“Brisbanism” is the term Liam Proberts uses to encapsulate the characteristics of an architectural style becoming such a distinct marker of the Queensland capital.
It’s a trait of many late-generation commercial and multi-residential buildings that identifies them as so obviously belonging to Australia’s biggest subtropical city.
They are often greenery-laced or nature-encased “breathable” buildings. Indeed, Brisbane has a specific annual architecture award and a design guide that strongly encourages the making of “buildings that breathe”.
Brisbanist buildings moderate sun ingress with all sorts of nifty shading devices. And, says the principle of bureau^proberts, they often make a feature of an outdoor verandah or overhung facade, not only as shelter from sun and rain but also as an active zone of retail and hospitality operation.
“Sub-tropicality is becoming more and more our identity,” Proberts says. “When a building expresses a place, it strengthens the identity of that place. And that’s certainly what we set out to do.”
He’s talking about The Eaves, a relatively modest three-level structure that his architectural studio designed to be one of the key buildings in the wonderfully layered West Village development. Here, 2.6 hectares of former industrial estate behind the Southbank arts precinct have been remade into an enlivened neighbourhood of residential, commercial, parkland and public infrastructure that the public has keenly embraced.
Japanese global developer Sekisui House has mixed all these functions into what it calls “a master-crafted village” that, by 2024, will have 2000 residences and that already has fully subscribed office buildings and a similar uptake of almost all of the retail opportunities, many of them housed within the repurposed 1928 Peters Ice Cream factory.
“We’re not in the CBD,” says West Village commercial manager Jason Buchanan, “but it’s such a well-considered precinct that if I had more retail, I’d be able to lease it immediately. All the restaurants have gone”.
Where offices and shops in other cities have been chasing tenants with lures of reduced rents or desperately generous incentives, “we haven’t struggled at all as a precinct because we’ve got just the right mix of commercial, retail and residential – with a high proportion of those [being] owner-occupiers”, Buchanan says.
“Plus, it’s got all the green space. The Japanese build for generations, so it’s beautiful. It leases itself.”
The commercial building that Sekisui House asked bureau^proberts to design might be modest in scale but is located at an important pivot point in the village.
“The building has the job of creating the transition from the [structural] density of the site into the public realm,” Proberts says.
“A park wraps around it in an L-shape, and our building follows that shape. On the edge of the parkland are dining and retail, so the building had a big job to do. But it gave us a pretty great opportunity”.
With its remarkable and seemingly suspended terracotta brick screen that “creates an ethereal edge” and moderates western sun for the building and the cafes beneath; and with a scoop excised from its form so it can hug a big old fig tree that in turn is surrounded by brickwork seating, The Eaves has become a site destination known as The Gathering Place.
“We wanted to make it a good experience – a good place for people”, Proberts tells. “Because if you’re generous it makes a public space good for people, and it becomes a win for the public, a win for the client and a win for design.”
Aside from asking for a commercial building, in commissioning bureau proberts for the job, the client, Sekisui House, didn’t specify a precise user market. But what’s happened with The Eaves is that it has been taken up by medical, therapy and wellbeing practises.
“It was interesting” Proberts says, “to see the lifestyle tenants adopt this space because it was a really nice validation of our work.”
The win for design is obvious and is now internationally validated because earlier this month The Eaves was shortlisted in the mixed use category of the World Festival of Architecture.
“It’s been great for this sort of building and this sort of approach with design at the lead, to make something strong and simple that is recognised by the WAF.”
We’ll now wait until the Festival winners are announced in November in Lisbon to see if the project also becomes an international win for a type of architecture that could become patented as “Brisbanism”.