Pingelly Recreation and Cultural Centre has won 2019 Architecture of Necessity Awards in Sweden.
Congratultions to Advanced Timber Concepts Studio (atc studio) and iredale pedersen hook architects.
https://www.virserumskonsthall.com/archnec-2019-winners/
In the invitation to the 2019 competition for An Architecture of Necessity the jury formulated its expectations in the following way: “Considering the most pressing issues of today the jury would especially love to see entries that deal with the rural context – reactivation of forgotten places both with transformation of existing buildings and with new typologies, for example combining living, work and ’freespace’. Like many others we are looking for an architectural language, developed for smaller cities and places integrating landscape, typology and details and materials”. As underlined here, “forgotten places” is a global problem. But it is also to a high degree a question which has been focused by Virserum Art hall from its very beginning 15 years ago. And the countryside and the future is also the theme of this year’s exhibition, Wood 2019.
On June 27 the winning projects were presented at the conference Wood Summit Småland 2019 at Virserum Konsthall. On June 30 the exhibition Architecture of Necessity, with chosen projects from the competition, was inaugurated.
Over 60 entries from all over the world have been sent in to this year’s competition. On a jury meeting in Virserum in early May, surprised by a late snowfall, the jury, after hard work with many good projects, most of them within the theme proposed, made the following choice:
Pingelly Recreation and Cultural Centre is given a prize is given for the project’s informal lightness in creating a low-threshold meeting place based on local culture, built in local materials and with the complex of different spaces held together by an open verandah, a sidewalk in nowhere. Pingelly is a small town with some 1000 inhabitants. It is situated in the sparsely populated “Wheatbelt” of Western Australia. It has all the problems of similar areas with ageing population and diminishing employment. Sport has traditionally been important in both the white and Aboriginal communities. The new sports centre is a Shire initiative, responding to popular demand. Four pavilions with a Function centre with bar, a Sports hall with change rooms, a gym and storage spaces are linked together by a verandah facing east towards the already established sports fields. The verandah forms a welcoming “breezeway”, tempering the hot climate. All visible surfaces are of prefabricated Eucalyptus wood, locally grown and processed in thick sections to stand the harsh climate. It is the first civic timber building in Western Australia for almost a century. Iredale Pedersen Hook Architects were founded in 1999, working in a landscape “dominated by the horizon” with sustainable buildings. The same office was given a prize in the Architecture of Necessity competition in 2016 for a home for elderly aborigines.
