www.thinkbrick.com.au
Bricks & Pavers - Australia's low maintenance building materials. Inspiring home designs & information.
Choi Ropiha
Breathing new life into the city’s laneways is the key motivation behind a bold scheme by two Sydney-based architects, who want to add cultural appeal to spaces that are currently purely functional.
Choi Ropiha’s proposal takes advantage of recent changes in NSW liquor licensing laws to inject new life into under-utilised alleys. “These lanes are good places for smaller retail, cultural or bar outlets, where the fine-grained life of the city can occur,” says John Choi. “So much of our mainstream public space has become dominated by bigger franchises that it’s hard for smaller entrepreneurs to try things out.”
Their scheme for York Lane near Wynyard Station can equally be applied to any of Sydney’s 103 laneways, which are largely forgotten or ignored spaces. While these are very functional at present – being used for parking, deliveries, fire egress and garbage collection during the day – there is potential to give them an alternative character at night.
The scheme involves installing pivoting brick panels mounted in bronze frames – with a rough exterior surface – that sit flush with the lane’s brick walls during the day. Each night, these panels are opened to reveal luscious glazed brick interiors that accommodate art galleries, readings and talks and where food, wine and coffee are served. The laneway thus becomes a lively place to go at dusk, as office buildings begin to empty out. Public seating in the lane itself invites people to socialise and enjoy an intimate cultural milieu.
“Our proposal transforms the lanes from daytime to night time public use,” says Toby Breakspear who also worked on the entry. “There is a sense that the art gallery, bars and finer grained cultural programs share both the lane and its public space.
“That transformation gives the project a point of interest. It’s the unexpected nature of it that makes people come to the laneways. In effect, the street becomes a public room. Once we unfurl the panels, it becomes a public space that people can reclaim and have a drink in a quiet place in the city.”
Bricks are the perfect material for this day-to-night transformation, Choi believes. “Bricks are such a great durable material: they are very utilitarian and therefore a perfect material to act as a buffer in the daytime,” he explains. “But when you change one or two things in an unexpected manner – such as the jointing, or their adjacency with other materials – bricks can have a double reading, being both familiar and extraordinary, if you pay attention to the details.”
“The rough side of the brick is presented to the lane by day, where it can be aged, weathered and covered with posters or graffittied,” Ropiha adds. “At night, the glossy side is uncovered. There is no better material than brick to withstand those laneway or city conditions.”
