On the road: this economical and environmentally responsive new headquarters in Melbourne for highway emergency services is in the best traditions of bold roadside architecture

Architectural Review, The, April, 2003 by Catherine Slessor

The fascination and freedom of road travel have long been overtaken by the grim realities of inescapable congestion, featureless motorways, frustrating breakdowns and hazardous accidents. Yet the chivalrous image of emergency services and motoring organizations patrolling the concrete byways to provide succour to drivers in distress maintains a curious hold on public imagination and has inspired a vein of heroic industrial functionalism -- think, for instance, of Decq and Cornette's highway control centre (AR May 1999), suspended under a motorway flyover, or Nicholas Grimshaw's sleek landmark RAC headquarters near Bristol.

In a country as vast as Australia, travelling by car can perhaps lay claim to some of its lost romance, but the huge road network still needs the usual quotidian maintenance and supervision.

H2o Architects were asked to design a headquarters building to house the emergency services department for Victoria state in southern Australia. The brief combined offices for staff and garages for vehicles on a long narrow site overlooking an unprepossessing tangle of roads, tunnels and flyovers on the outskirts of Melbourne. Formed in 1999, H2o are a young practice who are establishing a modest reputation for architecture that manifests great formal and material innovation in the teeth of ungenerous budgets, and is shaped by a strong concern for energy use and environmental control. For their textile faculty building at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (AR January 2001), a simple box was wrapped in a climate modifying timber skin that sensuously mimicked the appearance of textiles. This latest project consolidates their thoughtful evolution.

The new centre replaces an existing building, which was dismantled and its constitutent materials recycled as part of the environmentally responsive brief (the steel structure was sold to construct farm sheds and demolished brickwork pulverized for use as crushed masonry infill). Based on the mews principal, with vehicles in garages at ground level topped by a piano nobile floor of offices, planning is simple and logical. The building abuts a neighbouring structure along its long south side, limiting its potential for expression. Yet what could have been a banal two-storey box stuck onto an existing building instead has dynamic presence, as the folded, wedge-shaped plane of the office floor thrusts out over the garage podium. Like some kind of segmented insect carapace, the elongated structure is divided into six bays, which are clearly articulated on the main public and roadside facade to the north. The sextet of bays forms a curved spinal edge, inset with long strips of horizontal glazing shaded by aerofoil wing brise-soleil (in southern latitudes, north-facing elevations get most sun and light). The angularity of the brise-soleil irresistibly recalls eyebrows, so from the road below, the building resembles a row of beetle-browed robots peering intently over the hill. Basic materials, such as corrugated steel cladding and rugged metal mesh evoke an appropriately robust spirit of economy and durability, enlivened by flashes of sizzling red (for speed and danger) along the exaggeratedly deep window reveals and in the clefts separating structural bays.

From the curved spine, the roof of the offices rises up at an angle to meet a flat roofed rear part. The narrow gap between them is filled by strips of clerestorey glazing that bring light down into the offices below. Despite a parsimonious municipal budget, H2o have managed to create a surprisingly civilized internal landscape, varying the height of ceilings and kinking walls to dispel monotony. Open plan areas line the north edge, with views out over the adjacent spaghetti of roads, while smaller cellular spaces for individual offices and meeting rooms are arranged along the south side, linked by a toplit spinal corridor. Here again, the inventive application of cheap materials (thin sheets of plywood to line walls, boldly coloured recycled carpet offcuts) animates the internal realm.

To reduce its energy consumption, the building employs a combination of passive and active environmental control systems, with natural ventilation and lighting accounting for around 40 per cent of overall requirements. An inverted concrete floor, insulated on its underside, forms a plenum that stores air warmed or cooled by thermal mass according to the season. In summer, night purging increases the cooling effect of the concrete mass. Ventilation outlets to the plenum are adjusted by occupants for local temperature control. Solar panels are used to heat domestic hot water and daylight sensors regulate artificial light in response to available illumination. Such measures are intended to reduce energy consumption to an annual level of 440 MJ/sqm (compared with 700 MJ/sqm for a standard building). With its mixture of ecological awareness and intelligent use of materials, the building is an inspiring paradigm that celebrates the more engaging aspects of life on the road.