The redesigned St Kilda pier won the Victorian architecture medal on Friday, the prize for the state's most outstanding project of the year at the Australian Institute of Architects' Victorian awards. This was reported by Qazaqyia.kz citing The Guardian.
The $53m Victorian government project, redesigned by Jackson Clements Burrows Architects alongside Site Office Landscape Architecture and AW Maritime, took home the Victorian architecture medal, the Dimity Reed Melbourne prize, and the Joseph Reed award for urban design. In March, it was the co-winner in the built outcomes category at the national Urban Design awards.
The project weathered controversy, including an aborted attempt by Parks Victoria to introduce pay-per-view access to the pier's resident penguin colony. The Victorian jury panel praised the project for balancing the competing demands of tourists, locals, fishers, ferries, marina users, and even the penguins. "The project demonstrates how complex infrastructure can also become playful, social and deeply civic," the judges said.
Jury chair, architect and academic Simon Knott said this year's standout projects were defined by their ability to transcend purely utilitarian briefs and prioritize human interaction. "[They] feature beloved landmarks that have transcended their function as a piece of infrastructure," he said.
The former Sunbury Lunatic Asylum (built 1879) has been transformed into the Sunbury community arts and cultural precinct, winning a clutch of awards including the John George Knight award for heritage and the award for interior architecture. Judges praised the design by Architecture Associates with Openwork as an adaptive reuse of an institutional complex that had previously been defined by human containment.
Fieldwork's design of 65 Dover Street in Cremorne claimed the Sir Osborn McCutcheon award for commercial architecture, featuring a rooftop recreation space with a half-size basketball court. Judges called it "a new benchmark for commercial architecture of this scale."
Baldasso Cortese's Edmund Rice centre at Emmanuel College won the Henry Bastow award for educational architecture. The Warrnambool campus learning hub is organized into three learning domains: wisdom, communication, and discovery.
In residential categories, winners were dominated by sustainable refits of heritage structures over the traditional "knockdown rebuild" strategy. Robert Simeoni Architects' Palmerston Street house in Carlton took out the heritage award and the John and Phyllis Murphy award for alterations and additions. Judges admired the restrained reimagining of the former 1870s hotel while negotiating rising construction costs and material shortages.