Gregory Burgess Architects

Gregory Burgess Architects, in collaboration with Thompson Berrill Landscape Design have been awarded the Yarra City Council Victoria Street Gateway Identification and Streetscape Theming Elements Project. This project presents an opportunity for Yarra City Council to highlight Victoria Street, one of its major activity centers, represent the Vietnamese and Asian communities. We will be working closely with stakeholders and the Council, embracing the community’s expectations, creating and ensuring a strong sense of community identity and ownership of the development with a sensitive approach to Victoria Street’s cultural streetscape and ensuring that the highest care is taken to protect and enhance the character of this special precinct.

Victorian Space Science Education Centre

‘Man and Architecture’ Exhibition,
´Mensch&Architektur´ journal in association with the Anthroposophical Society in Germany,
Berlin Philharmonie, 27 - 30 Jun 2013

Public Architecture (Alterations & Additions)

Institute of Koorie Education, Deakin University

Jury Citation:

‘The Institute of Koorie Education is an outstanding project that reworks a previously grim semi industrial building on the Waurn Ponds campus and adds new facilities that create an inspiring suite of spaces that serve Victoria's indigenous community.

The roof of the previous building has been raised to cleverly integrate with the new addition so that the new institute spans three floor levels, exploiting the slope of the site.

The architect has created a beautiful network of circulation and public spaces that knit together a wide diversity of teaching areas, academic offices, studios and a major performance space.

The generosity of this circulation network, which is naturally lit from above, creates a feeling of openness and collaboration.

Cultural traditions of greeting and ceremony are respected by creating both outdoor and indoor spaces that connect in a rational and poetic way.

The building is located at an important entry point to the campus and creates a welcoming, multifaceted and open education centre of a scale that humanises an otherwise monumental University campus environment.’

June 13, 2013
The Institute of Koorie Education
Reviewed by Clare Kennedy

Can a building change lives? Professor Wendy Brabham, director of the Deakin Institute of Koorie Education, is hopeful that the Institute’s new building will make a real impact on the future of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.
“I believe educational institutions within their architectural designs usually don’t consider the spaces required for the Aboriginal learner. Whereas, because we’ve been a part of designing this space with the architect, we bring to the table all the issues that underpin an Aboriginal student learner at the university level,” she says.
Designed by Greg Burgess, the Institute has been planned around an educational model that ensures students don’t have to leave their communities and families for long periods.
“Greg engaged, and understood the importance of the community-based model and that the space was important for the learner,” Brabham says.
Workshops with students, staff and Koorie elders determined that they wanted it to be like a home away from home. Classrooms, tutorial rooms and staff offices are distributed throughout the building, spaces informed by the teaching styles, administrative practices and needs of the learner.
“People have to walk between things, rather than being stuck in the same spot all day, so that walking and talking is a part of the educational philosophy,” he says.
“A light filled void connects the lower and upper level ... the idea is it’s a highly sociable building and highly interconnected.”
A tree trunk props up a huge steel beam from the original structure; the bark remains but the tree’s branches have been cut off. “The tree is like a reminder of traditional culture being a support for contemporary life,” says Burgess.
The Institute of Koorie Education has been shortlisted in the public architecture alterations and additions category.

Commendation for De Young Performing Arts Centre, Carey Baptist Grammar School

Jury Comments

The building provides a contemporary architectural response to the existing streetscape with references to the use of red brick and the traditional veranda. The building successfully restores the inner street on campus and provides a marker or gateway into the school. Along with the Great Memorial Hall, it frames the internal road and acts as a gateway celebrating the sense of arrival. The contemporary interpretation of the veranda around the building works successfully with the provision of landscaping in front to anchor building in ground. The building presents a creative response to the site and setting that reflects its use as a Performing Art Facility, through a bold façade that is certain to attract attention.
 

The Public Amenities Block at Middle Park Beach won the Mayor's award at the 2012 City of Port Phillip Design and Development Awards for its architectural excellence in sustainability and innovative design. Mayor Cr Rachel Powning told the packed crowd of architects, planners, and builders that the Middle Park Beach Amenities Block is an excellent example of how public toilets can be beautiful as well as functional.

“The beautiful design is highly responsive to its foreshore location,” she said. “The excellent design provides an aesthetically pleasing and safe public facility for the visitors to the foreshore of one of Melbourne’s finest urban beaches. And it uses rainwater harvesting for the toilet and basin use, solar electricity for lighting, and durable materials meaning low cost maintenance. This new facility has already been highly applauded within industry and by other local governments and so tonight it is only fitting that this work by Gregory Burgess Architects be recognised by the City of Port Phillip.”
 

May 4, 2012
De Young Centre for Performing Arts, Carey Baptist Grammar School
Reviewed by Joe Rollo
Anyone disturbed by the tawdry ordinariness of a lot of campus architecture would do well to make the pilgrimage to Barkers Road, Kew, to Carey Baptist Grammar, for reassurance that all is not lost.

To read full article, click on link below
 

Announced in the Queen’s birthday honours list, on the 13th of June, Greg was made a member of The of Order of Australia (AM), for service to Architecture in the area of environmentally sensitive building design, and to the community.  The team at GBA congratulate Greg.

This seasons featured projects are a selection of Cultural and Community jobs over the past two decades; Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre, Uluru Kata-Tjuta Cultural Centre, Twelve Apostles Visitor Centre, Churchill Island Visitor Centre, Mansfield High Country Visitor Centre, Lorne Visitor Centre and Burrinja Cultural Community Centre currently under construction .

Continuing our successful collaboration with Taylor Cullity Lethlean, Landscape Architects, our award winning partnership has been tested and proven successful yet again, this time with the engaging entry for the new Frankston Yacht Club.
The project was commended for the way the building, people, and nature are integrated into a harmonious and balanced ecology; a dynamic and responsive focus of community gathering and recreation giving delight and inspiration to Frankston's rich and vibrant culture.