If you could offer one piece of advice when it comes to designing, what would it be?:
Listen acutely to your clients but also keenly observe them. How they present themselves, their clothing, art collections, car and furnishing choices are all vital signs that often reveal far more than words alone.
How important are The International Design & Architecture Awards?:
In a fast-moving global design community, recognition by a respected body such as the International Design & Architecture Awards not only provides a valuable forum to showcase one’s own work, it also gives designers an opportunity to understand how we all work and thereby improve our craft.
What projects are you currently working on?:
We are excited about all our projects including the major rebuild of a substantial five-storey waterfront home, a sprawling mountainside rural estate and an urban ‘party’ home with a glass-based rooftop pool and subterranean lounge bar.
What was your favourite project to work on and why?:
‘Hinterland Sanctuary’ was a special project for us given its scale and the relative freedom our client granted us to realise our interpretation of an elegant holiday villa that celebrates the true Australian indoor/outdoor lifestyle.
What was your most challenging project to work on and why?:
Creating two levels of sub-floor spaces below an existing Victorian terrace house (built on a sandy cliff face) was challenging both structurally and spatially, but this soon to be completed project is one-off-a-kind.
Which products/services could you not live without when designing? E.g. Lighting companies, furniture companies:
Although all our projects are fully documented in Revit, it always begins with my scale ruler, a roll of yellow tracing paper and a handful of pens. So, for me those simple items are critical in initiating our design processes (along with coffee and quality headphones!)
Architecture is a team enterprise relying on all parties sharing a vision and trusting in the journey toward the completed space or structure. It all starts with the client, enhanced by the architect’s vision along with our consultant partners, suppliers and contractors. We could not do it without any of them.
