Phoenix Central Park is Expressing the Human Condition and Architecture

In any awards program, it is important to recognise those works that go well beyond that which is expected or that which can be predicted from the outset. The delivery to our culture of any form of authentic architecture is rare; some would say it is an unfamiliar act in these days of inauthentic professional practices and processes delivering work only ever of a minimum level of competency. And yet when something lands in the public domain and it offers an almost perfect reflection of what our profession had always promised, it seems that architecture’s role in culture is again able to be understood.

Phoenix is a project that confers on our profession a certain hope; that latent in our culture is something important to the human condition and architecture might be the medium to express it. Here is an example that promotes collaborations of humans at every level, from client to builder to craftsman and finally to practitioners within architecture itself. It proves that nothing worthwhile can happen without the will and effort of many working at times together and at times individually, and seeking what is almost impossible with best efforts offered.

Architecture in this way may indeed be delivered only with a collective effort; one where the hands of many can be seen to never just amount to a sum of the parts imported. It is a reminder to governments too that the best work is not simply that which has been delivered by an overwrought and overthought process of competitions or contrivances that seek to avert risk or configure predictable outcomes. Rather, architecture can only be delivered in a course which attracts the best practitioners to the best clients and seeks to deliver projects freed from predictability.

Nogreat buildings of any culture in any time imported enduring substance to its future with any other method than a well-judged engagement between client, architect and builder. The construction cost of such effort, too, is invariably high. But in time, high costs are always vindicated by significant offerings into the future, making works as worthwhile as Phoenix sound investments and sound examples of sustainable and economical cultural outcomes.

Phoenix is an important reminder of the mortality of every generation and the duties of every generation to deliver hope in historical continuum, hope within an authentic version of architecture as every age’s gift to the future.

Project Information

Architect: Durbach Block Jaggers with John Wardle Architects

Photography: Martin Mischkulnig