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Out of Order: Into space

Donald BATES studied architecture at the University of Houston, graduating with a bachelor of architecture (with honors) in 1978. He attended graduate school at Cranbrook Academy of Art, under the tutorship of Daniel Libeskind, gaining a master of architecture degree in 1983.

In 1987, Bates acted as design assistant to Libeskind on the prize winning ‘city edge’ project, as part of the international bauaustellung, Berlin. In 1989, he was an associate to Libeskind for the competition design of the jewish museum, Berlin.

In 1994, Peter Davidson and Donald Bates formed Lab architecture studio in London, beginning on a number of speculative competition entries. In 1997, Lab architecture studio won the international design competition for Federation Square, Melbourne, the largest urban, civic and cultural project of recent years in Australia.  Federation Square was opened in October, 2002.

Federation square, Melbourne (1997-2002) is the creation of a new urban order on a site that has never before existed.  Federation Square has become the centre of cultural activity for Melbourne. In the true spirit of federation, this design brings together distinct elements and activities that form a complex ensemble based upon the collective and the unique.  

The design of the public and cultural spaces was an understanding of the necessary range of spatial and event experiences, creating multi-faceted and compound arrangements, embedded and transposed groupings. We determined that a more compound, more diverse topology was required. This strategy of shifting, contingent social organisation, is also exhibited in the design for the Queensland gallery of modern art, Brisbane (2001-2002).  within the design, the gallery spaces operate as a refracting crystal, with vistas, views and orientations ricocheting between the gallery confines and out into the cityscape of the Brisbane river and the city. 

The overlap of filaments, of linear, dis-jointed volumes folding back upon themselves or neighboring filaments, re-emerged as a design tactic for the BMW-Leipzig competition (2001-2002).  The  ‘readability’ of multiple continuities, as the filaments over-lap, coincide or diverge, moves beyond the graphic to indeed inscribe a multiplicity of organisational schemes and logics within the building fabric.