Cairns Botanic Gardens a memorable piece of tropical architecture

I just wrote a post this blog sophie munns : visual eclectica : a memorable piece of tropical architecture after finding a story at Dezeen on this new architecture recently designed and built at the Gardens in Cairns.

I will add a section of that post here:

This morning I found a story at Dezeen on a place I spent a month last year on residency in Cairns in Far North Queensland.

Images I took during the month up north... 

daily reminder of my exhibition deadline that I walked past at the Entrance

 The photos from this Dezeen article were brilliant and I so wanted to share this post that I went to the Dezeen Copyright page to check what was feasible to share. Having learnt there that as long as I dont repost the article in its entirely I can share the following, especially as I don't make a practice of doing this which would of course upset things.

SO... please note that all this content I am about to share has been taken from Dezeen's article: http://www.dezeen.com/2013/03/11/cairns-botanic-gardens-visitors-centre-by-charles-wright/ and I hope you enjoy reading about this. At first sight, I might add, I was a little thrown by the use of the mirrors. I didn't particularly associate this as a building material one would bring to a Botanic Garden... however ... as I spent most days passing through the Visitor's Centre I found it really worked.

Many comments at the post were about birds crashing into the building and dying... but I must say I never saw nor heard reports or whispers on that during the month I was there... so perhaps not being a tall building its not impacting that particular issue greatly.

Via DEZEEN:

This mirror-clad visitor centre by Australian firm Charles Wright Architects was designed to be invisible amongst the surrounding trees of the Cairns Botanic Gardens in Queensland.

Comprising two buildings and a dividing promenade, the visitor centre was designed as a gateway to the gardens, which contain a selection of tropical plants from northern Australian rainforests as well as from across Southeast Asia.

Charles Wright Architects drew inspiration from the suit worn by the alien-hunter in the 1987 movie Predator to give both buildings a reflective outer coating that would play down their impact on the park landscape. "We proposed a design which literally reflects the gardens as camouflage for the building," explain the architects.

Rather than cover the surfaces with a single polished plane of metal, the architects added a series of flat panels that break the facade down into facets. Each one sits at an incrementally different angle and helps to muddle the reflected images.

The pedestrian promenade runs across the site from east to west. To the north, one building contains a cafe and exhibition area for visitors, with a multi-purpose hall and a courtyard amphitheatre, while to the south a second block accommodates staff offices that open out to a long and narrow terrace.

Both buildings have non-linear shapes, generated by the routes of predefined pathways and locations of mature trees. They also have to nestle against the landscape at one end where the ground starts to climb upwards around them.

Charles Wright Architects have offices in Melbourne and Shanghai. The firm also recently completed a house that can withstand powerful cyclones. See more architecture in Australia.

See more stories about mirrors on Dezeen, including a polished steel pavilion by Foster + Partners and a playground pavilion in Copenhagen.

Photography is by Patrick Bingham Hall.

Click to see the slideshow.

See more on the Conceptual Framework: 

I have much catching up to do at this blog but this week I'm moving out of the Paddington Studio so I will be back as soon as I can.

If you wish to see the my exhibition online from February  'From one small seed: Encounters in Bio-cultural Diversity' then visit Recent work tumblr for a visual tour!

cheers, S