RAIA Partridge Partners Prize for Structure in Architecture

Background

This prize was initiated by Partridge Partners, structural engineers, in order to help lead to greater co-operation between structural engineers and architects in real projects.

It is an annual prize to be given each year for a student in the fourth year of their architecture course, a year in which all of the schools integrate construction subjects including Structures with design. It is to be awarded to the design which best demonstrates the intimate relationship between structural engineering and architecture.

Some examples include Bordeaux Law Courts (Rogers); Olympic Archery Building, Sydney (Stutchbury); Berman House (Seidler); Great Court, British Museum (Foster); Peckham Library, UK (Alsop).

Judging

The judging is to be done in two stages.

Stage 1

5 projects selected jointly by design and construction staff from each university for a design project done in fourth year.

The best of these selected by one design staff member, one construction staff member from the university and Harry Partridge from Partridge Partners or his nominee and an RAIA Member.

Stage 2

The four best projects, one from each of the universities, to be exhibited in Tusculum at the same time as the Design Medal and HPA Mirvac awards.

The best of these four projects to be selected by Jury to include Partridge Partners.

Criteria

The award is intended to raise the awareness of structure in building design and to foster closer engineer/architect collaboration, and will be awarded to the design which best:

Illustrates how the structure has helped influence the architecture and vice versa.
Indicates a strong collaborative effort between architectural student and engineer.
Shows how the usual structural “constraints” have been addressed/overcome.
Demonstrates creative innovation in the use of materials.

Submission

Maximum of 2 x A1 boards, a report and a model to be submitted to the universities for the initial judging by the above panel; and the selected project from each university to be delivered to the RAIA, 3 Manning Street, Potts Point.

Prize

The remuneration for this award is to be provided by Partridge Partners and is to be $2,000 for the winning entry and $500 for second prize.

2006 Winner

Lucy Humphrey, University of Sydney

Lucy’s design for a Centre for Dialogue in Canberra admirably embodies the main criteria for this prize, which is to illustrate how the structure has helped influence the architecture and vice versa. The design was based on the idea of progressing through various levels of conversation/dialogue along a broad, gently rising, curved ramp, entering below ground, ‘in darkness’, moving through various designated conversation pits and finishing at the top, with a conclusion, ‘in the light’.

Here, the structure is the architecture and the architecture is the structure. One combines seamlessly with the other to shape the form and the function of the building. There is no fat. The circular rings of columns define and screen the dialogue places and provide the structural support for the main ramping concrete floor and the roof. This simple idea is repeated in varying scales to express the architecture and fully support gravity loads. Sloping columns are judiciously inserted to resist lateral wind and earthquake loads. Lucy’s work begins to approach Nature’s own splendid expression of the integration of structure and architecture working effortlessly together: the tree, in all its various forms.