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At the close of another year

with projects passed and new begun

together we join from far and near

in wishing you a happy holiday season.

If you come past Aalborg why not try an experience out of the ordinary of stepping inside the Christmas tree at Utzon Center. From the centre of the tree built from 1000 GRID squares, you can view the ever-changing illumination designed by our lighting team in vivid contrast against Aalborg’s winter sky.

Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) as part of the current exhibition Sky’s the Limit, the tree rises seven metres high and is on display in Utzon Center’s courtyard until the end of January.

Our Copenhagen studio will be closed for the holiday period from Wednesday 21 December 2016 and reopen on Wednesday 4 January 2017.

Our Sydney and Canberra studios will be closed from Thursday 22 December 2016 and reopen on Thursday 12 January 2017.

Our London studio will be closed from Monday 26 December 2016 and reopen on Tuesday 3 January 2017.

Indigo Slam has picked up the Robin Boyd Award2016 for new housing in the National Australian Institute of Architects awards.

This unique space fronts a new urban parkland and creates an inspiring residence for a renowned art collector. Behind a façade of sculpted concrete, serene living spaces and monumental halls create a dynamic spatial interplay of spare interiors in which the main decorative element is light.

The spatial sequence is alive to the changes wrought by natural light during the day and is redefined at night as a dramatic counterpoint.

What does the world’s best children’s hospital look like? Over the next few months, we will try and answer this question with our team who has been shortlisted in the project competition for BørneRiget, a new specialist hospital for children and their families in Copenhagen. The project vision is to set new benchmarks for future treatment and care, always putting the patient first and to create a facility that provides the settings for ground-breaking interaction between architecture, organisation, sustainability and operation.

We look forward to working on this exciting competition with PLH, Nickl & Partner, Amstein + Walthert, ISC Consulting Engineers, Balslev Consulting Engineers and Marianne Levinsen Landscape.

Located in Australia’s National Botanic Gardens in Canberra, the new Ian Potter National Conservatory will be a showcase for tropical Australian native flora and expand the Gardens’ capability to conserve and display the world’s most comprehensive collection of living Australian native plants.

Steensen Varming has been shortlisted in the competition with Danish based C.F. Møller and Australian-Danish practice TERROIR, exhibition designer Thylacine, and landscape architect Aspect Studios. We will be working on the second stage with the team from our studios in Copenhagen and Sydney, using our specialist experience with sensitive environments and plant research from past projects such a Copenhagen Plant Science Centre, the UWS Eucalyptus woodland free-air CO2 enrichment facility and the National Gallery of Australia.

The conservatory will be a new key attraction of the Gardens, appealing to a wider audience including international visitors and locals, younger audiences and academics and researchers through targeted events and programmes. The project is one of the major recommendations from the 2015 Gardens Master Plan and construction is planned to commence in early 2017 with the official opening in early 2018. The project is funded by the Australian Government with a generous contribution of $1.5 million from The Ian Potter Foundation.

Image: Artist’s impression of the conservatory from the Australian National Botanic Gardens’ master plan

We have presented our initial concepts for a new $780,000 lighting project for Christchurch’s historic Botanic Gardens.

Described by the Council Head of Parks Andrew Rutledge as “stand-outs in creating not just light, but an experience”, our design will bring the Gardens to life after dark with the use of creative lighting installations.

The concept presentation in Christchurch offered the Council taste of the lighting design and a discussion of the ideas, also giving the wider public opportunity to provide feedback with images of trials to be displayed within the Gardens.

We will use our global experience from lighting public spaces such as the lighting masterplan for Sydney Opera House to deliver this project, using darkness, as much as light as noted by lead lighting designer, Emrah Baki Ulas “light needs darkness, as darkness needs light” while keeping the main focus on a design that supports a safe, comfortable, enjoyable environment.

Construction of the Gardens lighting project is expected to begin early next year, and be completed before the end of summer 2017. The lighting will be visible from Rolleston Ave and the Canterbury Museum.

Read full Newsline on Christchurch City Council website

Established in 1854, The State Library Victoria in Melbourne is one of Victoria State’s oldest public institutions and Australia’s oldest public library holding a key place in Melbourne’s literary heritage and culture. Referencing the scheduled year of completion, the Vision 2020 Redevelopment will position the Library for the future to continue to provide a place where ideas, learning, culture and creativity are cultivated and ensure a number of developments and new initiatives enhance and expand this internationally recognised facility.

Since our very first commission in 1933 on the Faculty Library of Natural and Health Sciences at University of Copenhagen, Steensen Varming has been involved in some of the world’s most renowned and innovative libraries projects, demonstrating new ways of thinking in how libraries are designed and used, such as the British Library and the recently award-winning Bankstown Library and Knowledge Centre.

The Australian-Danish collaboration with schmidt hammer lassen and Architectus is supported by our studios in Sydney and Copenhagen, putting into play some of the world’s best talent and expertise in design solutions, based on shared vision and values. The team is also supported by Melbourne-based Andronas Conservation Architects and Irwin Consult.

Video: Overview of the State Library of Victoria Redevelopment Program

From Wednesday 18th through to Saturday 21st of May a group of benefactors from the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) will be visiting Copenhagen. The group of ten people – all with a special interest in the built environment – is part of RIBA’s programme Patrons of Architecture. The schedule for the trip includes many of Copenhagen’s greatest attractions in modern architecture such as Schmidt Hammer Lassen’s Black Diamond, BIG’s Power Plant and 3XN’s Bella Sky hotel but also visits to architectural gems that are not normally accessible to the public; accompanied by Tobias Jacobsen, designer and grandson of Arne Jacobsen, the group will have the opportunity of getting close to the more and lesser known buildings by the architect as well as the stories and the man behind them.

In Gentofte, Søren Varming, graphic designer and grandson of Steensen Varming’s founder, Jørgen Varming, will be giving a tour of his grandfather’s old house, built in 1952 in close collaboration with the architects Niels and Eva Koppel. The heritage listed house was bought by Realdania in 2013 and underwent an extensive renovation by Steensen Varming in collaboration with architect Kent Pedersen where care was taken to preserve the original systems that make the house so special and an example of exceptional engineering, including a six metre-wide glass façade that can be raised all the way up, a hot air heating system via an underfloor duct system and Denmark’s first extractor hood. The British guests will experience a unique house, marking the modernist development for Danish family homes, as well as the life that played out in these spaces.

More on Varming’s House

We wish everyone a Happy New Year and look forward to another year collaborating on exciting projects and celebrating great design.

2015 saw the official opening of our London Studio on Foley Street in Fitzrovia, the completed restoration of the iconic house and previous residence of our founder, Jørgen Varming, in collaboration with Realdania and architect Kent Pedersen in Copenhagen. In Sydney we were awarded the significant task of developing the concept and schematic designs for the upgrades to the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall with ARM Architecture as well as mechanical and electrical services design for the ground-breaking Sydney Modern project. We enjoyed participating in the annual HKBIM Conference with our views on BIM in project management in Hong Kong and the 25th Annual Conference of the International Association of Museum Facility Administrators (IAMFA) in Chicago.

A number of new appointments across our global studios were made to support our unique development plan, welcoming Fredrik Emil Nors in Copenhagen, Simm Steel, Tiadra Simpson Ben Savage, Arshpreet Kaur, Melissa Thorpe and Baoying Tong in Sydney and Anu Anna George and Isabel Lo in Hong Kong.

Our completed projects were acknowledged with the following awards –

Australian War Memorial External Lighting

IES NSW LiDA (Lighting Design Award), Award of Excellence

Bankstown Library and Knowledge Centre

IES ANZ International Awards, Award of Excellence

Roll of Honour Lighting & Sound System at Australian War Memorial

Audio Visual Industry Awards, Innovation in AV

Sydney Opera House Recording Studio

AIA NSW Architecture Awards, Small Project Architecture Award

University of Sydney Charles Perkins Centre (Centre for Obesity, Diabetes and Cardiovascular Disease)

AIA NSW Architecture Awards, Interior Architecture Commendation

AIA NSW Architecture Awards, Educational Architecture Award

UTS Alumni Green Catenary Luminaire

IES NSW LuDA (Luminaire Design Award), Award of Commendation

UTS Thomas Street Building

Sydney Design Awards, Architecture – Mixed Use – Construction category Gold Winner

AIA NSW Architecture Awards, City of Sydney Lord Mayor’s Prize

NSW Architecture Awards, William E Kemp Award for Educational Architecture

AIRAH Awards, National Sustainability Award

Architecture & Design Sustainability Awards, Public Building & Urban Design Prize