Trades North at Clarkson TAFE awarded at the Australian Institute of Architects WA Chapter 2012 Architecture Awards
14 Sep 2012
Trades North at Clarkson TAFE by JCY Architects and Urban Designers received a Public Architecture โ Architecture Award and the Colorbond Award for Steel Architecture.
The building design has been derived from a simple abstraction of the metal and wood shavings produced through manufacturing processes and interpreted into a series of rolling, folded roofs in three colours which alternately rise and fall creating significant areas of skylighting facing North and South.
The roof forms a fifth elevation with a wonderful tricoloured striped graphic viewable from the elevated high school above, set within a native landscape. The street frontage faces the West which provided the project with issues of sun penetration and heat gain. The design cleverly creates a highly glazed frontage with large glazed opening garage-like doors which allow natural light and ventilation as well as access to the centre. This western wall is then fronted by a wonderful dancing array of vertical fins in yellow, black and grey. These fins protect the facade from the penetration of direct light and create shade, animate, create a sense of movement, temper the view out to the road and become an integral part of the life of the building.
Materials are simple and entirely industrial. In effect, the building is a shed and includes face patterned concrete, steel structure, steel roofing, glazing and aluminium window frames and shading fins.
