Shiro in the media
We’re generally delighted when we see Shiro in the media, and here are just a few clips to date.
From the print edition of Indesign, February 2020
This comes up first only because it’s our most recent exposure. In A Matter of Intelligence – neither his creation nor his choice of headline – Shiro director Graham Lauren writes that the greatest foreseeable workplace opportunity presents itself to the landlord capable of branding, and justifying its reputation for, owning and operating knowledge factories that help those who occupy its spaces get smarter, more adaptable, more productive and more competitive. For this first-mover operator, the queues will be long, and most likely also its outsized reputational and learning advantages.
For its audience of designers, he adds that the design skills of those able to get inside the consciousness of learning organisations to guide creation of facilities that stimulate both new ideas and new revenues through productive collaboration that everyone understands would earn a premium.
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From the print edition of Facility Management, August 2019
In Social Media for Managing Property Customers, Shiro director Graham Lauren investigates and argues why “internet social literacy” may be the most compelling property customer development and marketing tool we have yet seen because it capitalises on an unrecognised human capacity now native to every customer and every employee in every business.
In a learning, networked economy, every company must continually adapt and develop new knowledge if it is to become smarter and stay in business.
The knowledge of building users’ needs social media can be used to acquire can be paired with the insights and experience of those across the supplier property organisation to create and test endlessly for better ideas, products and services.
Graham argues further, elsewhere, that universal post-Facebook internet social literacy, may even now be the most naturally abundant, potent and transformative management force for change the world has yet seen. Download this beneath.
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First, generous coverage in the Australian architectural media
In the January-February 2018 issue of Architecture Australia, Shiro Architects received a seven-side feature review of the award-winning KDV Golf and Tennis Academy, from which are extracted beneath a few choice paragraphs from author Philip Follent’s coverage.
The combination of her many years working with Harry Seidler and her fascination with Mies’s architecture is evident here in the pared-back materials palette, the meticulous detailing and clarity of plan in creating the envelope for flexible habitation…
The structure is lean and economical. A grid of white columns supports the floor slabs – some painted, some raw – ensure that the slab soffit is unobstructed. The mirrored aluminium soffit continues as ceiling above the second level and cleverly accommodates the head of double-height glazing frames to assure the illusion of a seamless soffit-to-ceiling transition. These gestures, along with the “solid” parts of the interior fit out being positioned well inside the transparent skin, enable the building to achieve minimal intrusion in the landscape, soak in the setting and remain “silent.” …
The inclusion of a cafe, gym and yoga facilities in the main building, the freestanding pavilions for birthday parties and barbecues, the minigolf course and the playground are initiatives to entice the original golfers and families to the academy. The architect has strayed here from the crisp, rectilinear geometry of the main building and opted for pavilions with petal-like forms as a whimsical and perhaps non-threatening foil to the forthright confidence of the academy…
Shiro Architects’ award from the Australian Institute of Architects is well deserved. The practice’s next project, a seventy-two-room student accommodation building for the academy on the same site, is eagerly awaited.
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A first Japanese-language media interview
In mid-August, 2017, Hiromi had her first Japanese-language media interview published in the Queensland edition of Nichigo Press. We challenge almost anyone who isn’t Japanese to understand it, however.
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A first media interview
On July 14, 2017, following winning her first significant award, Hiromi had her first media interview published in Australian Design Review.
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New post-award publicity
For both ourselves and our client, is great to receive recognition beyond the narrow confines of design commentary, so both we and KDV were delighted to receive this in the magazine Australian Leisure.
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Workplace strategy
We also sometimes write our own published pieces, as shown here on the web site of Facilities Management magazine, on the subject of workplace strategy. You can download a copy of the original piece printed in the December 2016 issue of the magazine here.
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First international media recognition
In November 2016, the KDV Golf and Tennis Academy found its way onto the international architectural web site ArchDaily here. We were later long-shortlisted in the top 100 of ArchDaily’s worldwide 2017 building of the year sports facilities.
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The Urban Developer: Commonwealth Games Served It’s First Pro Sports Facility
The Urban Developer followed up with the appalling grammar of its headline in “Commonwealth Games Served It’s First Pro Sports Facility.” This was also inaccurate as the KDV Golf and Tennis Academy, despite being on the adjoining site, is simply not a Commonwealth Games building.
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Surprise publicity for Shiro in The Canberra Times
On February 24, 2015, Shiro Architects received a welcome and unexpected accolade in The Canberra Times in this piece by its columnist Ian Warden.
Featuring images Hiromi and Selina had produced at the page’s top, Ian wrote about the exhibition Engineers Australia hosted at Canberra’s Gallery of Australian Design of all entries into its 2014 Freefall Experience Design Ideas Competition.
The organisation had invited engineers to design a feature installation for the Engineers Australia Freefall Pin Oak Forest at the National Arboretum in Canberra. We entered the competition with our friend, structural engineer Vesna Spasovski.
Despite being among the runners up, our imagery and story had captured Ian Warden’s imagination sufficiently to supplant those provided by the winner.
Ian wrote, “Great runners-up in the Freefall Experience competition include Egg Sanctum (pictured). The entry, by a team of five including engineer Vesna Spasovski, comes with this delightful and plausible-sounding saga.”
A few days later, I spoke to him and he was very friendly. He told me he’d chosen Shiro’s image because it was very striking and much better than the winner’s, which he said, “wouldn’t have worked at all.” He said he is very interested in making sure he uses strong images for his column, over which he says he enjoys quite a lot of autonomy, so I asked him, was it a “captain’s pick”? He laughed, saying, “Yes, I suppose it was.”
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Guardian Australia Culture Blog December 10 2013: Harry Seidler: Australia’s king of concrete and curves
Despite his death in 2006, interest in the life and work of Harry Seidler persists, and Hiromi was interviewed for this piece about his architectural legacy and his lasting influence over the students who worked for him.
