design
mag |
25
Architecture, named after 19th century architect
Edmund Blacket who designed Sydney University,
St Andrew’s Cathedral and a host of other
Anglican buildings.
The jury commended Silvester Fuller’s
“contemporary, confident, bare and unexpected”
architecture as presenting an “uncompromising
approach that has been embraced by this
regional community.”The project also received an
Architecture Award for Public Architecture and
Penny Fuller was named the AIA NSW’s 2012
Emerging Architect.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald,
architectural critic Elizabeth Farrelly admired
Silvester Fuller’s “capacity to take a sow’s ear of a
brief – the suburban big-box church – and make
from it a genuine silk purse.”
Amen to that.
This was the first time Silvester Fuller has worked
with Austral Precast.“We have, of course, made
use of Austral’s bricks on numerous occasions
previously” says Fuller. She was effusive in her
praise of Austral Precast.“They were really
wonderful, accommodating and very generous
with their time to help us find a solution to
achieve the texture which we were seeking.They
were good to work with and did a really great job
on this project.”
The Dapto Anglican Church Auditorium was one
of the first major commissions for Silvester Fuller
since returning to Australia after working for such
architectural luminaries as Herzog & de Meuron,
Foster + Partners and the Renzo Piano Building
Workshop.
Their work, and the confidence of their client, was
rewarded in July 2012 when the project was
awarded the Blacket Prize for Regional
The building is constructed of precast concrete
panels supporting steel trusses and a single
pitch roof. Penny Fuller cheerfully acknowledges
that the building structure is “basically like an
industrial shed.The use of precast concrete
panels was an economical and efficient way of
achieving the large spaces required on a tight
budget.”
She visited Austral Precast’s Wetherill Park NSW
plant with her client, Rev. Stephen Semenchuk,
Dapto Anglican’s senior minister, and his team.
As mentioned, Silvester Fuller was keen to
implement a highly-textured surface in the
primary mass but the tight budget did not allow
for this to be achieved with custom form liners. In
the end they decided to simply forgo the final
steel trowel finish for these panels, leaving a
random, roughly textured, exposed surface that
was painted on site.
