
Southern Ocean Lodge
21.04.08
Southern Ocean Lodge, Kangaroo Island, South Australia for Wallpaper*.
Architecture/Heritage
Singapore Cottage
RBA Architects & Conservation Consultants
09.04.08
This pre-fabricated cottage won the John George Knight Award for Heritage at the 2009 Victorian Architecture Awards for RBA Architects & Conservation Consultants + JAM Architects. Originally imported from Singapore in 1852-3, the restoration and conservation of this modest South Melbourne building is described by the awards' jury as an inspirational example of heritage architecture: "a revelatory intersection between history and the present".
Architecture
Elwood House
NMBW Architecture Studio
19.03.08
An addition to an addition to an addition. Originally a California bungalow, this house was first given a second storey, then a new wing and now NMBW's addition which is that rare project that gives more than it takes...adding quality to the public thoroughfare, the built and natural environments, the life of the family that it houses...a timber extension that demonstrates an enormous generosity of spirit. Evocative of camping by a billabong in the outback Flinders Ranges, the landscape is by Rush/Wright Associates.
Architecture
K House Anglesea
Ashton Raggatt MacDougall
27.08.07
Brought to you by ARM and the letter 'K'. The house's form is the k-mart 'K' in plan and elevation.
Architecture
Skinners Adventure Playground
Phooey
16.07.07
A small project that has made big waves. PHOOEY's recycled containers house a children's activity centre in a community playground in South Melbourne, and have won awards locally, nationally and internationally.
Portrait
Peter Cook
Peter Cook
27.06.07
Sir Peter Cook photographs the photographer. Commissioned by Monument magazine.
Advertising
Melbourne Winter Campaign
18.05.07
Client - Tourism Victoria
Campaign - Melbourne Winter, Lose Yourself
Agency - publicis mojo
Producer - Vince Tillyer
Art Director and Copy - Selina + Toby
Sculptors - Tin & Ed
Architecture
1010 Building
Ashton Raggatt MacDougall
03.03.07
Part of the new development at Digital Harbour in Melbourne's Docklands. The facade of this building by ARM produces a visual effect called the Münsterburg or Café Wall Illusion. Despite its appearance the facade panels are parallel. ARM note that the "presence of the coloured horizontal line at each floor level is essential to the illusory effect".
Architecture/Interiors
New Gold Mountain
Cassandra Complex
22.02.07
New Gold Mountain is a bar designed by the ever-intriguing Cassandra Complex that joyfully riffs on the opium den aesthetic of gold rush Melbourne.
Architecture
Hildebrand House
Lovell Chen
18.01.07
This is the last project of the firm Robinson Chen and dates from 1990. In 2007 I photographed the Hildebrand House in Somers, on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, for Monument magazine as a part of their series on Classic Houses. I was awe struck by the project and its presence nearly 20 years after its construction. It is more than a classic house, and was the precursor to a new style of Australian 'beach house' architecture.
Architecture
Cape Schanck House
Paul Morgan
28.11.06
Set in a stand of native tea-tree on the southern end of the Mornington Peninsula is Paul Morgan Architects' Cape Schanck House. The house won the Robin Boyd Award for Residential Architecture at the 2007 National RAIA Awards. I love the project's response to its slightly eerie coastal setting. That and the fact that its location is referred to by some as 'Cape Shag'.
Portrait
Greg Lynn
Greg Lynn FORM
06.07.06
I photographed Greg Lynn for Monument magazine. Greg later bought the image to use as his official portrait.
Architecture
Sheep House
iredale pedersen hook
02.07.06
This image of 'Sheep House' was acquired by Kodak for their permanent collection of photography as an 'exemplar of architectural photography'. The beautiful and pragmatic house was designed by iredage pedersen hook and does indeed have a small flock of sheep (and Diego the donkey) that graze around the house perimeter.
Architecture/Hotels
Millennium Hilton Bangkok
BARstudio
06.06.06
Bangkok's new urban resort perched on the Thon Buri bank of the Chao Phraya River. One of Bangkok's half built ghosts of the 90's has been transformed by BARstudio into a luxurious new retreat. Photographed for Hilton.
Architecture
Yve Apartments
Wood Marsh Architecture
13.04.06
Curves define Yve, designed by Wood Marsh and developed by Sunland Group. The continuous ribbons of the glass balconies snake around the perimeter of the building, creating effects of compression and expansion. This was one of the first projects I photographed with the full digital set up and it had some fantastically abstract moments.
Art
Huski art series
22.07.05
Rather than participate in the wholesale slaughter of wildlife for taxidermy, I photographed taxidermy (and interiors) in North American ski resorts. The resulting 100cm x 100cm canvases hang throughout Huski's apartments, lobby, produce store and day spa.
Architecture/Hotels
Huski Lodge, Falls Creek
Elenberg Fraser Architecture
19.06.05
Apartment hotel Huski sits amongst the snow gums in my favorite Australian mountain resort of Falls Creek. Elenberg Fraser's faceted facade was inspired by the crystalline forms of snow flakes. Best of all the Huski Produce Store serves the best coffee on the hill (and you can ski to the front door).
Architecture
Marion Cultural Centre, Adelaide
Ashton Raggatt MacDougall
16.06.05
In the Adelaide suburb of Marion, ARM (Ashton Raggatt McDougall and Phillips Pilkington Architects in Association) have created a Cultural Centre and its surrounds formed from the word "Marion". My photographs of this project were published in AR and Domus, and one was selected as the cover of Australia Architecture and Design published by Daab. The car park image was the poster for Australia's exhibition at the 2006 Venice Architecture Bienale...which makes perching in a swaying cherry picker on a freezing night to take the shot finally worthwhile!
Architecture
Wheatsheaf House
Jesse Judd/JLMA
04.06.05
Jesse Judd's house is set in a eucalyptus plantation and has a stained plywood interior that seems to glow amongst the monochromatic trees.
Portrait
David Chipperfield
David Chipperfield Architects
30.03.05
Commissioned by Monument I had David Chipperfield look up dreamily in Melbourne's Hosier Laneway for this photograph.
ART
GPO Melbourne
11.03.05
Matej Andraž Vogrincic created the installation "When on a Winter's Night a Traveller" at the Melbourne GPO for the 2005 L'Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. The installation was composed of one thousand umbrellas suspended over the atrium of the GPO. At various times a cloud of mist would form over the umbrellas, obscuring the far side of the building.
Architecture
QV
NH Architecture
01.03.05
Construction at QV. Where else can you see new buildings by NH, Kerstin Thompson, McBride Charles Ryan, DCM, John Wardle and Lyons on the same block?! This photograph was one of a series commissioned by AR and art directed by the legendary Peter Citroni.
Portrait
Lars Spuybroek
NOX | Lars Spuybroek
16.02.05
"Ha, ha, great picture!" "resisting to be a tourist" "I just can't stop laughing over here. Please tell the photographer he's as good as Jeff Wall!" Lars Spuybroek
Architecture
Barro House
Wood Marsh Architecture
08.12.04
The clients for this house by Wood Marsh were in the concrete business and the quality of the off-form concrete throughout is amazing. There are also wonderful traces of the construction process forever captured in some of the concrete ceiling panels. Notably the house also features a life size replica column from the Barcelona Pavilion.
Architecture
ACCA
Wood Marsh Architecture
15.11.04
The Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) by Wood Marsh Architecture is like a Cor-ten steel Uluru and has the most interesting contemporary art exhibitions and installations in Australia. It's an uncompromising building in an uncompromising landscape and I love it.
Portrait
Bill Henson
08.10.04
It was a quite a privilege being commissioned to photograph one of my favourite artists, photographer Bill Henson for Monument. Photographing in Melbourne's Botanical Gardens, I used a large format 4x5" camera and colour negative film.
Architecture
Toorak House
Allan Powell Architects
28.04.04
This house by Allan Powell Architects gives nothing away from the street but stepping inside was like immersing yourself in a brandy alexander.
Architecture
TarraWarra Museum of Art
Allan Powell Architects
09.03.04
TarraWarra Museum of Art is a privately funded public art gallery set in the picturesque Yarra Valley. The gallery focusses on Australian art from the mid-twentieth century to the present day and has an ever-changing roster of exhibitions. The gallery by Allan Powell Architects is not so much a building as a set of constructed interventions in the landscape, playing with concealment and revelation.
architecture
Centre for ideas
Minifie Nixon
01.01.04
Minifie Nixon completed this building in 2001 and it is both seductive and confounding. The form is generated from an investigation of Voronoi tessellations realised in brilliant stainless steel. The architect had a little sleep on the floor while I was photographing it.