We took a wander through the newly opened Paddington Reservoir by Tonkin Zulaikha Greer and landscape architects James Mather Delaney Design. a few weekends ago and came away very impressed by this excellent new urban park.

The reservoir played a limited role as a piece of infrastructure in Sydney’s early days. It was completed in 1866 but given its elevation could only service the immediate area and was decommissioned in 1899 when the larger and more elevated Centennial Park Reservoir was built. Following this it was used for storage and a garage by the water board before being sold to Paddington Council who continued to use it as a garage and opened a park on its roof.

When the roof over the western chamber collapsed in 1990, work began on the adaptive reuse of the reservoir as an urban park.

The park sits within the ruins of the western chamber and uses the intact interior of the eastern basin as a large column-filled multipurpose space. Where possible, the ironbark columns and cast iron beams have been kept and maintained with new concrete and steel arches, beams and columns inserted within where necessary. Vaulted aluminium sun shading sits perched above the park, signalling the submerged park to Oxford Street above and providing some contrast to the otherwise robust detailing.

This is the kind of work that TZG excel at and seen as a sister piece to their other recently completed project, Carriageworks at Everliegh, it shows an office that is extremely skilled in adapting industrial relics for contemporary uses.

Apologies for the crap iphone photos…but hey, what can you do.

Some upcoming events!! Awesome!

Firstly, Parallax, the National Conference is on next week in Melbourne. I have pimped its wares before, but if you have not taken a look at the line-up of speakers and sessions, I recommend you do as, I think it will be an ace couple of days. Slavoj Zizek, Peter Wilson, Aaron Betsky, Tatiana Bibao, Geoff Manaugh, Veronika Valk, Sou Fujimoto and so on.

<terrified> Also, I will presenting the work of Super Colossal at the bar sesssion — Parallaxed — on the Friday night, so see you there. </terrified>

Secondly, the Urban Futures exhibition opens tonight. I had a quick look through these AA projects (Diploma Unit 6) last night and among the printed models and many dense, iterative diagrams on display there is a great deal to take in. It is nice to see the output of other architecture schools on display in Sydney and will no doubt present a daunting standard to those currently enrolled… The exhibition will be followed up by a one symposium in May with the Unit coordinators Christopher Lee and Sam Jacoby:

Finally. Bjrake Ingels, of the notorious BIG, will be giving a lecture at UTS on Monday 27th April. I have heard they make the good buildings:

My niece was watching Toy Story recently, a film which I have not seen in quite some time, when a small detail jumped out at me. The pattern of the carpet in the neighbour’s house where Buzz and Woody have been trapped is a match for the carpet in the Overlook Hotel in The Shining.

Here we see Woody and Buzz attempting escape and Tommy playing with his toy cars in hallways of the hotel:

The carpet of this hallway in the Overlook is the backdrop for many of The Shining’s more memorable more moments, the door to room 237 opens up off this hall, the momentary flash of the uncanny twins and of course one of cinema’s more memorable sound effects with Tommy’s tricycle running from floorboards to carpet and back again.

The use of this carpet pattern in Toy Story then seems suitable in light of what lies behind the door to Sid’s bedroom — a shadowed world of dissected, tortured toys grafted together and reassembled into horror show hybrid beings.

Dear Designer, You Suck — a post by Khoi Vinh on the importance of critique and a critical press in the design world. These are very true words, and apply equally to architects as to designers:

“Sometimes I wonder, then: given that everyone in design seems to more or less know everyone else, are we really having the kinds of meaningful, constructive, critical discourses that we really should be having? Are we too quick to take offense at the opinions of our peers? Or are we pulling our punches too much when discussing the merits of the work that our peers turn out? To put a finer point on it: are we being honest with one another?”

“If you’re learning design, then you’re giving and receiving criticism regularly. If you’re not engaging in constructive criticism, then you just aren’t learning about design. And yet, at some point when a designer achieves some modest level of notoriety or establishes some foundation of peers in the industry, the critiques stop. If you’re a practicing graphic designer of more than say five years, it’s a pretty good bet that no one outside of your design practice actively and regularly provides you with objective, rational and lucid feedback.”