Ashton Raggatt Mcdougall (ARM)

Total Projects from Ashton Raggatt Mcdougall (ARM): 2

Judging by their design for the National Museum of Australia in Canberra (2001), Ashton Raggatt McDougall's work is the architectural equivalent of dance music, sampling other architects' work with a bouncy freedom that is infectious but puzzling. The museum looks at the cultural history of the 'Lucky Country' - which does not seem so lucky from an Aboriginal point of view. ARM were not scared of the controversy inherent in these questions of Australian identity, and their 'quoting' of Daniel Libeksind's fractured Berlin Jewish Museum has obvious resonances - although Libeskind was not best pleased. The museum and the associated Institute of Aboriginal Studies also incorporate sections of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoie (painted black instead of white) and Sydney Opera House (by way of Aldo Rossi and James Stirling among others). It is as audacious and in-your-face as ARM'S previous work.

The Melbourne-based practice was formed in 1986 by partners Stephen Ashton, Howard Raggatt and Ian McDougall (born 1954, 1951 and 1952 respectively) and, despite the populist veneer to the work, they have been driving an Australian architecture that is about ideas rather than a pragmatic or poetic response to landscape. They are out to prove that Australia's cultural 'cringe', which has seen a dearth of great public architecture, can be overcome. Their work ranges across all sectors - educa¬tional, commercial, housing - but it is cultural projects that have given them the profile and freedom to make their voice heard. And boy do they shout.

Their 1996 reworking and extension to Storey Hall, at the RMIT University in Melbourne, carried their name overseas. It is like an extraor¬dinary green chameleon, transforming a neoclassical building into a gallery and auditorium encrusted with a scaly internal and external skin, informed by an exploration of mathematical and computer-based models.

More recently, a cultural centre for the city of Marion, South Australia (2001) has used the place name literally to organize the buildings: the M and the A are angular folded elements that run through the build¬ing; the R is a curvaceous metal-clad porte-cochere. By the time you get to the N (a free-standing sculpture of steel trusses) the conceit is wearing a bit thin. Anyone looking for subtlety should look elsewhere. Their scheme for St Kilda Library in Melbourne (1993) creates a new facade in the form of a large stone book, complete with leaves. This is Postmodernism writ large.

ARM do have their quieter moments, however, and have taken a more subdued approach to another monument of national importance, the Shrine of Remembrance war memorial in Melbourne, where they are excavating the hill on which the neoclassical temple sits to create a visitors' centre and galleries of remembrance. The practice has also been responsible for some intelligent housing and masterplanning schemes, including the ongoing regeneration of Melbourne's extensive docks area.

Despite, or perhaps because of, the nudge-nudge quotations and jokes, the Australians have taken the practice and their clever work to heart, even if the conservative establishment are not happy with ARM'S architectural outspokenness.

website: www.a-r-m.com.au

Featured Projects

	Albury Library Museum Address: Corner Kiewa and Swift Street , ALBURY - Australia Architect: Ashton Raggatt Mcdougall (ARM) Category: Museums \| Cultural



	Melbourne Recital Centre and MTC Theatre Address: Cnr Southbank Boulevard & Sturt Street, Southbank , MELBOURNE - Australia Architect: Ashton Raggatt Mcdougall (ARM) Category: Cultural