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PROFESSIONAL
EDUCATION:
Diploma
of Architecture (Hons), Architectural Association, London
1962
RIBA,
MIAZ.
PROFESSIONAL
EXPERIENCE:
Michael
Pearce has been working in Australia, the UK, Zimbabwe and Zambia
for 42 years. His experience covers a wide range, from building in
remote parts of Central Africa to converting old buildings in
North-East England and large-scale city developments in Harare and
Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe’, an ecological exhibition centre in Belgium and
the CH2 council office block in Melbourne, Australia.
Committed to appropriate ecological architecture, Michael Pearce
has focused upon the development of buildings which have low
maintenance, low capital and running costs and renewable energy
systems of environmental control. The most recent work involves an
approach to design in which the architecture expression is seen as
a balance of the natural, the social and the economic environments
in which the project is sited. He uses models from nature, copying
natural processes which he studies through the new science of
Biomimicry.
He was
directly responsible for the design and supervision of Eastgate in
Harare 1992 to 1996. This project has achieved world acclaim as a
landmark building based on these principles. It was the largest
commercial mixed development (31000m2) at that time, based on
sustainable passive energy principles. It has performed as expected
since it was occupied in April 1996.
In
August 2001 he was invited to work in the City Projects Division of
Melbourne City Council ( MCC) to become the Principle Design
Architect for their new 12 000 sq meter offices in Little Collins
Street called CH2. In this case he led the CH2 Design Team to
produce Australia’s first Six Star ESD design and which has already
achieved world status. This building is nearing completion and is
due to be occupied in March 2006.
As part
of his job with the MCC has also given a number of presentations
and seminars based on these principles;
In
Australia (55), New Zealand (2), The UK(4), Germany(2), France (2),
Belgium (2), South Africa (4), New York (1), Baltimore (1), Boston
(1), Costa Rica (1), Papua New Guinea (1), Zimbabwe(4),
The
following passage was taken from the citation at the 2003 Prince
Claus (of The Netherlands) Award, which was presented to Mick
Pearce on the 10 December 2003:
“Mick
Pearce is among the most ingenious critical tropicalist architects
practising today. He has had to be. Like Tai Kheng Soon of
Singapore and Ken Yeang of Malaysia, he is one of the rare
architects who are pursuing a solution to these problems in the
tropics. Like them, he has designed a large-scale urban project
that successfully adapts sophisticated technologies to minimize
economic and ecological cost, adapting the global to the identity
of the particular region. In Zimbabwe, in the early 1980s, Mick
Pearce produced a series of buildings: five major commercial office
blocks, university buildings, a major hospital, a Hindu temple and
an international school.
“His
most seminal project is Eastgate, a mixed office complex and
shopping mall covering half a city block in the business centre of
Harare. What makes it unique is that it is not only ventilated,
cooled and heated entirely through natural means, but it works. Its
ventilation costs one-tenth that of a comparable air-conditioned
building and it uses 35 percent less energy than six conventional
buildings in Harare. In the first five years alone the building
saved its tenants $3.5 million in energy costs.
“One
needs a considerable leap of design imagination to model a building
on a termite mound, or more precisely, on the termite mounds that
dot the Zimbabwean savannah. In a rare case of architectural
bionics – bionics being the field in which principles from
living organisms are transferred into engineering – this is what
Mick Pearce has done at Eastgate. Small wonder he became so
fascinated with termites – they, too, happen to be ingenious
because they have to be. They can only survive if their environment
has a constant temperature of exactly 30 to 31 degrees. As
temperatures in Zimbabwe fluctuate from 12 degrees at night to 35
degrees during the day, termites dig a kind of breeze-catcher at
the base of their mound, which cools the air by means of chambers
carved out of the wet mud below, and sends hot air out through a
flue to the top. They constantly vary this construction by
alternatively opening up new tunnels and blocking others to
regulate the heat and humidity within the mound.
“Based
on the termite mound analogy, Mick Pearce’s Eastgate building uses
the mass of the building as insulation and the diurnal temperature
swings outside to keep its interior uniformly cool. With Ove Arup
& Partners, he devised an air-change schedule that is
significantly more efficient than other climate-controlled
buildings in the area. Fans suck fresh air from the atrium, blow it
upstairs through hollow spaces under the floors and from there into
each office through baseboard vents. As it rises and warms, it is
drawn out through 48 round brick funnels. During cool summer
nights, big fans send air through the building seven times an hour
to chill the hollow floors. By day, smaller fans blow two changes
of air an hour through the building. As a result, the air is fresh,
much more so than from an air conditioner which recycles 30 percent
of the air that passes through it.
“The
building is an astonishing example of what one might call
Zimbabweanist architecture, not only in its locally inspired bionic
approach to design but also in the way it is rooted in local
culture. With its heavy masonry walls on the exterior of the
building, it is an expression of the traditional native stone
masonry architecture from which Zimbabwe derives its name. On the
inside, it is the expression of industrial machine architecture
brought in by European immigrants. As one would expect from a
graduate of the AA and a student of the technology enthusiasts
Reyner Banham and Cedric Price, the interior atrium has a high-tech
gleam, with its delicately detailed steel-lattice girders, walkways
suspended on tendons, bridges, and filigreed tiaras atop the main
entrances to the complex. This project is the very symbol of
diversity at work in creating a better world.
“With
this building, Mick Pearce has tossed the norms of architectural
correctness out of the window and looked to nature and local
cultures for a solution to sustainability. This goes to show that
local culture and the realities of the natural geo-climatic region
have much to teach those who are willing to reject standardised
ready-made solutions. His building stands as a defense of diversity
in the face of the homogenizing forces of globalize practice, but
also as a defense against a backward-looking refusal to engage with
the modern world.
“Mick
Pearce has probably moved further away, than any other architect in
the world today from the lip service the profession usually gives
to enhancing sustainability and diversity. His great achievement
has been to come up with a truly innovative and successful
alternative to the all-glass high-rise that tropical countries tend
to import from the North. Perhaps it is no coincidence that such an
architect has wide experience of working in the tropics, where
ecological, economic and political crises are so pressing and so
serious that they demand nothing less than ingenious solutions, not
only for the benefit of the local population but for the whole
planet, whose health depends on the survival of tropical
bio-diversity. The post/neo colonizing world of the North does not
tend to look to the post-colonial world for groundbreaking ideas,
but Mick Pearce has come up with some brilliant ones.
“Due to
the political conditions in Zimbabwe, Mick Pearce is temporally
working in Melbourne Australia, where he is putting his Eastgate
paradigm to ingenious new use, notably in his Council House Two
project, called CH2. His tendency to agilely cross over boundaries,
both intellectual and geographical, combined with his stubbornly
uncompromising commitment to diversity – ecological, architectural
and political – has a lot to do with what makes this Zimbabwean
bionic paradigm exportable not only to the rest of the tropical
region but to the whole world. (Liane Lefaivre and Alexander
Tzonis)”
Below is
a selection of some of the buildings that Mick Pearce has
designed:
CH2
MUNICIPAL OFFICES IN MELBOURNE 2002–2005
Due to
the growing political crisis in Zimbabwe since the 2000 elections,
the economy of Zimbabwe has been in sharp decline and the building
industry was the first to suffer. In August 2002 Mick Pearce moved
to Melbourne, Australia, where he had been offered a contract by
the Melbourne City Council to act as the lead design architect for
their new municipal offices in Melbourne’s central business
district. CH2 (Council House Two) is the name given to
this already well-known project. This building follows the same
principles at those established at Eastgate: the architecture and
its visual expression should respond to the natural, socio-cultural
and economic environment of its location in the same way that an
ecosystem in nature is embedded in its site. The metaphor for
Eastgate was the termitary, the metaphor for CH2 is the
tree.
CH2
is a mixed development with retail on the ground floor and with
nine floors of offices above. The project may be seen on the
Internet web site, www.CH2.com.au . It is being built at
present and is due to be completed in March 2006.
Mick
Pearce was the lead designer as well as the partner in charge of
the following projects:
THEATRE
AT HARARE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL 2001–2002
The
Harare International School Arts Centre. This comprises a 500-seat
theatre with a drama and music school attached. This building is
the first of its kind to be cooled with a rock-store system in
combination with three wind-driven turbines. Both the rock store
and the turbine at the school were developed in consultation with
Ove Arup and both have achieved international acclaim.
CENTRE
FOR THE ENVIRONMENT AT ZOLDA, BELGIUM, 1998–2002
The
turbines will be used in Zolda, Belgium on another project for
which Pearce’s office is mainly responsible.
EASTGATE
DEVELOPMENT HARARE, 1991–1996
Eastgate
Development, Harare for City Centre Properties (Pvt) Ltd. Lead
Designer and Architect for this 55 000m² mixed-use city centre
development, using passive environmental systems.
HINDOO
TEMPLE, HARARE, 1989–19991
The
small but lively Hindoo community in Harare financed this temple to
seat up to 1000 people in lotus position. The building is built in
northern Hindoo style with a 60m high stupa, a hall and three
stupas over the entrance foyers. The temple was built in corbled
brick.
CHINHOY
HOSPITAL ZIMBABWE, 1990–1995
Chinhoyi
Provincial Hospital, Chinhoyi. In charge of inception, briefing and
design for this new hospital, including site planning, staff
housing and the Training School.
LAND
MANAGEMENT FACULTY, UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE, 1986
Land
Management Building, Faculty of Agriculture, University of
Zimbabwe. Project Architect for all stages of work on a mixed-use
campus building, including laboratories, lecture halls and
offices.
STUDENTS
RESIDENCE, UNIVERSITY OF ZAMBIA, 1968
Students’
Residences, University of Zambia, Lusaka. Project
Architect.
MILK
PROCESSING FACTORY ZAMBIA, 1969–1971
Milk
Processing Factory, Lusaka for the Dairy Marketing
Board.
THREE
RURAL SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN ZAMBIA, 1968–1970
Rural
secondary schools in Choma, Chama and Chongwe, Zambia. Designer and
Project Architect.
TRADES
TRAINING INSTITUTE AT KABWE AND LIVINGSTONE IN ZAMBIA,
1966–1968
This
experience fits the project under reference as these Trades
Training Institutes were large tertiary training colleges which
were residential and included residential units for a student
population of 300.
INFORMATION
ABOUT MY APPROACH TO MY WORK
I have
become increasingly interested in the development of a new
relationship between the city and nature in which man’s
relationship with nature is changing. This has a wide-ranging
influence on my architecture. I am also convinced that the mindless
burning of fossil fuels, which I call “burning diamonds”, is having
a disastrous effect on the planet’s natural, social and economic
environment. We should instead be using the vast resource of fossil
remains for higher-state energy transfer processes to produce
hydrocarbon materials like carbon fiber, while at the same time
moving towards using the renewable energy which will give rise to a
new solar age.
CONFERENCE
PAPERS
The
Intelligent Building Design Symposium in Stuttgart 1997. I
delivered a paper entitled “Eastgate, Harare: a Living System in
the City
The
same to the Architectural Institute in Brussels, 1997
The
same at the Architectural Association, London 1997
The
same at a public lecture at the University of NUST, Bulawayo,
Zimbabwe 1999
The
same to science students at the University of Zimbabwe,
1998
“The
City and Nature” at the Durban 2000 Millennium
Conference
“Stop
Burning Diamonds” at the Harvard Graduate School of Architecture,
2001
“Stop
Burning Diamonds” at the RIBA, London and Sheffield in
2001
“Stop
Burning Diamonds” at the Intelligent Building Design Symposium in
Stuttgart, 2001
“Stop
Burning Diamonds” at a Tropical Architecture Conference in San
José, Costa Rica 2001
Sixty
lectures given in Melbourne from 2003–2004 to members of the
public, university students, professionals and developers in
architecture and the building industry. Details can be
supplied.
RECENT
PUBLICATIONS ABOUT MY WORK
A
selection of journal articles:
The
Architectural Review (UK)
September 1996. An article on Eastgate called “Sustainable
Architecture”.
Zimbabwean
ReviewSeptember
1996.“Towards
the Sustainable City”
AIT
Spezial Intelligente Architektur,March
1996, 4, “Burohaus in Harare, Zugluft
De
Spiegel, 1996.
“Inspired by Termites”
New York
Times, Feb
1996. & The Herald Tribune “Genius
of Termites Inspires Office Development”
The Arup
Journal1/1997.
CAA
Architect Newsnet and Quarter1997Issue No
4.
Planning,
Architectural & Planning Review for Southern
AfricaNo 154
Nov 1997 Eastgate Harare Zimbabwe
Mathematical
modelling of the storage of coolth.Unpublished
University of Zimbabwe research document
South
African ArchitectJournal
of the South African Institute of Architects August 1998 “Report on
Finalists Constitutional Court International
Competition”.
South
African Architect Journal
of the South African Institute of Architects March 1999
AR
Architectural ReviewAustralia074
summer 2000/2001. “Anthill” by Professor Lindsay
Johnston
AR
Architectural Review Australia 084
Winter 2003 Mick Pearce interview with Andrew Mackenzie
AR
Architectural Review Australia084
Winter 2003 CH2 by Lindsay Johnston
Municipal
Engineering in Australia. May
2005 Breaking the Mould with CH2
Building
Australia Magazine May/
June 2005 CH2 Australia’s Greenest Building
A
selection of books in
which Eastgate is described:
Architecture
and the Environment: Bioclimatic BuildingDavid
Lloyd Jones, 1998. Design Lawrence King.
The
Architectural Expression of Environmental Control
Systems,
George Baird, 2001. Spon Press
Tropical
Architecture Critical Regionalism in the Age of
Globalization. Edited
by Alexander Tzonis, Liane Lefaivre and Bruno Stagno. Wiley-Academy
2001
City
Edge Case Studies in
Contemporary Urbanism by Ester Charlesworth. Elsevier
2005
The
Natural Advantage of Nations Business
Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st
Century Edited by Charlie Hargroves & Michael H Smith. EARTH
SCAN 2005
Hi
TechNatuToni
Burgin et al., r: Drei Museen, Drei Ausstellungen ,
Natur-Museum Luzern page 51
The
African City,2000.
ACBD Workshop Report , Durban, April
Big and
Green: Toward Sustainable Architecture in the 21st
CenturyDavid
Gissen Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press
2001
A Vision
for the New Age Derek
ThomasArchitectural Press Architecture and the Urban Environment.
2002
PRIZES
& AWARDS
International
Awarded
the 2003 Prince Claus Award for Culture and
Development. This
award covers participants in Africa, South and Central America and
Asia
British
Civic Trust Award, 1982. For the
conversion of All Saints Church in Newcastle-Upon Tyne.
First
prize, Fulton Award,Concrete
Society of Southern Africa, 1997 for Eastgate.
Steel
Construction Award, 1997,
Winner for Eastgate.
International
Design and Development AwardsProgramme
of International Council of Shopping Centres, 1997, for
Eastgate.
ICSC
Certificate of Merit, 1997,
for innovative design and construction of a new centre (Eastgate)
(USA).
AAMSA
Cladding Award, South Africa Certificate of MERIT. 1998, for
Eastgate.
The Aga
Khan Award, 1999,
short-listed for Eastgate.
British
Steel Design Sense for Architecture, 2000,
short-listed in the top six for Eastgate
Local
AIZ
Award of Excellence, 1994,
for the Hindoo Temple, Harare.
AIZ
Honourable Mention, 1994
for 101 Union Avenue. Harare.
AIZ,
Merit in Architecture, 1999,
for Chinhoyi Hospital.
AIZ,
Commended Design 1999, for
Harare International School.
Environment
2000, Award of Excellence, 1999,
for Eastgate.
COMPETITIONS
Winner,
1985, of the competition for the New Parliament Building, Harare,
Zimbabwe.
Finalist,
1997, one of the five for the International Competition for the New
Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Winner,
(with Jackson Moore Architects), 1990, of the competition for the
Agricultural Finance Corporation Headquarters, Harare. | 