What if you started over, had a competition, w/ people that create biomeds like this?
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Once again, I am not upset, but still disappointed with a building in Toronto. There is nothing wrong with the latest MaRS, except the style does not make me do cartwheels. If I find myself alone in this view, so be it.
If there was a competition, I want to see the other entries. If there was no competition, and this is what they selected on their own, they
didn’t
do their
due
diligence.
Last year, two innovative bio-medical research buildings came on line in two different parts of the world – one was in Berlin Germany; the other was in Canberra Australia. The Australian contribution was by a Melbourne-based firm, which I will temporarily call the
Brothers Lyon - Corbett, Cameron and Carey (along with four Principals making 7 partners). Of the two new buildings, the most “out there†was the one from Australia. The latter doubles as a research school, with the school and a degree of private enterprise co-existing at the same location.
This may be the type of building you would do cartwheels over, at least I would:
Exterior JCSMR/Australian National University in Canberra, Australia
The caption gives you the abbreviation most used/
JCSMR translates to
John
Curtin
School of
Medical
Research. (The name comes from John Curtin who was an Australian Prime Minister.)
One of Australia’s highest honour given to an architect or firm for a building is the Master Builder Award. The creators of JCSMR at ANU received the
2006 Master Builder Award. Imagine a couple of buildings like this as your grand entrance to
Queen's Park. But what is most fascinating about
Lyons, the real name of the architectural firm that designed this building, is that they constantly turn out these types of low-rise gems with both great interiors and exteriors, environmentally responsible, and fairly inexpensive.
Prior to this,
Lyons won the
2002 Victorian Architectural Medal; and prior to that, they were chosen to represent Australia at the
2000 Venice Architecture Biennale. Not bad for a firm that began just 12 years ago.
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