One of the advantages of not having a job for the last couple of months is that it has given me time to do some work on my house, and in particular with the weather rather good it meant quite a bit of work on the outside of the house could be done.

The project that we decided to do externally was the re-invigoration of  our existing deck area including the re-staining of our deck, a new roof over the deck and a new coat of paint for everything including a change of colour that we hope to use on the rest of the house.

Probably the hardest task apart from all the painting was actually choosing a colour. We had been inspired by houses in the area and photos in magazines that showed weatherboard houses painted in a dark blue/grey colour with white trims that looked extremely effective. The only problem is that we didn’t really no what colour it was although we did manage to find one paint colour name in a magazine, which coincidentally was the one we chose. However this is the list of colours that we sampled on our wall – Wattyl Midnight Seas, Dulux Mary Janes, Wattyl Colorbond Ironstone, Haymes Stormy Blue, Haymes Distant Hillls, Wattyl Colorbond Monument, Dulux Oolong, Dulux Grid and Wattyl Grey Ember. To increase the suspense you will have to scroll down to the end for what colour we actually finished up with in the end.

The deck area albeit a few years ago

The deck in its original condition

The deck after cleaning and sanding

The deck after two coats of stain

Choosing a paint colour

The end product

Products used: Deck Stain – Cabots Ironwood; Posts, beams and ceiling – Haymes Nearly White; Walls – Dulux Mary Janes.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Enrico Taglietti

Rudolph Schindler

Standford White

Donald Bates

If you would like to support my Movember campaign you can do so by making a donation by either:

• Donating online at: http://mobro.co/NeilZimmerman
• Writing a cheque payable to ‘Movember,’ referencing my Registration ID: 58313 and mailing it to: Movember, PO Box 60, East Melbourne, VIC, 8002

You may or may not have noticed a lack of action on the “Home is where the architecture is” front of late but nevertheless there has been some action, most of it in the garden and mostly very boring.

However we are getting to some of the more exciting stuff as we look to update our living area. Of course one of the fun parts of redoing your living area is picking what furniture you would like. We have decided to go somewhat of a vintage feel to reflect the house and we, and my girlfriend in particular, have fallen in love with this lounge chair from Fler Furniture that we discovered in a magazine. Of course they are very difficult to find but if anyone out there can help with recommendations or places that are worthwhile checking out it would be very much appreciated.

Photos of the finished living area will of course be posted once completed.

Last Sunday was Sustainable House Day in Melbourne and seeing that it was nice day out I thought I would check out some of the houses that were open to the public.

Going on my experience from last year’s Sustainable House Day some of the houses can be a little hit and miss and this year was no different as I checked out houses in East & West Brunswick and my own suburb of Yarraville. Whilst the smaller houses were less than inspiring I was rather impressed by the Westwyck Eco-Housing Sustainability Development in West Brunswick.

Westwyck occupies the building and grounds of the former Brunswick West Primary School . The Westwyck developers aimed to bring the building to new and vibrant life as an urban demonstration showpiece of sustainable development and good design. Working on this project have been idontwearblack favourites Multiplicity alongside Mills Gorman and Michael McKenna with Taylor Cullity Lethlean taking care of the landscape.

The project is only part way through but is impressive both in ideology and its architecture. Whereas many of the houses on display during Sustainable House Day are what I would call “hippy” houses – oldish houses being renovated by people with a very environmental bent, Westwyck is a refreshing example of contemporary sustainable architecture that would have mass appeal.

With the Melbourne International Film Festival about to kick off tomorrow, it’s again time to take a look at the films that may be of interest to the architectural/design types out there.

Unlike previous years there is no documentary on a specific architect with there being more a concentration on the urban environment with Detroit Wild City, Foreign Parts and I Wish I Knew taking a look at Detroit, New York and Shanghai respectively.

“Detroit Wild City” by French filmmaker Florent Tillon takes a look beyond the haunted landscape of  Detroit to discover new urban explorers who are discovering opportunities in this decaying city’s reversion to a natural state. Paired with “Detroit Wild City” is The Future Will Not Be Capitalist which is short twenty minute film taking a look at Oscar Niemeyer’s Communist Party headquarters in Paris.

In a similar vein, “Foreign Parts”, is a peak into the lives of people who are living in and living off the wreckage of America’s cars in Willets Point in New York and how a $3billion urban redevelopment may affect their unique way of life. In contrast “I Wish I Knew” is a collage of the memories of eighteen people to construct a history of Shanghai.

Continuing on the industrial theme of “Foreign Parts” and “Detroit Wild City” is Ruhr, a film by experimental filmmaker, James Benning, which a two hour, meticulously composed meditation on the industrial landscapes of the Ruhr Valley, the former industrial heartland of Germany.

Closer to home andvery close to the heart of many Melbourne architects is The Triangle Wars, a look at the controversy surrounding the proposed redevelopment of the St Kilda Triangle. This should make for interesting viewing considering the kerfuffle that surrounding the redevelopment of what is essentially a car park.

Outside of the documentaries it also may worthwhile having a look at Day is Done, a fifteen year study of Zurich as seen through the eyes of filmmaker, Thomas Imbach.

Images taken from miff.com

The other night I got the chance to take a look at AAMI Park on a guided tour organised by the AIA. As a massive football fan I visit the stadium on an almost weekly basis during the A-League season I was actually more interested in seeing some of the behind the scene facilities that makes up a large part of the stadium that the general public don’t get to see. Unfortunately for all of us on the tour, those facilities were in use so we weren’t able to have a look.

Sometimes you win some, sometimes you lose some and we may have missed out on one opportunity but with the stadium management using lights to help the grass grow we able to capture some pretty interesting effects that the lights created. Here are some for your viewing pleasure.

If anyone knows me at all they know that I am a sucker for timber box-like buildings with Felipe Assadi and Francisca Pulido’s Fruit Warehouse being one of my favourite buildings of all time. So when Emilio Fuscaldo and Imogen Pullar of Nest Architects invited me to take a look at their project for KereKere I didn’t need a second invitation.

KereKere is a coffee vendor based at the University of Melbourne that let’s customers decide how its profits are distributed whilst providing employment for young people facing barriers in their quest for work. Kerekere, which takes its name from the Fijian custom of when someone asks something of yours you must give it to them, is the brainchild of James Murphy, a client who Nest Architects have worked with previously.

Murphy, although armed with a vision didn’t exactly know what he wanted but definitely had some ideas as to where he wanted the business to go and how it should evolve. At this stage all that Murphy’s venture consisted of were a couple of coffee carts and initially Fuscaldo thought that he go for some kind of structure. But all the client wanted at this stage was a few items that would create a brand: some chairs and tables; a screen to protect the coffee carts; and a trolley to put all the furniture on.

Not ones to disagree with the wishes of their client, they designed the items wanted including the little box where his playing cards get put into by customers to distribute the profits. Both say the client was really happy with outcome, which led them working together for the next year and a half on a number of different projects including going to other universities with the same model. It was at this stage that idea of a more permanent kiosk came up and Nest Architects are not exactly sure how Murphy managed to swing the location at Engineering Lane in the University of Melbourne but by the sounds of it they are pretty happy that he did so.

At the beginning, after overcoming a few building issues, Fuscaldo said they initially came up with something quite flamboyant. The plan was initially to use less timber, as they wanted to move away from its use, which if one can say such a thing at this early stage of their career, is something of a trademark. They initially wanted to use galvanised steel and painted colour panels to keep costs down but the more they progressed with the project the more their client liked the timber and wanted to the kiosk to be a “timber thing”.

They describe it as this “nice box” and I for one am pretty happy that it did. In fact it’s more than just a “nice box”, it’s a “nice timber box” simply treated with the intention that it will grey off over time giving it an ever-evolving patina. As Fuscaldo notes, “If you touch the timber, you have to keep touching the timber, so you might as well leave it and let it bleed and eventually it will be quite beautiful as one side will be really grey and the others less so. It will change over time and it will be interesting.” In fact the choice of timber is somewhat of a masterstroke because at the moment it blends in well with the bricks of Engineering Building in front of which it sits and gives the impression of being part of the existing building.

Whilst I may describe it as a “nice timber box” it’s probably doing it a little disservice as the little armatures out the front, the barn door on one side and an awning on the other means that each exposed side has something different going on. They are simple intrusions so as to not ruin the overall simplicity of the kiosk and they compliment it well.

One thing that was key to the client was that people still came to this new fixed location and could still see a relationship to the old set-up of two mobile coffee carts which worked extremely well as a business model. Both Emilio and Imogen clearly stated that in the process of making something permanent they didn’t want to kill off the feeling that people had of discovering it when it was located on the opposite side of the campus and feel that they had changed. They said, “That’s the last thing you want is to build something up and then have people say you changed so they don’t go there anymore. It’s not cool anymore.”

Rest assured with Nest Architect’s assured handling of their client’s wishes, it’s still cool.

Photos by Jesse Marlow

This year has been a much less prolific than the first one with only twenty entries as opposed to sixty. I guess I’m resorting to the old and slightly cliched adage of quality over quantity, or so I hope.

The most viewed post was Ten projects worth looking at which was my look at what projects were worth taking a look at the Presentation to Juries for the 2011 Victorian Architecture Awards. This was closely followed by my reports on the AIA National Conference, Natural Artifice which generated a huge amount of traffic and comment.

Top 5 most viewed posts:

1. Ten projects worth looking at
2. Natural Artifice – Day One
3. Natural Artifice – Day Two
4. Those crazy people in Adelaide
5. Fine winery architecture

Top 5 used search terms:

1. north melbourne station
2. crazy horse adelaide
3. winery architecture
4. lebbeus woods
5. space films