We acknowledge First Nations peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the lands, waters, and skies of the continent now called Australia. We express our gratitude to their Elders and Knowledge Holders whose wisdom, actions and knowledge have kept culture alive. We recognise First Nations peoples as the first architects and builders. We appreciate their continuing work on Country from pre-invasion times to contemporary First Nations architects, and respect their rights to continue to care for Country.
The public’s understanding of architects and architecture is most appropriately based upon spatial and inter-personal experience; however, community perceptions can also be founded upon received narrative.
The recent release of the cinematic epic, The Brutalist, portrays the post-war relocation of a modernist architect from war ravaged Europe to a new world of opportunity in the United States. To architects, the title inextricably draws attention, and while the principal character is an architect around whom a multitude of thematic threads are woven, is this complex rendition of the architect and architecture reflective of community perceptions?
This issue of Architect Victoria is fascinating for its complimentary exploration of how we physically sense and comprehend the designed environment in parallel with a critique of how our design profession is understood and defined, as presented by a carefully selected assemblage of writers in roles adjacent to or within the profession. The actual role of an architect demands a diverse and broad array of skills and education, commonly reflected in architects working collaboratively. Architecture is complex. Architectural tertiary education provides a foundation upon which an evolving development of ideas and practice is built, supported by structured continuing professional development and impacted by changing circumstances, parameters, and opportunities.
The Australian Institute of Architects was established via the various chapters to provide a collegial and learned environment in which architects can enhance their skills, enjoy fellowship, and as a collective body advocate to those who legislate and regulate our industry while promoting the benefits of architectural services to the broader public with the objective of improving our built environment.
The Victorian Chapter of the Institute is thoroughly immersed in advocating to our state politicians as well as to leaders of government. The Chapter has in-person meetings directly with Cabinet ministers with the objective of both informing and advocating for outcomes that improve the manner in which our industry works, and which manifest in a designed built environment that better serves our community. The Institute is regularly invited to contribute to parliamentary inquiries, stakeholder engagement sessions, draft regulations, and regulatory impact statements. Our profession is respected at government for the considered perspective it brings to the numerous issues that arise through the regulatory reform program that the Victorian Government is pursuing. Our Chapter is currently working and advocating on a number of important issues including, sustainability, electrification, planning reform, delivery of more and better housing, design building practitioner legislation and government consultancy contracts, not to mention the promotional advocacy of the national awards program.
This work greatly contributes to the manner in which architects are perceived and the consequential opportunities architects have to contribute to the design of our built environment. The public’s lens on architecture and architects is enhanced by our profession’s diligence in promoting good design as well as good practice in what is an ever changing environment.
Victorian Chapter President David Wagner FRAIA
Pictured: 2024 Australian Architecture Conference | Hamer Hall, Melbourne | Photographer: Michael Pham
Contributors
Annie Luo is an independent multidisciplinary designer, with a predominant focus on visual identity, digital design and print media.
James Staughton FRAIA is the editorial committee Chair, an architect, and director and co-founder of Workshop Architecture.
Editorial director
Emma Adams
Editorial committee
James Staughton FRAIA (Chair)
Lavanya Arulananda RAIA
Nikita Bhopti RAIA
Elizabeth Campbell RAIA
Hugh Goad RAIA
Kimberley Hui RAIA
John Mercuri RAIA
Justin Noxon RAIA
Guest editors
Amelia Borg RAIA
Lauren Crockett RAIA
Tim Leslie FRAIA
Associate guest editors
Nikita Bhopti RAIA
Simone Chait RAIA Grad
Hannah Lim RAIA Grad
Michael Strack RAIA
Creative direction
Annie Luo
Publisher
Australian Institute of Architects
Victorian Chapter, 41 Exhibition Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000
Victorian Chapter Executive Director
Daniel Moore RAIA
On the cover Weird Sensation Feels Good at ArkDes.
Photo by Johan Dehlin
Printing Printgraphics
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Readers are advised that opinions expressed in articles and in editorial content are those of their authors, not of the Australian Institute of Architects represented by its Victorian Chapter. Similarly, the Australian Institute of Architects makes no representation about the accuracy of statements or about the suitability or quality of goods and services advertised.
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Sensory design in architecture + Perceptions of an architect
Lavanya Arulanandam RAIA is principal urban designer and strategic planner at the City of Melbourne.
Hugh Goad RAIA is an architect who recently opened his own practice.
Justin Noxon RAIA is founder and director of NOXON Architecture and an editorial committee member.
Elizabeth Campbell RAIA is a senior architect at the City of Melbourne. She is a contributing editor of Architect Victoria.
Amelia Borg . RAIA is a cofounder and co-director of Sibling Architecture.
Lauren Crockett RAIA is an associate architect at Sibling Architecture.
Tim Leslie FRAIA is principal adviser of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect Design Review,
Emma Adams is an editor and editorial and publishing lead at the Australian Institute of Architects.
John Mercuri RAIA is a senior architect at Workshop Architecture and editorial committee member.
Nikita Bhopti RAIA is a project architect at Sibling Architecture, writer and curator.
Kimberley Hui RAIA is an architect, writer and curator of Archemist in the Making.
Melissa H Black is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institutet Centre in Stockholm, Sweden.
Leona Dusanovic RAIA is an architect and senior associate at NH Architecture.
Ilianna Ginnis is an access consultant and neuroinclusive design consultant at Architecture & Access.
Cathryn Grant is an occupational therapist and ACA-accredited access consultant.
Ellen Naismith is an access consultant with over 10 years of experience working with councils and nongovernment organisations.
Kirsten Day FRAIA is a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Melbourne.
Kerstin Thompson AM LFRAIA is principal of KTA and adjunct professor at RMIT and Monash universities.
Simone Chait RAIA Grad works at Sibling Architecture and teaches at RMIT University.
Michael Roper RAIA is a founding director of Architecture architecture.
Jefa Greenaway RAIA MDIA is a founding director of Greenaway Architects.
Ted Baillieu AO LFRAIA was the premier of Victoria from 2010-2013.
Anita Tesoriero is the founder and director of Mindspire Psychology and Consulting.
Sally Macindoe is a consultant and former partner and chair of Norton Rose Fulbright.
Sam Westbrooke is the executive manager, conservation and advocacy, at the National Trust of Australia (Victoria).
Tope Adesina RAIA Grad is a Nigerian born, Melbourne-based graduate of architecture, artist and photographer.
Glenice Fox is CEO/ Registrar of the Architects Registration Board of Victoria.
Carl Schibrowski is currently the chief development officer for New Murabba Development Company.
Jen Marks has over 25 years of experience leading high-performing teams in property and construction.
Bree Trevena is Arup's Australasia foresight leader.
Timothy Moore RAIA is a co-founder and co-director of Sibling Architecture,
Amrita Hepi (Bundjulung/ Ngapuhi Territories) is a multidisciplinary artist and choreographer.
Ceridwen Owen is associate professor, School of Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania.
Mark Jacques is an urban designer and landscape architect.
Dagmar Reinhardt is an architect, researcher and associate professor at the University of Sydney.
Andrea Lam RAIA is an architect at SJB Architecture Sydney.
Bradley Kerr RAIA is a Quandamooka man and an architect living, working and learning on Wurundjeri Country.
Charlie Woods is a director of Vague Labs, a hybridreality studio.
Julie Willis Assoc. RAIA is dean and Redmond Barry distinguished professor of architecture.
Rhiannon Williams is a foresight research and analyst at Arup.
Phil Gardiner is a structural engineer with over 45 years’ experience. He is a Principal Director at WSP in Australia,
We all experience architecture through our bodies, the fleshy conduit that allows us to make sense of our surroundings.
This process of making sense is two-pronged, with both sides existing in a constant loop directly informing our spatial awareness. First, a network of around 10 million sensory receptors capture external stimuli and transmit this information throughout the body. Beyond visual inputs – architecture’s preferred sense – we are registering everything from temperature, to our position in space, sounds, scents, pressure and pain.
The second, more variable aspect of this cycle lies in how we process and react to this sensory information. Factors such as age, cognitive and physical abilities, and past experiences shape unique responses to stimuli, embedding associations and informing our everyday behaviour. The same stimuli could elicit sensations ranging from pain, to comfort to delight. Our bodies constantly regulate sensory input, striving to balance hypo- and hyper-stimuli to maintain a state of equilibrium. When this balance is disrupted – whether due to overwhelming environmental stimuli or the body’s ability to process them – it can lead to sensory overload.
Architecture has a role to play in both stages of this cycle. In order to more effectively design environments that are legible, sensitive and engaging we first have to acknowledge and embrace the broad spectrum of experiences.
Guest editors
Amelia Borg RAIA
Lauren Crockett RAIA
What shapes an architect and how is the profession perceived by those around them?
Over 30 years ago, in 1994, the highly influential architectural text Questions of Perception by Steven Holl, Juhani Pallasmaa, and Alberto Pérez-Gómez, was published. The book explored the role both phenomena and the human senses play in the experience of architecture.
As a young student, at that time, this text was to have a transformative impact on my approach to architecture, in particular an ongoing investigation into the use of light as a design-shaping element. In 2015, I had the good fortune to meet Juhani Pallasmaa. I was interested to understand what had shaped him as an architect. He kindly accepted my invitation to interview him, and, in many ways, the resulting Questions of Pallasmaa was the springboard for this edition. This edition invites twelve contributors to discuss their perceptions from a range of vantage points. The topic is broken into four parts. Section 1 touches upon the transformation of an individual into an architectural graduate, then the pathway to registration, and finally to become an architect. In Section 2, a client, structural engineer planning lawyer, and builder are invited to provide their views on working with an architect. In Section 3, the broader opportunities and applications an architectural education may bring beyond practice is considered. In Section 4, a reflection on the impact the pursuit of architecture may have on the architect themselves, and concludes with my original interview with architect Juhani Pallasmaa.
Guest editor
Tim Leslie FRAIA
Sensory design in architecture
Words by Amelia Borg and Lauren Crockett
This edition explores difference as an opportunity rather than an obligation, emphasising the intrinsic connection between our sensory systems, spatial awareness, and sense of comfort. It acknowledges that varied sensory experiences can result in architecture that is more comfortable, dignified, and joyous for all.
Throughout this issue we invite perspectives of neurodivergence from practitioners whose research and projects expand upon our understanding of previously unheard or unseen issues faced by many people when interacting with architecture. We also consider the joy of everyday sensory experiences and the way that this contributes to our understanding and memory of place. Projects within this issue demonstrate the myriad of approaches to mediating our sensory experience of space. Some are designed to deliberately engage with and enhance one or more of the senses, while others are about sensitivity and dignity through a reduction in environmental stimuli. Architecture often exists in mediums that primarily engage our visual receptors. From initial sketches to archival photography, the dominance of the image often trumps the desire to consider design from a multi-sensory perspective. But sight is just a small part of the equation amounting to the total atmosphere of architecture. Take proprioception, which enables us to remember previous movements and reenact them, eventually achieving muscle memory, or our vestibular system which controls balance and spatial judgement. When approaching a corridor, our visual receptors tell us about scale, proportion and distance, our vestibular system processes this and enables us to move in a straight line, proprioception tells us we can move through it without bumping into things. We rely on these complex overlapping inputs to navigate and inhabit architecture every day. Beyond the typical five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste and touch, scientists now acknowledge the existence of up to 20 sensory systems including thermoreceptors to sense temperature and nocioceptors to sense pain. Bradley Kerr’s article, Sensing Country, reminds us that this way of thinking, about making sense, is limited to a Western worldview and does not consider the reciprocal exchanges that occur between Indigenous peoples and their knowledge systems. Amrita Hepi reflects on this in relation to her recent public artwork, Sun Stadium, considering how reciprocal knowledge systems can be embedded within the public realm.
Approaching the topic from the tangible to the ephemeral, there is currently a noticeable gap in information for designers looking to navigate the complexity around accommodating for so much diversity. Melissa Black gives architects and designers practical tips for navigating spatial design for the benefit of users with autism. Iliiana Ginnis, Cathryn Grant and Ellen Naismith provide similarly valuable insight and guidelines around designing, managing and locating reset rooms (FKA sensory rooms).
While many of these articles address sensory design through the lens of neurodivergence, when designing for heightened sensitivity we are not only accommodating people with autism but a broad spectrum of experiences. We highlight the importance of these considerations within an educational setting, with a review of exemplary new school projects by Project 12 and Architecture architecture, where students from a broad range of backgrounds benefit from the empathetic approach to architecture. This is considered in the domestic setting in Ceridwen Owen’s reflection on the sense of home.
A key factor influencing sensory comfort is the ability to make adjustments to your immediate environment, which is generally more attainable in a domestic setting than the public sphere. Kirsten Day discusses this in her assessment of sensory mapping in public institutions, whereas Leona Dusanovic reminds us that an enriched sensory experience is a key differentiating factor in certain types of public buildings. Kerstin Thompson mediates the home and the public sphere with a thoughtful comparison of the experience of comfort between two key projects, the Melbourne Holocaust Museum and Bundanon Arts Centre. These articles all speak to the regulation of the individual experience within public architecture.
The evocation of the personal within public space is discussed further in Mark Jaques reflection on the Heide
Healing Garden, where the landscape acts as a sensory prompt for other times and places. The garden may not have this effect on everyone; and it doesn’t need to. Bree Taverna and Rhiannon Williams pick up on this key point – that there is no way to design for every user. Moving beyond the building, they consider sensory experiences at an urban scale, where control is limited but opportunities to engage the senses are infinite. Andrea Lam gives a vivid and poetic reflection of her sensory understanding of Chinatown in San Francisco, reinforcing the importance of cultural memory in our understanding of the urban realm.
Towards the end of the issue, we explore the ways in which technology helps facilitate and heighten sensory delight. We dive into the world of ASMR; a sensory-stimulation trend that brings a world of experiences into the palm of our hands through a review of the exhibition Weird Sensation Feels Good. Simone Chait and Charlie Woods identify another way that access to physical experiences is being democratised by technology. They introduce Vague Labs; augmented reality nightclubs that allow people to participate in physical events from the comfort of home through a digital platform.
Our interest in this topic was sparked and materialised through working together on several projects at Sibling Architecture. As we are all aware, the practice of architecture is a very collective endeavour, particularly at Sibling. We would like to acknowledge the ideas and contributions of everyone in the practice who have contributed to this body of thinking. In particular to co-directors Nicholas Braun, Qianyi Lim and Timothy Moore, and to those who were directly involved in contributing to ideas around this issue; Michael Strack, Simone Chait, Hannah Lim and Nikita Bhopti. We would also like to acknowledge Creative Victoria who has generously supported us to continue researching these ideas and provided support to the contributors for this issue.
Amelia Borg RAIA is a co-founder and co-director of Sibling Architecture.
Lauren Crockett RAIA is an associate architect at Sibling Architecture.
Photo: Elsa Soläng
Built environments for autistic individuals
Words by Melissa Black
Before starting this contribution, I must clarify my position: I am not an architect, interior architect, or anything of the sort. My expertise lies in neurodevelopmental conditions, particularly autism, with a focus on promoting participation and positive life outcomes. While our fields differ, they converge on a shared goal: fostering inclusion and participation for all individuals, including those who are neurodivergent.
The work I present here represents a collaborative, multidisciplinary effort between health professionals and an interior architect. In this work we comprehensively reviewed research on built environments for autistic individuals, seeking to explore the state of the art and develop recommendations for the field. This multidisciplinary approach, I believe, is critical as we too often work within silos, missing valuable insights and developments that collaboration can offer. In this work, we hoped to bridge this gap.
Though the topic of built form sits outside the expertise of health professionals, our foray into this subject stems from our understanding of disability – not as something inherent to an individual, but rather as the result of a mismatch between the individual and their environments. It is here that you – the architects, interior architects, and designers are crucial in shaping spaces that allow neurodivergent individuals to thrive.
Autism and the built environment
There exists significant variation in the neurological makeup of humans, producing diversity in how individuals perceive, experience, and interact with their world. Autism is just one example of the many ways in which this neurodiversity manifests, being a common lifelong condition arising early in development due to divergent neurological functioning. Although the experiences and impacts of autism can vary from person to person, it is characterised by differences in social interaction and communication, a preference for
routine or focused interests, and often the altered processing of sensory information. Like other forms of neurological diversity, the contexts in which an individual is situated play a crucial role in shaping their experience, enabling or disabling their ability to participate fully.
The importance of the environment in shaping an individual’s ability to thrive is outlined in this quote by Australian autistic researcher Dr Jac Den Houting in their 2019 TEDx talk at Macquarie University. “If we started designing shopping malls that were quiet, dimly lit, predictable, and sparsely populated, I would still be autistic, but I might not be disabled by shopping malls anymore.” While built environments will not solve all challenges faced by an individual, there are critical elements that play a significant role in supporting or hindering an individual’s ability to interact and engage with their world.
Design considerations
Here, I highlight key recommendations for designing spaces that foster the inclusion and participation of neurodivergent individuals, particularly those who are autistic. I focus on four key areas:
1. Sensory considerations, 2. Increasing predictability, 3. Accounting for individual variability, and 4. Stakeholder input.
Sensory considerations: Autistic individuals often experience atypical sensory processing, that is – stimuli in a built environment, including visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory –can be processed differently, impacting access and engagement. Differences in sensory processing can manifest as both hyper (heightened) and hypo (reduced) sensitivity, and different individuals will have different sensory needs. Many individuals tend to be hypersensitive to sensory input in the environment, making it important to reduce stimuli that may be overwhelming. On the other hand, some might seek stimulation, making it
important to provide opportunities for different experiences. In many cases, it is not always possible to fully accommodate sensory needs in an environment; here, dedicated “retreat spaces” that offer room to decompress and regulate sensory input can be invaluable. Other sensory considerations include:
Visual input: Harsh lighting, visual clutter, complex patterns, bright colors, and shadows can contribute to overwhelm. Avoid fluorescent or bright lights and instead opt for lowerlevel lighting and adjustable lighting; consider the selection of light fittings to avoid shadow casting and minimize visual clutter.
Auditory input: Loud and inconsistent noise can be distracting and often distressing for individuals sensitive to auditory input. Consider incorporating soundproofing materials such as carpets, wall paneling and the creation of “quiet zones”. Also, consider the location of noise-generating appliances (e.g., coffeemakers).
Tactile input: Different textures can be preferred (or conversely disliked) by autistic individuals. Explore a variety of texture and surface options to provide opportunities for individuals to both seek or avoid different forms of sensory stimulation.
Olfactory input: Autistic individuals may be more sensitive to strong odors, such as from food. Consider spatial sequencing and ensure good ventilation and air quality.
Increasing predictability: Unpredictable environments can be overwhelming for many autistic individuals, with unpredictability stemming from a lack of clarity of what
activities are to be undertaken in spaces, difficulty knowing where to go, and abrupt changes. Easily legible layouts, avoiding blind corners by incorporating curved walls, and having clearly defined spaces with specific purposes may increase predictability.
Accounting for individual variability: It is critical to note that autism, like any other neurodivergence, is diverse in regard to its underlying mechanisms, presentations, and impact on the individual. Needs and preferences may differ from person to person, and one-size-fits-all approaches may not always be appropriate. Where possible, spaces should allow for flexibility, adaptability, and personalization. Examples could include using adjustable lighting or providing opportunities for different sensory experiences.
Stakeholder input: Perhaps the most critical consideration is stakeholder input. Consultation with intended users of any environment is important, but here it is crucial given the significant role environments can play in enabling (or disabling) autistic individuals. Autistic individuals are the experts in their own experiences, needs, and preferences, and thus, active consultation and engagement with autistic individuals and those close to them are essential to ensuring that built environments effectively and authentically reflect their needs.
Concluding remarks
Built environments can significantly influence the inclusion and participation of autistic individuals. Architects, interior architects, designers, and others involved in this work thus hold significant power in shaping the experiences and abilities of individuals interacting within their worlds. The considerations outlined here can support this important endeavor.
Melissa Black is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institutet Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders (KIND) in Stockholm, Sweden. Her research is focused on neurodevelopmental conditions, with an emphasis on exploring and promoting participation, wellbeing, mental health, and functional outcomes.
Design for delight
Words by Bree Trevena and Rhiannon Williams
Moving through the Kyoto subway at rush hour you’re searching your way from the platform to the south west exit. As you weave around crowds, through barriers and down escalators, your ears pick up something unfamiliar in this subterranean space; the sound of birdsong, as clear as it would be outdoors. By the time you’ve followed the bright yellow signs to your exit you notice an entirely different bird song. Research done from the comfort of the kitchen table later on reveals the reason behind the unexpected audio - the birdsong recordings are there to facilitate navigation for visually impaired people, a melodic assistive technology with different bird trill calls signifying different spatial zones.1
This elegant acoustic wayfinding not only centres diverse ways of understanding the world but brings a little extra delight to the experience of urban navigation. A 2022 study
by King’s College London associated exposure to birdsong with mood boosts and mental health benefits2. This way of approaching creative sensory engagement, designing for variety of experience and joyful encounters as a design prerequisite avoids framing diverse experiences as design add-ons, afterthoughts or deviations from a perceived norm. Given one in eight Australians are neurodivergent, almost half a million of us have low or no vision and 50% of people over 65 have changed physical and cognitive abilities, our understanding of ‘norm’ may be well overdue for reconsideration. 3 4 5
‘Every day, everybody is at odds with the built environment,’ writes Sara Hendren, an artist, design researcher and author of What Can A Body Do: How We Meet The Built World. ‘ How we meet the built environment depends on bodies and worlds.’6 Hendren’s work brings a rich ecology of experience to the sorts of questions we ask of the built environment and technology – particularly, how we might move beyond accommodation and towards a more varied designed world that actively enables people in terms of welcome, comfort and information.
Arup’s Aural Diversity Toolkit began from this premise. To start, ethnographic research built up a picture of auditory diversity by documenting a variety of experiences; people who are particularly attuned to some types of sound, those who experience and process sound in different ways, those who are more reliant on hearing to compensate for other sensory loss, those who have no hearing at all and people who have different levels of sensitivity to certain frequencies and volumes. Anonymised persons were compiled to demonstrate aurally divergent experiences . The ambition is to support architects, designers and engineers in equitably valuing various ways of moving through the world.
These approaches come to vivid life in built environments like San Francisco’s Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired, where the design philosophy was to be beautiful not just visually, but acoustically. For example, working
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Imagine being guided through the metro following the soundwave of an Australian magpie. Image by Arup
closely with those who would be future occupants of the building led to transition zones indicated by changes in floor material to help orient through the absorptive or echoing sounds of shoes or canes. Sound Lab technology was used to prototype different potential experiences, simulating how different spaces within the building would be experienced. This design approach aims to go beyond access and draw on what is delightful, dignified and informative for different people.7
Similarly, in arts and cultural venues like Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, it is increasingly common to integrate audio augmentation in ways that allow people with various hearing abilities to move through spaces using their own device with autonomy and self determination. Projects like these demonstrate empathetic sensory design doesn’t always mean rendering people as visible as possible. In truth, the provision of spaces to ‘be invisible’ is both desirable and essential for some groups to equitably participate in daily life.
Design for less visible variation of experience is also coming to the fore. The built environment can be overwhelming and disorientating when it comes to sensory output. Being drained by a busy urban street or workplace is a common experience, yet sensory design around neurodiversity is increasingly opening new frontiers of how these same spaces can have the capacity to do the opposite. So how can we go beyond passive architecture and design spaces and infrastructure that are actively restorative?
Increasingly, office design is becoming more attuned to restorative approaches through deeper consideration of the ways light, noise levels, floor contrast, temperature and finishes can create discomfort, distraction and loss of concentration for a range of neurotypes. Here high- and low-tech design methods increasingly combine, for example using immersive VR simulations to represent experiences of neurodivergence in office spaces by incorporating quantitative and qualitative data such as eye tracking, heart rate and emotional mapping to start understanding what successful environments look like for different people. 8
This approach is reflected in the Arup office I frequent in Melbourne, which includes a wide range of treatments, colour palettes and surfaces, acoustic panels, quiet rooms and controllable lighting to reduce sensory overload or, conversely, stimulate the senses. Such design philosophies also acknowledge individual ability to fully participate in the world can change within a single individual over a single day.
In the public realm, projects like Restorative Ground by architecture firm Women In Practice (WIP) Collaborative are putting these design questions front and centre. 9 WIP took a section of sidewalk in Hudson Square in New York and refurbished it as a space of play, rest and reflection, with a specific focus on neurodiverse experiences. By incorporating a range of bright colours, soft and textured materials and seating in the form of hammock nets and steps at different
levels, the space communicates warmth and invitation. In an environment where people are often stressed and harried, Restorative Ground alters the role of the city by actively encouraging passers-by to stop and rest, slow down and use the space how they wish.
The Rocks Tallawoladah Women’s Safety Strategy project led by Placemaking NSW with Arup brings sensory perception together with experiences of safety at precinct scale. Connecting with the lived experience of women, girls, nonbinary and transgender people of diverse age, mobility and cultural and linguistic backgrounds shone a light on the urgency of designing for a multisensory experience in public space. Avoiding uneven and harsh lighting in ways that prioritise safety and identity resounds through on-the-ground reports from participants.10 Where these ‘feedback’ spaces encourage us to sit down, to slow down, to take care of ourselves and respect
In Arup's Sydney Soundlab, the intangible is made tangible by helping people experience, explore and understand future audio environments. Photo by Arup
the boundaries of others, they also begin to change how we relate to each other.
Discarding the idealised singular, default user in favour of designing for diversity opens design up to more creative and joyful ways of designing and of interacting with the world. Birdsong as a navigational tool or signposted spaces for different neurotypes don’t only create layers of accessibility but also tease out empathy via design by encouraging us to tune in to the rhythms of various spaces, people and even species we coexist with. The built environment is rife with opportunities for amusement and joy, stimulation and peace. It is the role of architects, designers and engineers to maximise these moments in everyday life.
Notes
1 Yee, Amanda (2023) Assistive Technology: Birdsongs in Japanese Train Stations https://medium. com/@amandayeee/assistive-technology-birdsong-in-japanese-train-stations-2b5d4e9926a2
2 Hammoud, R., Tognin, S., Burgess, L. et al (2022) Smart phone based ecological momentary assessment reveals mental health benefit of birdlife in ‘Scientific reports 12’ https://www.nature. com/articles/s41598-022-20207-6
3 Australian Catholic University (2024) https://www.acu.edu.au/about-acu/news/2024/march/ neglecting-neurodiverse-a-waste-of-talent
4 Vision Australia (2024) How do you know if you have low vision? | Vision Australia. Blindness and low vision services
5 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2024) People with disability in Australia, Prevalence of disability
6 Sara Hendren (2020) ‘What can a body do: How we meet the built world’ Riverhead Books: New York, p3
7 Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impared (2016) ‘Hear the sounds of the new lighthouse with our acoustic designers’ https://lighthouse-sf.org/2016/09/06/hear-the-sounds-of-the-newlighthouse-with-our-acoustic-designers/
Bree Trevena is Arup's Australasia foresight leader.
Rhiannon Williams is a foresight research and analyst at Arup with a passionate focus on equity and socially sustainable futures.
Building calm
Words by Timothy Moore
In schools across the state, students weave together memories like the colourful threads of a tapestry – tuckshop lunches shared with friends, the thrill of schoolyard games, and the quiet triumph of mastering a new skill. As the Victorian state government invests billions into revitalising educational spaces through its school funding programs managed by the Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA), architects are designing environments to foster learning and connection, setting the stage for new memories to be made.
Alongside the rollout of infrastructure, there is a concerted effort from educational institutions to create more inclusive environments that accommodate different neurological profiles, such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. Schools are increasingly implementing strategies to support neurodiverse students, focusing on individualised learning plans, sensory-friendly spaces, and trauma-informed practices.
In recent years, there has also been growing recognition of the need for design practices to cater to neurodivergent users. This includes several design guidelines that have emerged in the last decade to respond to this, such as: Autism ASPECTSS (2015), Design for the mind – Neurodiversity and the built environment – Guide (2022), and Design across the spectrum: play spaces (2016). The National Construction Code and Australian Standards are also under review to see how regulatory frameworks can accommodate neurodivergence. However, architectural precedents are lacking that translate the universal and broad strategies of guidelines to its contextual relevance, or test and validate these strategies, particularly in educational environments. Recent educational projects by Project 12 Architecture however provide much needed examples that exemplify how to effectively address sensory stimulation in these environments.
In the burgeoning outer northern suburb of Broadmeadows on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country, Meadows Primary School enrolments have continued to grow. To respond to this need, the school engaged Project 12 Architecture (along with Simon Ellis Landscape Architects) to design a new 10-classroom building capable of accommodating 200 additional students.
The design brief was deeply informed by the context of the staff and previous experiences within the school. The existing open-plan learning spaces, consisting of four classrooms within a single large area, facilitated concurrent activities and flexible configurations. However, many students–over seventy percent of whom had English as an additional language–struggled with auditory clarity and were easily distracted. The resulting sensory overload prompted the school to install makeshift acoustic solutions, such as gym mats and partitions, which ultimately proved ineffective.
The new building responds to this experience by prioritising security and comfort through physically enclosed classrooms. This is spatialised on a slither of the south-west corner of the site with a rational plan where the room schedule
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Hampden Specialist School by Project 12 Architecture. Photo by Hamish McIntosh
(ten classrooms, two small-group seminar rooms, staff work areas, student and staff amenities) is arranged along a generous central corridor. Each classroom is designed with thoughtful aspects that allow for natural light, while views are intentionally offset from student desks to minimise distractions and enhance focus.
A key move of Project 12 was to create two seminar rooms that subtly double as sensory rooms even though they lack the typical enhancements - textured surfaces, adjustable LED lighting or other visual stimuli. Director Aimee Goodwin from Project 12 indicates it was important to provide a place for students to have timeout in a way that was not obvious in putting “students on show”. These spaces are significant as some members of the school may have been exposed to trauma. (Meadows Primary School utilises the School Wide Positive Behaviour Support (SWPBS) framework and the Berry Street Education Model (BSEM) to implement traumainformed practices.)
Project 12 arranges the new classrooms under one polycarbonate gable roof. The form continues the rational and logical expression demanded by the school. The gable roof indicates its suburban context while three clear recessed doorways signify entry. Clear wayfinding continues in the interior along the central spine: colour is assigned to lockerbays, and are extended joyfully to the clerestory. Playful hopping stones (circular stickers adhered to the carpet) appear part way down the corridor as an instrument to regulate overly active students.
The dampening of sensory overload in the Project 12 addition is reflected in an improvement in NAPLAN results of the school. The quality of the work was also recognised with Meadows Primary School receiving a 2023 Victorian Architecture Awards Commendation for Educational Architecture.
Calmness is also a quality continued with Hampden Specialist School, located three hours south-west of Melbourne in Terang on Djargurd Wurrong Country. The brief for Project 12 was to provide a new building for Hampden’s P-5 (of 19 students) along with a library and classroom building for the junior students for Terang College on the Senior Campus site. The consolidation of Hampden Specialist School and Terang Junior School onto the Senior College campus emerged from the downsizing of enrolments at Terang from 600 to under 200. This co-location means Hampden now has access to a wide range of programs and curriculum offered by the college.
The new building features a layout that places four classrooms along a central corridor, with a multipurpose room and an administrative wing at either end. At the heart of the corridor is a life-skills space, which includes a dining room where children can prepare lunch before going outside to play. This space not only fosters social interaction but also engages the sense of olfaction, as the aromas of fresh food create a stimulating environment. Connection to outdoors is also used as a stimuli with each classroom providing access to
the outside that can help moderate behaviour, including through ventilation.
Project 12’s acumen with educational buildings is further demonstrated through a new competition-grade gymnasium for Cowes Primary School on Bunurong Country, designed to meet both the school’s educational goals and the needs of the broader Phillip Island community.
The site was blessed with both a swimming pool and a swathe of remnant bushland gifted to the school over 30 years ago. The new building, which contains a competition grade basketball court, music room, toilets and change rooms, sits between the pool and the bushland to form a sports precinct. The new gym does not compete with the natural setting: the lower part of the building is framed as a black band that sets up a McCubbin-esque bushland view. When gym doors are open, eucalyptus and tea tree scent waft in on the breeze - improving air quality, but also enhancing the mood, and creating a more inviting atmosphere. The building also provided an opportunity to include an outdoor amphitheatre and external teaching space that connects seamlessly with the surrounding native bushland. This renewed attention to nature now sees students now take the long way back to the classroom through the sanctuary.
The additions to Meadows Primary School, Hampden Specialist School and Cowes Primary School demonstrate an astute command of sensory responsiveness. Project 12 leverages rational spatial planning to combat the constant sensory overload of the school environment to bring a sense of calm to the busy school environment. Olfaction also is considered as a design element, which can otherwise get regulated as secondary. This reflects a deep understanding of Project 12 in the role architecture plays in shaping positive educational outcomes.
Timothy Moore RAIA is a co-director at Sibling Architecture, associate dean (engagement) at Monash Art, Design and Architecture, and the curator of contemporary design and architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria. Timothy has worked at architecture offices in Melbourne, Amsterdam and Berlin, and as an editor for influential magazines, Volume, Architecture Australia, Memo Review Architecture and Future West (Australian urbanism). Timothy is widely published in architectural magazines and journals and speaks at architecture conferences and in the media.
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The new gymnasium at Cowes Primary School invites in the sounds and scents of the adjacent bushland. Photos by Hamish McIntosh
Designing public spaces as sensory environments
Words by Kirsten Day
Every designer approaches a project brief in their own way. The same brief outcomes can vary dramatically, influenced by production methods, budget, location, regulations, available materials, and the designer’s personal experiences and preferences. These factors shape how the design is realised. Similarly, the experience of interacting with a space also differs from person to person, depending on their physical, emotional, and mental state. Every design decision – from material choices to circulation patterns to lighting – profoundly impacts how individuals perceive and engage with a space. These decisions can influence whether users feel safe, comfortable, or inspired.
The way sensory experiences vary from person to person adds a layer of complexity to designing public spaces. A single environment can evoke drastically different feelings and reactions depending on an individual’s physical or emotional state. This is particularly important when designing spaces that are meant to be inclusive of people with varying abilities. Public environments are dynamic and constantly changing, filled with diverse interactions and behaviours. Although designers can predict some behaviours, each person brings their own emotions, experiences, and needs, which shape their unique perception of the space.
Navigating public space often requires meticulous planning for individuals with physical disabilities. Every journey step – from leaving home to arriving at a destination – requires forethought, especially when accessing transportation or ensuring that entrances, restrooms, and other facilities are accessible. Spending time with someone who uses a wheelchair or mobility device reveals how deeply ingrained ableism is in the design of our cities and towns. The absence of – or poorly located ramps, inadequately designed public transport systems, and inaccessible buildings contribute to exclusion and segregation.
Many architects have examined our sensory relationship and the sequencing of physical space – from Moore to Alexander to Holl to Ando. They underscore a profound connection
between architecture and the senses, urging designers to look beyond aesthetics and consider how sensory aspects – such as sound, touch, and air quality (temperature and movement) –shape the human experience. This approach is especially critical in public spaces, where design choices significantly impact accessibility, comfort, safety, and inclusivity. However, while phenomenological design acknowledges the needs of those with visible physical disabilities, cities often remain inherently ableist, structured to accommodate only certain bodies and ways of moving through space. As we expand our understanding of inclusivity, it’s essential to consider not only visible disabilities but also the often invisible needs of neurodivergent individuals, for whom spatial and sensory design choices can profoundly impact their experience of the built environment.
Neurodivergent individuals also face unique challenges when navigating public spaces. Overstimulation from noise, lighting, or crowd density can cause significant stress for these people. Planning an outing often involves identifying potential sensory triggers and preparing strategies to manage them. For example, knowing the location of sensory rooms, where they can retreat to avoid becoming overwhelmed, can make a world of difference.
Sensory mapping is becoming an increasingly important tool in the design of public spaces, especially in GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, museums) buildings. A sensory map is a detailed plan that highlights different sensory experiences within a space. It allows users to better prepare for and navigate their surroundings. By providing information about more stimulating or quieter areas, sensory maps can reduce the stress of moving through complex environments or locate sensory rooms that allow people to decompress from overstimulation.
While helpful, sensory mapping is still in its infancy. Most existing sensory maps offer minimal information – labelling areas as “high sensory” or “low sensory” does little to describe the nuances or context of environment stimulation. Often, these maps are purely visual, overlooking the intersectionality
of disability and the diverse ways individuals experience sensory input. A sensory map considers sensory qualities and the intensity of those qualities.
Institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York, USA), the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia), and the National Maritime Museum (Greenwich, UK) are pioneering efforts to enhance accessibility using sensory maps available on their websites, allowing visitors to plan their journeys. The National Maritime Museum, for example, employs isometric floor plans that illustrate the spatial proximity of exhibition areas to accessibility features, such as stairs, lifts, and toilets, while also highlighting sensory characteristics – such as lighting intensity, activity level, sound volume, strong scents, and tactile exhibits – to accommodate visitors
with hypostimulation needs. This approach allows visitors to customise their experience according to sensory preferences and advertises the presence of staff trained in autism awareness. Similarly, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, incorporates “emotional mapping,” a playful tool that engages visitors while addressing their sensory needs.
Ultimately, designers are responsible for considering how every design element – from spatial layout to signage –contributes to the sensory experience. By adopting inclusive, user-centred approaches, architects and planners can create functional and comfortable spaces for all. Thoughtful design, informed by sensory mapping and a deep understanding of diverse user needs, will help make public spaces more accessible, supportive, and enjoyable for everyone.
Kirsten Day FRAIA is a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Melbourne. Her research explores future scenarios and their impacts on the architectural profession and designing for humanity.
Comfort or dis/comfort
Words by Kerstin Thompson
“Our collective allegiance to comfort is a form of self-assurance – that we are not threatened and that tomorrow will be like today. Comfort indicates that one has risen above the inconsistencies of the natural world and triumphed, not only over nature and the weather but over chance itself. We can rely on comfort. It will be there when we get back… To be rich means never to be uncomfortable… Being discomforted can become a value for spatial innovation… There is nothing more traditionalist, more conservative, than comfort.”
Daniel A Barber After Comfort
On comfort
As architectural practitioners, what should we make of this key preoccupation within the developed world in which we practice?
Daniel Barber’s thinking around comfort is a challenge for us to rethink comfort towards a more sustainable, less resource-intensive practice of architecture and significantly to utilise discomfort as a value for spatial innovation.
I particularly like his definition of ‘comfort’ as a term to describe ‘consistency, normalcy, predictability’. In response to the theme of this issue of Architect Victoria, I’ll rely upon this definition of comfort to position our approach to comfort through the discussion of two KTA projects.
Cultural comfort – Melbourne Holocaust Museum
Architecture’s role in a museum about The Holocaust is fraught. While many overseas examples have attempted to use architecture to somehow render the horrors of The Holocaust via associative means - our design for the Melbourne Holocaust Museum (MHM) adopted a decidedly abstract but also humane architecture that recognises that for many, The Holocaust remains outside of representation.
Rather than appear as a bunker, a common trope in
recent Holocaust Museums, the MHM is visually and physically connected to the community and the street through its façade and interior.
Internal spaces are reserved and luminous, fostering education and understanding; this is a community facility to be shared and experienced. Here the architecture is deliberately comfortable, humane, gentle in its disposition, as a device for fostering an emotional openness to the discomfort of the content in order to impart uncomfortable learnings.
The façade’s utilisation of glass bricks meets the desire for transparency while balancing the security demands for a resilient building envelope. Views into and out of the building are enabled to and from less light sensitive zones such as administration and classrooms, and withheld from gallery and museum spaces.
The visually most open parts, formed by glass bricks in a hit and miss formation, are adjacent to the elevated memorial garden and central public circulation spine that encompasses the stairs and breakout areas designed to provide some relief for visitors more strongly affected by the difficult museum content. Here also mirrors, skylights, windows capture and / or reflect back sky and clouds Views to nearby rooftops of
a suburban Melbourne landscape locate visitors back into their local geographic situation after being mentally transported to far away European landscapes of trauma and histories they have encountered through the museum.
Climatic discomfort – Bundanon Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge directly engages with the Barber challenge to deploy climatic discomfort for spatial innovation. It asks if comfort for the land, for Country may assume discomfort for people?
Bundanon is a centre for arts and education and Australia’s only national museum in a regional setting.
In bushland two and half hours south of Sydney Bundanon occupies land of the Yuin peoples. For millennia it has been shaped by fire and flood. While fires and floods are consistent with this environment’s weather patterns the intervals between extreme events is reducing. Climate change is upon us.
So, the design of its new buildings, landscapes and infrastructure for expanded education and art programs and sustainable tourism is necessarily driven by resilience, resistance and ecological repair, supported by indigenous practices of land management.
The relationship between building and ground became instrumental. A spectrum from being in the ground through to suspended above it corresponds with the further spectrum of climate modification relative to program: from being in a highly controlled interior environments to being en plein air which recalls Arthur Boyd’s painting practice outdoors and exposed to climate variation.
The program and activities were arranged according to these preferred climatic conditions.
The fire-resistant Art Museum responds to these constraints as a conditioned, highly insulated subterranean
structure with earth roof buried into the hillside. Programs requiring close control conditioning to preserve, and display artefacts are located deepest in this resilient bunker, buffered by tempered front of house and administrative spaces that open to the forecourt.
The flood resilient Bridge is an unconditioned, openair element, spanning above the probable maximum flood level. Short term accommodation, workshops, dining and kitchen spaces are arranged along the naturally ventilated bridge, with breezeways taking advantage of a mild climate and local wind effects for cooling.
These two approaches enable the substantially passive performance of both buildings by virtue of their siting, materiality, and typology. They also offer a profound contrast in visitor experience of place and implications for comfort. The Museum is stereotomic architecture - embedded, monolithic, concrete, massive, a refuge in which one feels the weight of the earth/hill above.
By contrast the bridge is tectonic, assembled from many pieces of steel tending towards the aerial, granting visitors feelings of suspension and supporting overland flow and sporadic floodwaters in the wet gully below, its stilts posing minimal hydraulic impact.
In this regard the Bundanon project posits a model for climate adaption as also an opportunity for user delight and connection to place. Part of this connection to place is through feeling climate, and yes sometimes to the point of discomfort.
These two projects approach the provision of comfort from distinctly different starting points, but perhaps ultimately arrive at a similar conclusion: that what we and our profession deems an acceptable level of comfort is inherently influenced by a project’s cultural and environmental context and perhaps to a lesser extent, by individual preferences.
Kerstin Thompson AM LFRAIA is principal of KTA and adjunct professor at RMIT and Monash universities. A committed design educator she regularly lectures and runs studios at various schools across Australia and New Zealand. In recognition for the work of her practice, contribution to the profession and tertiary education, Kerstin was elevated to Life Fellow by the Australian Institute of Architects in 2017, appointed the Member of the Order of Australia in 2022 and awarded the Gold Medal in 2023: the Australian Institute of Architects’ highest honour recognising distinguished services by architects.
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Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge by Kerstin Thompson Architects. Photos by Rory Gardiner
Photo by Yaseera Moosa
Choreography of the Sun An Interview with Amrita Hepi
Interview by Lauren Crockett
Sun Stadium is many things at once; a dancefloor, a place to sit and wait for the bus, and a sundial. Amrita Hepi was determined for her new public artwork at the University of Queensland’s St Lucia Campus to avoid the common tropes of permanent public artworks – monumental, figurative, and eventually covered in dust – and instead be a lively place where the spirit of the work still leaves room for the users to make it their own.
Unveiled in October 2024, the realisation of the artwork was a collaboration between Hepi, Poet Jazz Money, Sibling Architecture, Five Mile Radius and Dialogue Office. Hepi sat down with Lauren Crockett of Sibling Architecture to reflect on the project as a site of bodily, spatial and environmental awareness.
Lauren Crockett: How did your practice, as an artist, dancer and choreographer who often works in time-based mediums, lead you to this work?
Amrita Hepi: I’ve always defined choreography as the organisation of space and time. This project was about thinking beyond the body, to other things that organise space and time and hold that choreography. So originally, I was thinking about the sun as organising space and time. There’s also this social level of understanding Queensland; I was born in Townsville, it being called the Sunshine State, and thinking about how to make something that links back to this idea of the choreographic on a greater conceptual level, but also to keep it quite simple and functional.
Some of my first ideas were around creating a spot on campus to watch the sun rising and sun setting. Once we saw the topography of the site, that changed, and it was thinking about how to mark time with a shadow by orienting our bodies with the sun Also, understanding the context that this would be a public artwork that would stay in place, over time. Usually when we’re talking about performance or liveness, the thing that’s exciting about it is its ephemerality. So, when we started talking about permanence, the question was how to capture those things.
LC: The work plays with universal human experiences, such as the sun and the presence of your own shadow. How did you work with these universal themes but also embed a sense of place?
AH: There’s all these different symbolic things that the sun brings up. It’s an evocative, symbolic, but also universal figure. The challenge was also in making the ideas legible without overexplaining, without making the artwork itself didactic. That’s where Jazz (Money) played a really important
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Sun Stadium. Photo by Yaseera Moosa
part as my collaborator. Poetry is something that is similar to performance. It can be so dense and then also so minimal at the same time. It really takes honing to make something; a honing of a word, or a honing of a site, or a honing of a place, to make something really simple and complex in its own right. So having her involved with her understanding of how to work with language and place and time, I think was really special.
LC: Has the work changed the way you think about public space?
AH: I think that it has made me think about, not only how I would choreograph performance in public but also methods of participation of the public. Rather than it feeling like “you do this now in order to have the experience” – how to let the participation be active and open but also have a moment of passivity for it to be something else for someone at a different time.
I feel like so often there’s this guesswork in terms of making public spaces, then those spaces inevitably have their own stories or through lines or become something completely different. I love the idea of someone not knowing what it is and stumbling upon it and discovering that as they’re meeting somebody else, or journeying along their way. I’ve been here a few times when I spent a bit of time here, but I still get lost. So, for me personally, there’s also a nice through line of, “ I’ll meet you at the Sun Stadium” .
As an architect, working with an artist and choreographer and thinking about bodies in place and people and stories and liveness, do you feel like this project has influenced your architectural practice?
LC: Definitely. The way that the project considers movement was never about replicating movement. The translation into form as a design process can be overly figurative and produce buildings or public spaces that don’t actually accommodate life – they just replicate an idea of it. Sun Stadium was about creating an environment where there’s an invitation to move around, to understand your shadow in relation to the sun.
AH: It leaves enough space for both the concept and the audience.
LC: Now seeing the project in person, how do you think the materiality – particularly the custom concrete pavers by Five Mile Radius – affects the way it will be understood and interacted with?
AH There’s something really beautiful about the fact that a lot of the materials are from the pile of refuse. I feel like there’s a certain alchemy in that as well, taking the offcuts to fashion them anew, which is something that Five Mile Radius does really well. They have an uncompromising sensibility to
them, where unless it’s like coming off site, or unless we like chance upon it, then we can’t use that. So you’d have to find another way to do it. And that’s something that I think, while it could be limiting, it gives a really solid framework in terms of material that can be used.
Initially I knew that I wanted it to have a lot of brilliance or colour within the landscape, but I’ve had to go a little bit ‘deep time’ with how these materials are going to change and maybe become even more brilliant and dull.
I do think that it’s interesting that this work is something that’s underfoot rather than vertical. Underfoot and under seat, which is another thing that I’ve begun to think about after the work has been made. Maybe that was subconsciously there, and now it becomes very conscious in terms of seeing the site as it is.
LC: You can touch everything. And not just humans!
AH: Not just humans, bush turkeys.
LC: As the work is walked on, touched, sat on; how do you feel about the work ageing and some of the details being worn away, particularly in the words inscribed on the base?
AH: There’s something, in an ideal fantasy world, that I’d love to implant in the same way that people end up remembering codes or upholding the Latin name of their places. Part of the mythos of this work is that as the words fade, they’re remembered by people orally or like.
Work through memory, or that, you would have to really focus to see what they are, not that they become secret, that they become part of uncovering or putting together the words over time, and that maybe the relationship to what those words mean changes as they stay there, under foot, over time.
It’s not didactic anymore. It’s just all about talking to each other. I love that as an idea. Maybe I can try and make that happen.
Amrita Hepi (Bundjulung/Ngapuhi Territories) is a multidisciplinary artist and choreographer based in Naarm/ Melbourne and Bangkok. Her interest as an artist is in the idea of archive; particularly in relation to the body and how it is organised by ancestry/people/events and environment.
Lauren Crockett is an associate architect at Sibling Architecture where she explores an expanded approach to architecture that includes research, exhibition and publication design. These interests are reflected in her other pursuits through research and design collective, Sens, co-founding Caliper Journal, and as design studio leader at RMIT University.
Reflecting on senses of home
Words by Ceridwen Owen
Home is a concept that is both familiar and elusive, encompassing both the material dwelling (a home) and an existential state (feeling at home). As architects, we are engaged in the imagination and construction of houses with a promise that the existential state will follow. However, we cannot assume that the foundations
that we lay afford everyone the same opportunity to feel at home. If, as Claire Cooper-Marcus contends, the house is a mirror of selves what insights might we discover if we look beyond our own reflection? In this short article I explore this question in relation to one core dimension of the experience of home – a sense of security – through two different lenses –neurodiversity and trauma.
At home with autism
My interest in neurodiversity and design began with a research project exploring transformations of home from the perspective of carers of autistic children. Autism encompasses a broad spectrum of differences in sensory experience and cognitive perception, with the manifest diversity captured in the adage “if you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” Design strategies are similarly multi-faceted, but largely revolve around increasing legibility and predictability and tuning the environment to suit different sensory experiences.
Our homes are arguably the one place where the environment can be customised to suit individual needs. The research revealed a diverse array of micro-scale modifications to objects, spaces and everyday practices designed to keep occupants safe from harm, both real and perceived. Adaptations to the dwelling to ensure physical safety – doors, locks, fences, screens, alarms – are not unusual, but their scope, and the constant vigilance required by parents, can impact the experience of home as a safe place. Housing modifications to create a sense of security for children were more diverse, tailored to individual experiences, and often identified through trial and error. However, a common theme was the creation of spaces within spaces, that are more intimate in scale, offer a sense of prospect and refuge, moderate sensory stimuli and enable individual occupation and control.
The research also highlighted the importance of the built environment in fostering a sense of security. One participant talked about how her child’s bedroom needed to
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Hobart Women's Shelter by Core Collective Architects and Christopher Clinton Architect.
Photo by Adam Gibson
‘be there’ for her when she was by herself. Temple Grandin has described how her “emotional bonds are tied up with places more than people.”1 Yet it is important to note that the relationship between the built environment and emotional security is complex and varied and finding a good fit can take time. Moving home can be particularly challenging in learning to navigate a new environment. Participants described how their children felt lost and environments were foreign, even several months after a move.
This lived experience of home as strange stands in stark contrast to the normative experience of home as a familiar place. Feeling at home is a process of ‘making sense’ of an environment. Enhancing legibility and predictability support this process, yet the challenges in imagining what has been described as the hidden logic2 of a space can be difficult to comprehend. As an example, the disparity between the line of sight and physical path of travel to the garden were a major problem for a teenage boy and a pain-in-the-neck for his mother as she had to assist him in navigating the circuitous route every day. Nevertheless, as architects we must try to make sense of the diversity of experiences; sensory and cognitive barriers are no less challenging because they are invisible.
Trauma-informed design of supported housing
Recently I started exploring the relationship between complex trauma and built environment design. This was precipitated through a prototype housing project for Hobart Women’s Shelter led by my colleague Emily Taylor (Core Collective Architects) and Christopher Clinton Architect and developed through a collaboration with a neuroscientist at UTAS, James Crane.
From a trauma-informed design perspective, there are two key aspects to enhancing safety and security. First is reducing or removing environmental stressors which indicate the presence of potential danger. The capacity to identify and respond to threats is essential for survival. However, in the case of trauma, fear memories can lead to the association of sensory stimuli that were present during a traumatic event with the event itself. Given the potential range of environmental stressors and the enduring nature of fear memories, it is difficult to eliminate stressors altogether. However, key design considerations include the elimination of common stressors such as loud noises and
Ceridwen Owen is an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Tasmania. Her research and teaching centres on design for sustainability, health and social inclusion, with a focus on cognitive and sensory diversity in the design of the built environment. She uses creative and visual-based methods to gain insights into experiences of place and to extend opportunities for inclusion, collaboration, and engagement in research, teaching and design projects. Ceridwen is also a director of Core Collective Architects.
promoting direct and indirect connections with nature. The second approach, which we term ‘defensible environments’3 , promotes the presence of safety cues related to strategies of visibility, concealment, escape and secure boundaries. Visibility and concealment are strongly aligned with the concept of prospect and refuge, with some subtle but important differences. Maintaining clear lines of sight and reducing clutter fosters the ability to anticipate potential threats whilst remaining (partially) hidden from view enables the avoidance of potential threats. The strategies of escape and secure boundaries emphasise the capacity for selfprotection from potential threats through the availability of clear paths of exit and the presence of solid walls and lockable doors.
These, and many other aspects that support traumainformed design, are embedded in the design of the prototype housing for Hobart Women’s Shelter. Connections with nature are central to the design, both in the direct relationship to the landscaped gardens (designed by SBLA) and in the curved forms, natural materials and colour palette (by Lymesmith). Brick was used as a material for both the external walls of the houses and the boundary fence, conveying solidity and security. The ‘hit and miss’ brickwork in the front fence, together with the placement of the window seat, provide the opportunity for visibility and concealment. A high-level circular window affords opportunity for visual connection with the sky without fear of being seen. And while the front door is celebrated as a welcoming point of arrival with the hand-crafted door handle, back doors reinforce the experience of safety through the provision of alternate escape paths.
These prototype houses lay the groundwork for an ambitious program of developing and delivering long-term trauma-informed housing by Hobart Women’s Shelter for women transitioning out of crisis accommodation. Central to the agenda is an emphasis on designing with not for women escaping domestic violence. The relationship between the material site of dwelling and the existential experience of home in these prototype houses is still a promise (and will be the subject of a future post-occupancy evaluation). However, anecdotal feedback from the women is extremely positive – described as a sanctuary and a different world these houses give new meaning to the word ‘refuge’.
Notes
1 Grandin, T. (1996) Thinking in pictures: and other reports from my life with autism. New York: Vintage Books.
2 Baumers and Heylighen (2010) ‘Harnessing different dimensions of space: the built environment in auti-biographies’. In P. Langdon, J. Clarkson and P. Robinson (Eds.) Designing Inclusive Interactions, pp.13-23. London: Springer-Verlag.
3 Owen, C. and Crane, J. (2022) ‘Trauma-Informed Design of Supported Housing: A Scoping Review through the Lens of Neuroscience’. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 19(21):1-27.
Elsie and Isabel, prototype housing by Core Collective and Christopher Clinton Architect.
Photo by Adam Gibson
Photo by Peter Bennetts.
The Healing Garden at the Heide Museum of Modern Art
Words by Mark Jacques
“We’ve found that the Healing Garden is a democratic space because you don’t need language in the garden. There are no expectations in the garden. The garden brings memory – which is vitally important for people diagnosed with dementia. Obviously, we don’t claim that we’re going to cure or stop dementia with this program, but it can bring beautiful memories for adults living with dementia and their carers who are often their partners. It can bring back memories, and we have found that it sparks joy.”
The idea of Heide began with sensing the landscape. Everything that has happened there, all the making, all the danger, all the culture, has been enabled and registered through an exchange between body and the landscape.
The project for a Healing Garden at Heide is an attempt to return the body to landscape in a way that editsout the distractions of other people and the distraction of the gallery. The project is an attempt to evoke those sense spaces that exist in the collective memory of the site and in shared garden memories that each of us carry.
The Healing Garden is set within the grounds of the Heide I kitchen garden – a site that was once home to John and Sunday Reed and that hosted Modernist painters and writers in the early part of the 20th century.
The brief called for the creation of a space that would allow for small groups and individuals with special physical and developmental needs to occupy and experience a sensory garden. The garden and its programs are intended to align with the philosophies of Sunday Reed – it is a place of wellbeing, produce, experimentation and sensory indulgence.
The essential task of the healing garden is to provide the positive distraction of the natural world as a way of promoting mindfulness and by doing so, change our normal everyday behaviour. While it’s true that all gardens have the potential to change our behaviour or to shift our focus, the design of the
Healing Garden at Heide Museum of Modern Art shows a way of charging an existing garden with the invitation to notice.
Our project is not a remaking of the site or the importation of a new idea. Instead, we have looked, observed, framed and created tipping points in the existing
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The Heide Healing Garden. Photo by Peter Bennetts.
landscape that invite occupation and allow people to be in an environment in which they are free to slow down, to notice and to change their behaviour.
An arbour structure creates a threshold between the familiar space of Heide I and the heightened space of the garden. The existing heritage paths and planting are carefully retained, with new areas of immersive, textured and seasonal planting along with seating that invites the body.
The figure of the healing garden contains clues that the space is different to the wider site. A series of thin steel armatures and frames draw the eye to specific plants that we’d like people to notice because of the season or because of their connection to the Reeds. These are a way, like a viewfinder or a lens, of finding focus within the undifferentiated “green noise” of the landscape and changing behaviour by moving and seeing the garden in a different way.
Openwork undertook a detailed mapping of historical and biographical references to planting at Heide using primary and secondary sources, preparing a matrix of plants noting their seasonality, colour and their relationship to the Reeds occupation of the site. This mapping reveals traces of two landscapes which are both legacies of Reed’s interest and influence.
The first is the English Garden Landscape idea –contained with a controlled and seasonal informality – an interest which the Reeds picked up from Gertrude Jekyll amongst others. The second is an early manifestation of an Australian landscape garden – a constructed native rambunctiousness – championed by Heide’s first gardener Neil Douglas.
Both these ideas can be seen in different parts of the Heide site, but the Healing Garden’s innovation is in being able to bring them together into one space – revealing the similarities and contradictions that make their co-presence so much part of the experience of Heide. The character and experience of the site does not rest in either of these conditions, but in the ability to sense both simultaneously.
Within this charged place, moments of invitation are created by the provision of seats, big enough for only one person or one person and their carer. Their arrangement within the circular figure is dispersed to ensure the garden doesn’t become a social space, but rather a collection of personal and
intimate ones held at a distance from one another. The garden was designed before the pandemic but has accidentally become an exemplar of social distancing. The seats are another way of using design to interpret history, combining actual stacked limestone leftover from the construction of McGlashan Everist’s 1968 Heide II and imagined fragments of domestic furniture that might have been brought into the garden from Heide I.
The healing garden is for everyone who visits Heide, but it is also purpose built for people who could benefit the most. Evelyn Tsitas is the leaning and engagement manager at Heide and oversees a project called Creative Age which is designed to cater for adults living with dementia and their carers.
Seasonal cues and changes provide comfort for people with a distorted sense of time. The rhythm of foliage / leaf fall and regrowth reinforces ideas of rebirth and renewal – measuring our daily experience against a bigger idea – time, scale, repetition, things we associate with the natural world. Evelyn Tsitas recalls that, “Recently, there was one person visiting the garden who has been diagnosed with dementia eight years ago, but he’s still at a quite socially engaged capacity. We were walking through the garden and talking about the seasons and how we were there as seasons were changing. And we were feeling plants and smelling plants. We smelled some rosemary, and suddenly one of the adults with dementia started to sing the Simon and Garfunkel song Scarborough Fair with the line about parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme and all the adults started singing it, and it was beautiful. Noticing the garden had triggered a memory that they all had shared.”
“The sensory garden has a capacity for a dopamine effect – for jogging the memory. It can be like a window to another world. One man visiting the garden had been in a loop for some time, saying the same two sentences over and over. At the end of his time in the garden, he clearly said 'I lived around here all my life, I drove past and I never came in. I never knew it was here'. And it was like a kind of magic to have him break through from saying the same thing that he’d been saying over and over to his wife and she was in amazement. So, I think there is the capacity for sense to literally heal and I didn’t realise the extent of that until we started to run Creative Age in the Gardens.”
Mark Jacques an urban designer and landscape architect. He graduated from the UNSW’s College of Fine Arts in 1994 and in 2016 founded Openwork as an office undertaking projects in public space, landscape architecture, urban design, research and speculation. In 2015, Mark was appointed professor of architecture (urbanism) industry fellow at RMIT School of Architecture and Urban Design. In 2021 Mark was appointed to the inaugural Melbourne Design Review Panel, part of the City of Melbourne’s Design Excellence Program.
Museum of Touch
Words by Dagmar Reinhardt
Collections of artworks, artefacts, and specimens are central to museums and exhibitions. Museum collections are often shielded by glass enclosures or cases to ensure their preservation; with light sensitive, fragile and unique objects that usually cannot be touched. As a common solution, glass barriers prohibit physical interaction yet give visual access. While common, this solution excludes blind or low vision people (BLV). To these audiences, exhibits are effectively inaccessible and so meaningful engagement with cultural treasures becomes impossible. Moreover, museum objects are anchor points for societies and sometimes worlds long gone, they carry a universe within that allows us to understand our contemporary experiences. Using vision alone is a severe limitation to understanding a world that we experience by touch, smell, sound and taste.
In the Museum of Touch the research group explores the idea of touch models – 3D representations of artefacts, specimens or objects that are normally considered too valuable, fragile or dangerous to touch. The research connects with current museum strategies for digital scanning which is increasingly being used as an access point on websites and repositories for general audiences and research. Objects and artefacts are scanned and used to create digital 3D models, which can be published and interacted with online or printed by use of standard 3D printers. This significantly expands access to information – tactile images for blind and partially sighted are often interpretations of visual sources and can be ‘read’ (i.e. touched) as relief images or graphs with accompanying braille. For people with low-vision or blindness, processing tactile information also posits a key approach to engage with and understand spaces, activities and interactions, and the quality and depth of that tactile information is crucial. A sighted person first takes in the whole then details in observation. In contrast, a partially sighted or blind person feels details first and then assembles knowledge piece by piece and section by section, so that an understanding and a mental representation can be formed – of patterns, objects or spaces.
Museum of Touch aims to support blind and lowvision people to access objects and the stories, worldviews and concepts that these objects connect to and represent; for example turtles and shells, sharks and teeth which represent a predator and prey narrative. Mathematical models and growth patterns can explain similarities between corals and trees. Object representations can be scaled up and compared with others, so that small details can be touched and compared. For the Museum of Touch, we tested tactile objects, maps and chairs with blind and partially sighted adults, and also codesigned tactile objects with school children.
The strategies developed by the research include a whole array of approaches: (a) developing workflows and implementation for 3D scanning and 3D printing techniques
The Macleay Collections of Natural History at the Chau Chak Wing Museum
which can be adopted by others; (b) the integration of multiple modalities, particularly 3D and audio elements to further enrich the engagement for all with a user manual on how to move through levels of explanations; (c) prototyping hyperartefacts in form of information surfaces on chairs or furniture as design concept for learning together; (d) sharing touch models through an open free platform to extend accessibility and knowledge dissemination (sketchfab), so that museums and education institutions can download; (e) making a prototype museum toolkit of 3D models with exercises and activities for all audience engagement; (f) developing a user manual for museum design for BLV with website advice, orientation and mobility strategies and scenarios for touch stands; and (g) creating experiences with our partners, BLV co-designers and testers, both children and adults. Coupling vision with tactility can also support us in sharing with others our perception of objects and environments, relative to our unique and personal abilities for sensory cues.
Importantly, we wanted to bring people together, so Museum of Touch extends the 3D representation of an object to a hyper-artefact; a multi-functional furniture object that integrates different sets of visual and pictorial information with Braille and tactile elements. People with full vision decode pictures by sight, and tactile information is then deciphered by experienced Braille readers. An example is the Apollo Moonlanding chair, where Braille patterns are embedded in the top surface, coupled with topographical lines, and the Astronaut path and crater texture is deciphered collaboratively between all audiences.
Museums can do better at being accessible for blind and low vision audiences, but they can also become (more) exciting for everyone through touch and tactile narratives. By adopting a practice of Universal Design for equitable, simple and inclusive use and by combining tactile and visual narratives for diverse audiences, the research aims to contribute to increasing awareness, knowledge and understanding of other people’s conditions. This awareness supports positive changes in attitudes and behaviours, towards more inclusive and accessible environments.
Museum of Touch, led by A/Prof Dagmar Reinhardt, is a collaboration with international partners and institutions: School of Architecture, Design and Planning (Dagmar Reinhardt, ADP, The University of Sydney), Monash University (Dr Leona Holloway), the Chau Chak Wing Museum (CCWM, The University of Sydney) and its OBL team (Jane Thogersen and Dr Eve Guerry), The Faculty of Medicine and Health Media Lab, School of Medical Sciences (Prof Philip Poronnik, Claudio Andres Corvalan Diaz , William Havellas), Nextsense Australia ) and IBOS (Institute for Blind and Partially Sighted, Copenhagen, Denmark); SASSVI (Lily Gower and Hannah O’Brien, South Australian School for Vision Impaired); and the NSW Department of Education. The work has been funded by the Alastair Sway Foundation International Grant 2023. Our work is free and open source, so 3D models are available at: https://sketchfab.com/muse- umfortouch/models, and the report is downloadable at: https://alastairswaynfoundation.org/ research/museum-for-touch/
Dagmar Reinhardt is an architect, researcher and associate professor at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney. As a practising architect, her built works, competitions and installations are widely published and have received numerous recognitions and awards.
Top left
Dicotylichthys punctulatus Kaup, 1855. Alternate name: Porcupine Fish. Photo by CCWM Online Catalogue. Left
Chelodina longicollis (Shaw, 1794). Alternate name: Common Snake-necked Turtle. Photo by CCWM Online Catalogue
Sensing San Francisco's Chinatown
Words by Andrea Lam
It’s 8.45am and the sun is beating down with a temperature of 31 degrees celsius. San Francisco bakes in the middle of its “Indian summer” heatwave.
A mother and primary-school aged son - wearing a backpack larger than his torso - approach a crossing, and a lollipop lady in a bright construction vest carefully walks into the middle of the road to stop traffic. The mother and son hold hands and cross the road under her kind gaze.
Lollipop lady: Zou san, nei go sai lou zin tau faat ah?
(Good morning, did your son just get a new haircut?)
Mum: Hai aa, ngaam ngaam kam jat zin.
(Yes he did, just yesterday! )
Lollipop lady: Wow, hou leng zai ah. Bing go bon nei zin?
(Wow, he looks very handsome. Who cut it? )
Mum: Ngo zi gei zin!
(I did it myself! )
Lollipop: Mhou zou taai san fu, gam jat hou jit! Bye bye!
(Don’t work too hard, it’s very hot today, bye bye! )
I know I have arrived at San Francisco’s Chinatown because I can hear it. Instead of the typical visual markers – the iconic paifang gates, the strings of red lanterns criss-crossing overhead – it’s the melodic contours of conversational Cantonese that tell me I have reached my destination. The tonal language bounces between shopkeepers and customers, elderly friends, mothers, sons and crossing guards guiding them across the street. Everyday expressions of care speak to the intimate social fabric of Chinatown.
The notion of community in San Francisco’s Chinatown is important when you consider its origins. In the 1850s postwar China was undergoing a mass population increase, this, combined with the effects of natural disaster, famine and political instability, many Chinese were lured to the US by the promises of the California Gold Rush and the prospect of a
better life. Early immigrants, mainly from the Guangdong region in south-east China, initially settled in different parts of San Francisco according to their employment in mines and railroads. However, the influx of Chinese immigrants also coincided with a recession in the United States and the Chinese communities across the United States became a scapegoat for the country’s financial woes. Discriminatory national policies soon followed;
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Morning shoppers at the intersection of Stockton St and Pacific Ave. In the backdrop, a public art mural on the facade of an affordable housing block. Photo by Andrea Lam
San Francisco’s Chinatowns.
Photo by Andrea Lam
the 1875 Page Act effectively banned Chinese women entry into the country, and the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act; prevented Chinese labourers from immigrating and restricted their land ownership and employment, across the United States. As a result, Chinese migrants were forced into densely packed areas we’ve come to know as Chinatown.
Between the discriminatory laws and the need to find sanctuary in numbers amidst anti-immigration sentiment of the city, San Francisco’s Chinatown became its own enclave, branching out from Portsmouth Square with businesses set up along Grant and Kearny Street in the centre of San Francisco’s city district.
Chinatown is a dense and vibrant place, filled with a variety of fine grain storefronts – restaurants, groceries, jewellery shops, Chinese medicine dispensaries and variety stores. Covering twenty-four urban blocks, this Chinatown is the largest Chinese ethnic enclave outside Asia with over 15,000 residents living there today.
To visit Stockton Street, Chinatown’s commercial strip, is to experience a sensory overload. The wheels of shopping carts pulled by elderly women rattle over concrete footpaths, while the hiss of buses syncopate with the thuds of fresh-produce boxes being unceremoniously unloaded by their handlers. Steam from a dim sum cafeteria fogs up the window - I order a plate of cheung fun, and the server shouts out my order to be collected over the steel countertop. Slippery folds of rice noodle sheets, doused in soy sauce, coddle plump pieces of prawn. I devour one roll, then another. Chinatown
is a place where the auditory, visual and tactile blend into a vibrant and at times overwhelming symphony.
But there are places to retreat. At Willie “Woo Woo” Wong Playground, the sharp noon sun casts a shadow in the undercroft of the community clubhouse. A group of women practise slow, graceful tai chi movements as a warbling, tiny melody plays on a set of small portable speakers. Nearby, a trio of elderly men practise dribbling a basketball on a blue sports court, their motions deliberate and unhurried. These leisurely moments of respite in public open spaces highlight the presence of a large residential community, predominantly of senior age, many of whom live in high-density affordable housing. The protection of housing was and continues to be a deliberate tool by the Chinatown community to fight against forces of displacement of the poor and working class, and safeguard spaces where daily rituals and social interactions can thrive.
The I-Hotel on Kearny Street exemplifies this prolonged fight. At 3am on 4 August 1977, 150 elderly Filipino and Chinese tenants were evicted from their homes. The building owners, the Four Seas Corporation, planned to demolish the building and convert it into a multi-level carpark. Thousands of supporters formed a human barrier to block this eviction, with over 400 riot police physically removing the residents. Over a period of 28 years, tenants and advisory committees lobbied and negotiated with the mayor’s office and the owners to ensure affordable housing was zoned for the site. In 2005, the new I-Hotel opened with 104 low-income housing units and continues to serve that purpose today.
As gentrification and urban development threaten Chinatown’s housing and public spaces, the need to protect these multi-sensory sites of community is greater than ever. Preserving these experiences is not about keeping Chinatown as a static cultural exhibit, but about embracing its dynamic and evolving identity and ensuring its future as a living, breathing space for generations to come.
San Francisco’s Chinatown offers a model of how urban spaces can nurture comfort, dignity and joy through the power of sensory design. It invites us to consider how we might design for environmental stimuli; how the interplay of sound, sight and taste, often chaotic, at times serene, shapes our understanding of place.
Andrea Lam RAIA is an architect at SJB Architecture Sydney and was awarded the 2023 Christopher Proctor Prize and the 2023 Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship, supported by the Australian Institute of Architects NSW Chapter and the Architects Registration Board NSW respectively. She is conducting international fieldwork on the significance of Chinatowns and their unique contributions to cities around the world.
Left A group of women pass through Ross St Alley in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Photo by Andrea Lam
Sensing Country
Words by Bradley Kerr
“But all we’ve been given is a seasonal calendar and it’s always the same conversation, we want to take something more meaningful to engage within our architecture, but they just keep giving us a calendar”
– Insert almost any non-Indigenous architect here.
What does it mean to you, to me, that Country is a teacher? What does it mean when you hear Blakfullas say “I don’t know exactly, I let Country tell me”. I was watching a kids show with my three-year-old and this show explained the concept better than anything I’ve seen, heard, or discussed with some pretty intelligent colleagues. It was explaining the concept of relationality to children, a concept that many adults in architecture fail to recognise. And it’s that we don’t exist in isolation from each other, nor from the flora and fauna that coinhabit Country – so we listen to our co-inhabitants to teach us. What does it mean to sense Country? What does it mean to have Country as a teacher?
I know it’s my birthday when the drooping she-oaks start to drop their fruit into the freshwater streams – it attracts the short-finned eel. This suggests that eel migration is about to start, so setting up a system for letting family know that we’re going to be gathering becomes a priority. We start to attract aviary species – species that thrive off the insects that eat the fruits, the fish that are curious about the eels and the increased activity at the surface. The kookaburras laugh – not because (as my mother used to tell me) they’ve seen me naked – but because more avians are attracted to the Yaluk Langa – the river’s edge in Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung language ( I’m Quandamooka and that while this is not my language, I currently practice and learn on their Country and wish to respect their language). Kookaburras are territorial, they don’t particularly love these birds invading
their territory. Country makes noise, the smells change, the activity around you changes. If you’re paying attention, this is how you truly Acknowledge Country.
Is this reading Country? Well – this is science. This is Traditional Knowledge. This is taking that boring seasonal calendar and realising that the terms we use –terms of relationally and reciprocity – actually mean something. These calendars teach you the beginnings of everything you need to know, to understand, to begin to read Country. To appreciate and understand the balance of ecological systems. Still don’t really follow, how about this:
What area of ontological and epistemological philosophies place Country? Is it even considered in Western philosophical teaching?
Yeah, Blakfullas can use big words, hey. Let’s put it another way though. Country is a complex network of knowledge, ceremony, law, lore, relational and reciprocal living cultural histories and it has been ignored. A purposeful ignorance towards the architecture of Country informed terranullius. First Peoples sophisticated understanding of place, of narrative landscapes and mnemonic memory through song, dance and storytelling were ignored, dismissed and First Peoples were dispossessed. Landscapes made way for colonial farming, First Peoples movement paths, following the land, were straightened. People sing of roken Songlines. cadastral mapping sliced Country. Cities turned their backs to rivers, using them as
dumping grounds. Country is a living thing – a place embedded with knowledge, lore, culture, history, tangible and intangible memory and story – it’s a place that we long for, that we sing to and that we will one day return. Country begins in the geological formations, extends far into the sky and stars and it’s everything in-between.
So, architects, what do we do? Well, the rest of this text is simply a series of questions that I ask individuals to consider, and to then reconsider.
Who are we designing for? how do we connect; how do we relate – and who/what are we relating to?
How do we expand on critical regionalism to something more like critical relationalism?
What does it mean to not have architecture? To not have architecture is to look up into an open sky. We have each other’s hands, that’s how we get by. And so, without tapping into the epistemological foundations of a place – without having access to those particular relations, knowledges –are we reproducing relations of inequality and colonisation?
Hopefully we all appreciate and know now that Country is a living thing – a place embedded with knowledge, lore, culture, history, tangible and intangible memory and story –it’s a place that we (Blakfullas) long for, that we sing to and that we will one day return.
Knowing this about Country, how can we perceive the architectural industry as anything but violence. Our industry’s primary function is to shape and modify place, and that’s putting
it gently. We have to ask ourselves – who are we in relation to the buildings we design, the spaces we occupy, the communities we build and culture that we interact with? Approaching practice through this lens is the only way to reach a position where participatory design models – models that ensure values-based decision making – can begin.
And so, how do we first understand the impact –how do we truly understand it?
Mnemonic memory. Identifying knowledge that’s stored within an object, a smell, a sound, a place, the warmth of your grandmother’s hug. This is key to understanding, to unlocking, the fullness of Country and what it has to offer, to teach and to guide.
What do I believe? How do we improve our relations? How do we reach a position where the relations we believe in matter?
We have to accept our complicity in the world we have created.
I don’t aspire to the quarter acre block – I aspire to the spaces beyond, the time between. We don’t exist in rooted spaces – we exist to experience the joys Country has to teach.
And so, what are we aspiring toward? Awards? Flagellation and gratification? Healing? I’m still trying to understand my place – I don’t know what my place is.
I want to talk to you about yours.
Bkerr@winsorkerr.com.au. Hate mail, curiosity, questions – It’s all welcome. Let’s yarn.
Bradley Kerr RAIA is the director of Winsor Kerr and works closely with communities and stakeholders to develop integrated design responses appropriate to place, Country, Peoples and culture. We work on unceded sovereign land, and are always on and within Country. We hold a fundamental responsibility to work with Country and its Custodians
Architect Victoria
Above and left Wurundjeri seasonality diagrams. Drawings by Bradley Kerr
Splendour and sparkle
Words by Leona Dusanovic
Sensory design is an emerging area within architecture, but can we make a case for its longer term existence within the context of theatre in the 40th anniversary year of Roy Grounds’ Theatres Building in Melbourne? The official opening of the Theatres Building was in 1984, three years after the death of Grounds. His original design was never fully realised, as the commission for the interior fit out was awarded to John Truscott in 1980. Truscott was a costume and set designer who learned his trade through years spent in a Melbourne theatre workshop.
Given the relatively short duration and dynamic nature of a live performance, theatre production designs must almost immediately resonate with audiences. Using both the tactics of theatre and the textural qualities of material, Truscott makes the vast building interiors an immediate and visceral experience through a complex visual, aural and haptic environment. Being in the Theatres Building is thrilling. Beyond an early example of sensory design, the Theatres Building has become a local icon over its 40-year life. We can however also look under the symbolic 162-meter-tall spire to find the relationship between the senses and memory, the latter which is manifest through the collective experiences of patrons and visitors.
Stepping into the Theatres Building is stepping into another world. Daylight recedes quickly as one descends the escalator, and the night becomes immediate through a shiny black and chrome interior, the sparkle of reflected light on the surfaces reminiscent of a starry sky. Black soon becomes red and sparkling stars reappear as bursting bubbles in flute glasses. All glitz and glamour. When almost everything has fizzled out, any last remaining sounds are dampened by a vast expanse of velour and carpet, you wouldn’t hear a pin drop. The curtain rises. In order to achieve this outcome perception is deliberately warped and played with. Reflection and other tricks of perceptions are rife.
The medium here is affected, manipulated through tactics of theatre. This kind of project is best understood through first hand experience rather than studied on paper. It is well
documented that Truscott worked tirelessly, inventing detail after detail, using the tools and techniques of theatre to manifest a labyrinth of subterranean spaces for the venue. The use of paint to imply both space and material is more akin to frescos of past centuries than a late-20th century theatre. Columns that appear to be marble are in fact paint, as are foyer walls. Inside the State Theatre auditorium, a deep red stain suggests Jarrah. Splendour by illusion was Truscott’s motto. The proportions typical to set design are also seen in Truscott’s bespoke furniture designs. The velour sofas are low, and seem somewhat miniaturised alongside oversized lampshades. Truscott warps and distorts material and surface, exaggerates proportion to cast doubt on our normal and accepted perceptions and causing the senses to re-calibrate to the order of the interiors. This makes the built environment immediate and memorable in this moment when perception adjusts to the new order.
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An ascent laced with brass and red, leading up to street level. Photo by Tope Adesina
The interior schemes of both the Theatres Building and Hamer Hall are based on a geological theme, inspired by an exposed basalt rock face Truscott saw while driving along Melbourne’s Eastern freeway. The palette is defined by various minerals (metallics) and precious stones (colours) which each characterise and delineate a unique venue within the building. For example, the State Theatre foyers and auditorium have a combination of brass and red. While the reference is direct, the application is more nuanced than just representation, resemblance or abstraction. Truscott translates his own experience into material with surprise and delight is taken from the freeway to the theatre.
The formal characteristics of theatre have a long lineage. One example of this is the use of the colour red in theatre and opera design, which originated in 18th century Italy. The colour red has a learned meaning and symbolism in cultural and historical consciousness. Within the traditions of architecture, there are practices and theories which enshrine
meaning through rhetoric and symbolism, others who either reject or embrace history some appropriate or re-contextualise, and others privilege formality above all else. Truscott’s theatrically based practice doesn’t fit easily in architectural traditions. Effect and illusion are employed above all else in service of experience, red has no prescribed meaning.
The interiors of this building were designed under an unusual set of circumstances, whereby the tactics and skills of set design were writ large on a complex performing arts venue. This building does something that the tradition of architecture is perhaps afraid of, which is to emphatically pursue effect and trickery at the expense of material clarity. While a 40-year-old design can’t adequately account for an emerging awareness around diverse sensory needs, it does give an example of how design can profoundly affect the senses. It makes a case for experience as a universal base from which we can collectively hold an idea of place in our memories.
Right Deep hues and soft polish leading to the stalls. Photo by Tope Adesina
Leona Dusanovic RAIA is an architect and senior associate at NH Architecture, where she has contributed to the design of the interior spaces on the Reimagining Arts Centre Melbourne project. Leona is also a design studio leader at RMIT University in Melbourne.
Reset rooms
Words by Ilianna Ginnis, Cathryn Grant and Ellen Naismith
There are vast differences in the ways that people receive, understand and respond to environmental stimuli.1 This can lead some people to need extra sensory sensations (sensoryseeking) such as touch, movement, sound or taste and/or a need to reduce sensory input (sensory-avoidant) such as using noise cancelling headphones or turning lights off.
Dedicated spaces for sensory regulation, “reset rooms” (also known as sensory rooms), provide relief from the uncontrolled sensory inputs of public spaces. This provides neurodivergent people, as well as those with hidden disabilities and heightened sensory sensitivities2, with an opportunity to regulate their nervous systems. In addition to universal design principles 3 reset rooms offer neurodivergent people greater inclusion for more meaningful participation.
Research conducted as a part of the Deakin University Occupational Therapy Honours program, in collaboration with Architecture & Access 3 , revealed that individuals and families, particularly those with children with higher needs for sensory input, spent more time in shopping centres and other public facilities after using a sensory room. These spaces allowed them to take restorative breaks and made outings more accessible and enjoyable for neurodivergent people and their supporters. The research sought feedback from users and their supporters about the location of the room, signage, equipment and furniture, and how the room was managed including cleanliness, attitudes of staff and availability.
Informed by this lived experience, research, Architecture & Access, Deakin University (School of Health and Social Development) and Amaze (a leading autism organisation in Victoria), collectively developed The Reset Room Design Guide.4 This guide offers practical insights on where to locate a reset room, evidence-informed suggestions for furniture and equipment, and guidance on the management of these rooms.
The Reset Room Design Guide is a resource to assist architects, designers, building managers, government institutions, educators, and event organisers in planning and
designing a reset room. Engaging with neurodivergent individuals and experts with lived experience throughout the design and management process is recommended as a way of creating environments that are truly supportive and accessible.
The guide emphasises three factors for consideration –locate, design, management.
Locate
The location of a reset room is crucial to its effectiveness. It should be easily accessible and a dedicated and contained space, ideally in a quiet, low-traffic area. Proximity to other essential facilities such as restrooms is important to consider. In larger buildings, multiple reset rooms may be needed to cater to different user groups or areas of the building.
Clear signage is essential for guiding users to the room, and it should be easy to find for all users. Many neurodivergent people also have differences in information processing and communication and visual cues such as symbols or images can support more inclusive wayfinding and navigation.
Design
Design elements such as acoustics, lighting, furniture, and equipment all need consideration in reset room design. Two principles should drive these choices: reducing uncontrolled and external sensory inputs for a calm and restorative environment and providing users choice and control of sensory experiences to cater to the diversity of sensory needs.
The size of a reset room is a crucial starting point in its design. Room dimensions and occupancy should be based on the building type and the expected number of users. For instance, in a clinic, a smaller reset room suitable for two to three people is recommended. In larger public spaces, such as shopping centres or airports, a larger room accommodating five to twenty people is more appropriate. Larger sensory spaces should also incorporate zoning5 and a variety of sensory inputs and interactions. Additionally, the reset room’s location within
the building should be carefully chosen to minimise intrusion from external noise.
There are important design elements that need to be considered within the reset room. For acoustics, soundabsorbing materials should be incorporated to minimise noise distractions. Lighting should be adjustable, allowing users to choose their preferred light levels. Furniture should be comfortable and durable, as many neurodivergent people experience physical discomfort or fatigue. Where possible, provide a variety of different types of seating to give users more choice.
Reset rooms are recommended to include a variety of fixed equipment, such as bubble tubes, sensory mats, and tactile wall panels, to enhance sensory regulation and experience. Bubble tubes provide both visual and auditory stimulation; the moving bubbles create subtle sounds, promoting focus and relaxation. Tactile wall panels encourage exploration through different textures, shapes, and patterns, supporting cause-and-effect understanding, self-regulation, and fine motor development through selfsoothing and exploration. Sensory mats offer tactile and proprioceptive feedback, allowing users to walk across the surface, feel varying pressures, and experience a calming, predictable environment. In highly supervised settings, loose items like toys or sensory tools may be appropriate. However, in unsupervised settings, fixed equipment ensures safety and cleanliness.
Textures and materials should be selected with careful consideration of different sensory needs, including varying levels of sensory stimulation and sensory avoidance. For example, vinyl and fabric can both be suitable choices for upholstery: some users prefer the warmth and softness of fabric, while others are drawn to the cool, firm texture and subtle sound of vinyl. Additionally, textures in acoustic and wall panels offer valuable opportunities for sensory engagement and self-regulation. Textural options like perforated timber, embossed panels, and raised surfaces allow individuals to regulate their senses by touching and exploring these tactile elements within the environment. It is additionally important that the textures chosen minimise physical harm and are safe for everyone.
Management
Effective management is crucial for the success of a reset room. Consider whether the room will be available ondemand or require booking. If a booking system is used, it should be easy to navigate and clearly communicated through signage, websites, and social media. On-demand reset rooms provide much greater inclusivity for users who are often unable to predict if and when such facilities will be needed. Clear guidelines for access and usage should be provided to ensure that users understand the room’s purpose and how to use it. The management of a reset room also includes monitoring its usage and ensuring that the space
continues to meet the evolving needs of its users. Periodic reviews and consultations with reset room users, or consultants who work with neurodivergent communities, will help refine the space and ensure that it remains a safe, welcoming, and effective environment.
Reset rooms are an essential element in the design of inclusive public spaces. Integrating these rooms into environments such as supermarkets, airports, and shopping centres can greatly enhance the participation and comfort of neurodiverse individuals by offering safe spaces tailored to their varied sensory needs. These rooms provide a refuge where individuals can manage sensory overload, regulate their senses, and restore their sense of calm. By creating environments that cater to different sensory preferences – whether through quiet spaces, adjustable lighting, or tactile elements – public venues can foster inclusivity, reduce anxiety, and promote greater access and enjoyment for everyone. The implementation of such rooms underscores a commitment to universal design and a broader understanding of accessibility.
The Reset Room Design Guide will be launched in early December 2024 and will be available on the websites of Architecture & Access and Amaze website.
“Built environments such as workplaces, shopping centres and sports stadiums and entertainment buildings are central to many individual and community daily activities and meaningful participation in society. Inclusive design therefore needs to consider the sensory needs of neurodivergent people."
Ilianna Ginnis is an access consultant and neuro-inclusive design consultant at Architecture & Access.
Cathryn Grant is a registered occupational therapist and ACA accredited access consultant.
Ellen Naismith is a highly accomplished access consultant with over 10 years of experience working with councils and nongovernment organisations.
Notes
1 Sensory stimuli refer to inputs from the environment that activate the senses, including light, colour, noise, textures, temperature, position and movement.
2 Sensory sensitivities refer to how people experience input such as sounds, textures, patterns, lighting etc. Depending on the individual and their preferences, some sensations may heighten a individual’s emotional state.
3 The Universal Design Principles are guidelines for creating spaces, products and services that are accessible, equitable and available to everyone regardless of their age, abilities and background.
4 The Reset Room Design Guide helps architects, designers, building managers, government bodies, educators, and event organisers plan and design reset rooms.
5 Sensory zoning within a large sensory room refers to the multiple levels of sensory input. The varying zones will differ in sensory input, generally ranging from high sensory input, low sensory input and a balanced space to assist in sensory regulation and escalation.
Virtual Reality clubs
Words by Charlie Woods and Simone Chait
Since its debut in the 1970s, the Melbourne rave scene has been an incubator of progressive ideology, notorious for celebrating uninhibited self-expression. From tiny underground clubs to huge warehouses, the nightclub was a utopian space that gave home to disenfranchised and marginalised communities. Its origins are rooted in a safe space that heralds cultural and artistic creation, an outlet to celebrate a diverse range of subcultures.
A mixture of erratic strobe lights, reverberating bass and artificial darkness makes the nightclub a sensory-rich spectacle. Floor to ceiling video projections and LED screens are synonymous with this type of space, creating total immersion.
Today, the high costs tied to land, living expenses, and the monopolisation of industry pose significant challenges to the Melbourne rave scene. Physical venues also face significant spatial limitations that are often at odds with an accessible and inclusive environment. The advent of Virtual Reality (VR) is at the forefront of this radical culture shift, expanding the demographic of users to traditionally unreached groups.
Since its onset, the nightclub space has always used technology to enhance the separation from reality. Experimental projections, smoke, lighting and sound couple together to create a barrier from the outside world. VR is the latest foray in an industry that historically celebrates cultural and technological innovation, however, it is riddled with preconceptions associated with Big Tech’s ‘Metaverse’: overhyped, tone- deaf, inaccessible, devoid of value. The reality of virtual nightclubs couldn’t be further from this, it’s a growing ecosystem dedicated to building genuine community.
Hybrid-reality studio, Vague Labs is leading the way in connecting virtual and physical nightclubs. VR nightclubs, such as ‘Loner Online’, founded by Velatix 1, offer a virtual space that has no geographical limits, no timezones, and you can plug in from the comfort of your own home, making it appealing to a much broader audience.
VR brings particular advantages for those with sensory
disabilities. In a crowded club, overstimulation from lights or loud sounds can lead to anxiety or panic attacks, but in VR, users have full control over their environment. They can adjust the music volume to their liking, disable social chat to eliminate background noise, or enable it when they’re feeling social. This control allows users to engage with their surroundings at their own pace, in a way this places inclusivity as a key value—it’s built into the fabric of the club experience.
One of the key components to the success of virtual nightclubs is a thoughtfully designed platform. Being an intangible, amorphous spatial experience, the technical boundaries of realism are lifted, and the spatial opportunities become endless. However, the community feedback on Loner Online proved that a more realistic mimic of a typical club typology was the key design principle to maintaining community engagement on the platform. Initially, there was little sense of
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Loner Online Virtual Event VOL.68. Photo by @loner_online
scale or geometry, which resulted in an overuse of oversized avatars. The introduction of a lowered, realistic ceiling height forced users to work within a levelled plane. Similarly, the introduction of spatial elements such as stairs, columns, or balustrades further signal specific zoning for dancing and socialising, subconsciously shaping users’ behaviour in the virtual world. The introduction of a bathroom, for instance, became a rowdy and social gathering spot for avatars looking for social interaction beyond the music.
Vague Labs’ proof-of-concept ‘Hybrid’ series highlighted the synergy between physical and virtual spaces. For each virtual club event, a physical event runs in tandem somewhere in Melbourne, with crossover between the two.
The first event was held in a Collingwood studio with a boxy design that accommodated only 20 attendees, creating an intimate atmosphere that virtual participants thoroughly enjoyed the ‘cramped’ feeling of. However, those present in person found the tight conditions uncomfortable, particularly
in the 30-degree heat, leading to an environmental dysphoria.
When the concept moved to an industrial warehouse in Abbotsford, the larger space offered improved sightlines to the LED screen. Attendees then appreciated the ability to mimic the gestures of their VR avatar counterparts and interact as if they were in the same room. These two events highlighted the advantages of having a virtual counterpart to physical events, setting a precedent for the future of hybridised spaces.
Finally, VR serves as a space for regenerated experimentation and creativity, as creators adapt to trends in real time, a limitation that is faced by physical venues. VR’s true power lies in its capacity to offer a deeper level of accessibility and inclusivity, enabling club-goers to express themselves and redefine their identities, including gender and sexual orientation, often restricted in the real world. The safe, immersive environment of virtual spaces has cultivated a confidence that now carries over offline, encouraging users to embrace scenes and connections they might have once avoided.
Charlie Woods is a director of Vague Labs, a hybrid-reality studio that develops and launches virtual environments for music-centred events. These spaces serve as an intersection of physical and digital worlds. In addition to his work with Vague Labs, Charlie is an entertainment and media lawyer at EMT Law.
Simone Chait RAIA Grad is currently working at Sibling Architecture and teaching at RMIT University. Having recently graduated from RMIT University and receiving the Anne Butler Memorial Medal, Simone is particularly passionate about the role of architecture in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Note
1Velatix
is a key figure in the VR community, pioneering the virtual music underground scene as it stands today. The club nights hosted by Loner Online continue to innovate, set trends, and cement their position as leading tastemakers in this space. Their work has earned recognition from The New York Times and Resident Advisor, highlighting Velatix’s significant influence on this dynamic digital landscape.
Below Loner Online Virtual Event VOL.68. Photo by @loner_online
Photo
Weird sensation – feels good
Words by Amelia Borg
ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is a term that describes a positive bodily sensation or euphoric-like calm response to specific auditory or sensory stimuli. A sub-culture of sensory enthusiasts, both content makers and consumers emerged and grew around this movement in the years after YouTube was established in 2005. Over the last decade the internet has exploded with ASMR content; the hush of whispering voices, the tap of long fingernails onto hard echoing surfaces, the pop of plastic bubble wrap-there’s something for everyone. Weird Sensation- Feels Good is the first dedicated exhibition to take this content off the internet and explore this emerging sensory movement IRL.
Curated by James Taylor-Foster, the first iteration of the exhibition took place in 2020 at ArkDes, the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design in Stockholm, and was expanded upon in its second staging at the Design Museum in London 2022-2023. The exhibition brings together the work of over 30 ASMRtists grouped into several themes; Visual ASMR which explores how ASMR can be triggered by hypnotic or meditative movement, Unintentional ASMR which looks at incidental content, Intentional ASMR, the relationship between ASMR and advertising, and finally ASMR and Prosthesis.
The exhibition design completed by ETER provokes a sensorial response equal to that of the content. Soft, flesh coloured cushioning akin to giant fingers, or an upholstered brain bend between the floor and walls to form a cocoon-like perimeter around the content. The scale of cushioning acts as a nurturing and comforting support to visitors as they bliss out to sensorial stimuli displayed within carefully suspended content stations dotted around the perimeter. Coloured prosthetic silicon hands reach out in every direction to offer the visitor headphones, a ticket to slow down, dwell, and tap into a new audio world.
The content is widely diverse, ranging from a series of demonstration videos from the iconic host of The Joy of Painting (1983-94) Bob Ross showing how to morning mist in
a painting to HairCut Harry slowly and painstakingly performing an old-fashioned wet shave across a man’s thick facial stubble. There is a video titled Oddly IKEA: IKEA ASMR, a 25-minute presentation of various IKEA products being set up in a college dormitory. Two hands carefully apply and stroke fitted sheets, duvet covers, pillows and pillows cover to a slow voice over narration. Here, the Swedish home making giant is leaning into the sensory world created within domestic environments and intentionally tapping into the world of ASMR.
The exhibition also explores the inherent link between internet culture, technology and sensory design. Objects such as the 3Dio Sound Omni Binaural Microphone are displayed, a set of 4 speakers with lifelike ears specifically designed to create a unique and immersive listening experience, where sound can be sculpted in multiple directions. Also on display is Marc Teyssier’s project An Artificial Skin for Mobile Devices which sees a hyper-
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ASMR Arena,. Photo by Ed Reeve for the Design Museum
realistic skin surface applied to handheld electronic devices such as mobile phones. Teyssier says that the project is about mimicking the sensory aspects of the skin, about reproducing its visual, tactile and kinaesthetic nature and qualities.1 There is an uncanny likeness to the human skin, the project explores how touching, stroking or stretching can evoke a sensory reaction within us, all while scrolling the internet. Whilst the content varies in subject matter, there is a unique similarity in the feeling it evokes. There is a softness and slowness to the content. It requires or enables a kind of focus or what Taylor- Foster calls a type of ‘close listening’ that is ultimately trying to replicate the sensation of touch. Through its very creation, the exhibition gives a new type of recognition to this area of sensory exploration and design. It offers an opportunity to experience a social or communal experience of something that is typically a very solitude experience and recognises sensing in a new way. Taylor-Foster posits that “we are squishy beings moving through a world that’s full of sharp objects. ASMR allows us to acknowledge that we are sensory beings, this is a field of design that mediates between mind and body.” 2
Notes
1 https://marcteyssier.com/projects/skin-on/
2 A conversation with James Taylor-Foster on ‘WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD’ at the Design Museum London (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeJ_zABkrLk)
Amelia Borg RAIA is a co-founder and co-director of Sibling Architecture.
Right Lounging in the ASMR Arena. Photos by Ed Reeve
Yarra Ranges Special Development School
Words by Michael Roper
Many of us will have memories of bustling school corridors: throngs of students pushing their way through elbows and school bags under bright white lights. These long, disconnected passages seldom offered views of the outside world. Instead, the clutter of bag hooks and pigeon-holes among a sea of swinging doors. Even for the neurotypical student, these corridors could be abrasive and disorienting, hardly setting the scene for an emotionally regulated and ready to learn state of wellbeing.
When Architecture architecture was engaged by the Victorian School Building Authority to deliver new classrooms and specialist learning facilities for Yarra Ranges Special Development School (SDS). The campus was in a dire state, consisting mostly of a haphazard accretion of tired relocatables. The campus was disorienting, lacking a cohesive structure or identifiable centre, with a network of concrete paths winding among a field of playground equipment and fences. For the students of Yarra Ranges SDS, who have moderate to severe intellectual disabilities, the school environment was not enhancing their learning.
Working in collaboration with the school’s leadership team, specialist teachers and occupational therapists, we have reimagined Yarra Ranges SDS to deliver an intuitive and welcoming campus that aligns with the school’s Instructional Model and attends to the educational, psychological, physical and social needs of its students.
Students learn and grow when their environment offers safety, comfort, engagement and delight. They thrive when empowered to shape their own experience, shifting between periods of energised activity and studious concentration. Like everyone, they have a need for both connection and solitude: the opportunity to gather with their fellow students and, at times, to retreat. Engaging principles of light, form, colour and spatial sequencing, we have worked to create a campus where students play and learn in safety and comfort. Wherever they are in the school, students now
have the autonomy to access zones of exploration, relaxation, collaboration, concentration and dignified retreat.
The almost wholesale removal of the school’s relocatables afforded the opportunity to reimagine the masterplan, beginning with a new campus heart. The school’s new administration, specialist learning and middle school spaces now flank a half-acre of outdoor play area, graced by a cluster of established eucalypts. As a large, secure and highly visible space, students now have the freedom to leave their classrooms, to play and roam with relative autonomy, empowering them to take time out, connect with nature and self or co-regulate when needed. Generous covered walkways around the perimeter of the campus heart provide protected paths of travel, and the opportunity for outdoor play on rainy days. As a legacy of the old relocatables, the school was accustomed to circulating outdoors and observed that many of their students benefited from the reset of fresh air between classes. These colonnades provide a visible and intuitive mode of campus circulation, while minimising the need for internal corridors. Building entries are similarly intuitive: consistent in form, they are generous and curved, establishing clear, welcoming access into each building. How students move around a campus is central to their wellbeing. Working with the school’s occupational therapists, we learned that many on the autism spectrum are triggered by sudden changes in environment. Our response to this defines the DNA of the school.
Stepping inside, the typical long, noisy corridor has been replaced with intimate, acoustically treated foyers with minimal doors. Gardens are immediately visible upon entry, softening the transition to indoors. These foyers provide a moment of sensory respite before moving into places of learning, activity and concentration.
At the end of each foyer is an upholstered respite nook: a cosy cave for gazing into the garden where students can roll in, sit down or sprawl about in peace. Importantly these are not enclosed rooms, which has historically been associated
Yarra
Photo by Tom Ross
with institutionalisation and containment. Instead, they are open, connected and easily supervised. The repeated and predictable positioning of these nooks at every entry helps students feel located and calmed in the knowledge that respite is near at hand.
This pattern continues into the classrooms. From the point of entry, outdoor learning spaces are immediately visible, maintaining intuitive access to landscape and respite. Again, the number of doors is minimised, establishing clarity and calm. The classrooms are variously fitted with mobility hoists, hearing augmentation and adjustable workstations to support equitable learning. Architecture architecture worked with the school’s specialist education teachers to ensure each learning space provided opportunities for group work, solitary work and respite. From every classroom, the accessibility of campus heart, outdoor learning and respite nooks ensures students feel safe, supported and as autonomous as possible.
A consistent material palette is adopted throughout the school to provide students with a sense of continuity and calm. In each learning space a pale aqua colour defines the upper volume, its hue a reassuring reminder of the respite nooks; a ceiling space, soft and cloud-like, where
wandering minds find quiet reflection. Amid the bustle of school life, these spaces benefit from a high-order visual structure, clear and cohesive.
It is our hope that the students at Yarra Ranges SDS now have an environment that is meaningful to them, supporting their autonomy, their friendships and their learning. Visiting the school we often see students on their own or in small groups, supported by staff as needed, exploring the campus heart, working in the outdoor learning spaces, sitting on a bench or nestled into one of the respite nooks. We see them taking charge of their time.
While we are yet to undertake a formal post-occupancy evaluation, the school leadership has reported increased student engagement and teacher comfort. The grounds are well used. The art program, food technology, digital technology and television production programs are thriving.
The senior school students recently presented us with a collaborative artwork depicting their new school buildings in the landscape, beautifully evocative and a little bit magical, with a keen attention to the qualities of their new campus. The painting is peaceful and joyful, and now hangs proudly in our studio. We couldn’t have hoped for more.
Michael Roper RAIA is a founding director of Architecture architecture. He has taught architectural design both in Melbourne and abroad and was the founding program manager at the ANCB Metropolitan Laboratory in Berlin. Michael currently chairs the University of Melbourne Architecture Advisory Board and was a founding member of Nightingale Housing.
Right
Consistent and calming palettes are found throughout the school's interiors. Photo by Tom Ross
Guest editorial
Perceptions of an architect
Words by Tim Leslie
Perceptions of an architect provides an insight into the diversity, complexity, failings and potential of architectural training, and how it may be viewed by those around us.
Of interest, half the contributors have no architectural training, the other half are graduates of architecture. Of those six graduates, only three are undertaking the design and documentation of buildings, and two of those are practising architects. Several of the contributors reflect on the changes within the construction industry and how the long-held perception of the architect as lead consultant may no longer match the reality. Some offer possible solutions for improvement within practice, while others recommend a call to action.
Becoming an architect
Beginning with a contemporary graduate, Tope Adesina RAIA Grad, to understand their reasons for undertaking the degree. How they perceive the profession and why have they chosen to study in this field. While an individual is not representative of the many, it is interesting to understand if their reasons have parallels with the aspirations of previous generations of students.
Architecture is a lifelong journey of learning, yet a major metamorphous occurs at university. Professor Julie Willis, a Dean of Architecture, discusses how university helps shape a mind to prepare for the incredibly broad range of skills an architect may encounter in their career. An architectural education will change the way a person views the world and consequently how others view the profession.
For many who undertake a degree in architecture, a core aim will be to have their designs built. Following years of study, a graduate of architecture moves to formal supervised training. Often there is an initial shock at the depth and breadth of pragmatic necessities of practice. A whole range of additional skills need to be learnt or refined to complement those gained from university. It will often take many additional years of industry training, as is the case with other professions, to gain proficiency with these requisite skills. Passing your professional examinations leads to becoming registered and being bound by the Architects Act. Dr Glenice Fox, a regulator, who witnesses
the many positive and negative sides of the profession, gives an account of her observations.
Completing a building
For an architect to practice, they must have a client. Some clients only engage an architect once in their lives, while others, such as developers will work with many different architects over their careers. Carl Schibrowski, a highly successful developer who trained as an architect, was asked his views on the profession. Does an architectural qualification assist in being a developer? Why do clients seek out architects? What makes a good architect from a client perspective and how does the profession need to improve?
The design of buildings relies on the integration of diverse technical information from many experts to meet the aims of the brief and building codes. A well running consultant team is a fundamental for a project’s success. One of the most significant of these consultant relationships is between the structural engineer and the architect.
Often at the start of larger projects there is only the client, architect, structural engineer, and quantity surveyor.
The structural engineer playing a pivotal role in providing quick advice on opportunities and constraints for emerging ideas as diverse concepts are contemplated. However, over the decades the roles the architect and the consultant team have changed.
Traditionally the architect has been the lead consultant, engaging the entire professional consultant team to provide full construction documentation services. This structure placed higher liability onto the architect but also provided greater control.
the architect, are part services. Contractual engagement for each consultant is generally direct to the client, often via a project manager, rather than via the architect. The architect often remains as the lead coordinator, but no longer has the same level of oversight or the contractual ability to directly manage outcomes.
Perceptions of architects today and their expected role is still often based on more traditional consultant contractual relationships, even when this is not the case. We ask a leading structural engineer, Phil Gardiner, for his observations of the changes in the industry over the decades and how working with architects changed during this time.
Following engagement of a consultant team and the establishment of a feasible design concept, one of the first major project hurdles for a client is achieving a planning approval. Planning is often the time a project first becomes known to the public.
Architecture, as an agent of change, will sometimes lead to public consternation and projects may end up at Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). A planning lawyer, Sally Macindoe, is asked for her observations on the role of the architect in the planning process and what makes a successful architect in navigating this pathway.
The realisation of a design into a built reality is of course the ultimate aim of architecture. In fact, the word architect comes from the Greek word ‘architekton’ meaning ‘master builder’ or director of masons. Working with a good builder, or head
Many of the roles of the consultant team today, including Below
Australian Embassy, Washington DC. Architect: Bates Smart Photo by Tim Leslie
contractor, is one of the great experiences of architecture, where the craft of construction and resolution of onsite constraints greatly enhances the outcome. However, the changing nature of contractual responsibilities, and spheres of influence, can lead to misunderstandings and tension between parties.
Today the role of the architect is often to provide documents to inform a builder on design intent based on partial documentation and then work for the builder to meet their time and cost obligations to the client. This differs from a more traditional role of the architect providing full construction documentation and acting as an independent superintendent for the client over the delivery of the works.
Architects typically wish to progress their design as far as possible to capture the detail rather than just providing design intent. Contractors, conversely, typically wish to be engaged as early as possible to determine a construction methodology.
Over a builder’s career they will have worked with many different architects under various contractual arrangements.
Jenifer Marks, a contractor, provides her observations on what working with an architect is like and what they believe leads to best-for-project outcomes.
Diversity of practice
The First Peoples of this continent lived here for over 50,000 years, approximately 1850 generations, prior to western settlement. Yet, surprisingly, it is only in the last generation that the profession has started to formally recognise this. In 2021 the National Standard of Competency for Architects (NSCA) recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ ongoing connection and custodianship of Country. The NSCA embedded relevant performance criteria for the teaching of architecture and for ongoing professional development of practitioners. Jefa Greenaway, the first known Indigenous architect to be registered in Victoria (2004), was asked how the profession has changed during his career and how it may continue to evolve.
Architectural places of heritage significance regularly require maintenance and repair. The buildings may require modification and expansion to maintain their viability within a commercial environment and often require protection from demolition, or an intervention from irretrievably debilitating modifications.
These places require experts, such as Samantha Westbrooke, who immerse themselves into research to advocate for the best outcomes for these sites. The heritage architect works to understand another designer’s mind, the construction techniques of the period, versus the requirements of today. They will often design, document, and supervise the works to these buildings.
At times heritage architects will be forced to confront their peers who may be seeking to remove, demolish, or dramatically modify a building of significance in order to insert a new vision. How does a heritage architect perceive the profession, where they are often working to save the work of past generations,
and sometimes working to protect them from architects of their own generation?
Architecture requires design advocates, people who will go out and explain the value of architecture and what it brings to society. Often advocates are not architects themselves, but their own expertise allows them to clearly bring together a range of subject matter experts to present complex design ideas to a broader and often public audience. Design advocates work closely with a vast number of creatives and experts over their careers. Sam Redston, a design advocate, discusses the traits he sees repeatedly in architects and the challenges ahead that require the skills of an architect.
Many people with an architectural degree go on to make a significant contribution to society outside the profession. Former Premier of Victoria, the Hon. Ted Baillieu, was asked how his architectural training shaped his own career and how it assisted him to attain the highest position in the State. He provides his critical observations on the changing role of the architect and what he believes must be addressed to improve the profession for the next generation.
Reflections on an architect
Career coach and psychologist, Anita Tesoriero, who has supported architects from all scales of practice and all levels of experience, is asked for her insight. In a profession which often believes in a higher social calling and a commitment to a better world, how do the realities of the profession, commerciality, and many conflicting personalities within the industry, impact an individual? What are techniques that could be sought to help resolve tensions before they cause harm?
To conclude, is the republished 2015 interview I undertook with Juhani Pallasmaa, one of the authors of Questions of Perception. This interview, like aspects of this edition, seeks to understand what has shaped him and through those influences, how others may perceive him.
These contributions aim to provide an insight into the complexity and often simplified or mis-understood aspects and shortcomings, of being an architect. By extension, this piece may be of assistance for those wishing to engage with or join the profession. Its aim is to speak of hope and purpose, and the need for critical thinking about our future. A training in architecture provides an opportunity to improve both yourself and our urban and social environment. Architects do and can make real positive change, no matter the scale or sphere they work in.
I would like to thank all the contributors for providing their time to share their thoughts to produce this edition.
Tim Leslie FRAIA is principal adviser of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect Design Review and board member of the Architects Registration Board Victoria. He is a former studio director of Bates Smart, founder and former president of Open House Melbourne, and former Victorian State Manager of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Becoming an architect
Section 1/4
1. The graduate
Words by Tope Adesina
As a graduate, I find it easy to speak about architecture as a concept – an idea, a motif – but the longer I remain in the profession, the less truth I find in my own words. When asked about what I do, my language has shifted from the esoteric to the pragmatic, from poetic imagery to quantitative explanation, as if trying to justify its relevance. Despite evocative vocabulary acquired through study, I now struggle more than ever to define architecture in a way that feels honest, without betraying a younger, more idealistic version of myself.
This gradual detachment from early conceptions, educated convictions, and what I once held as true has been replaced by an acceptance of the gritty uncertainties that come with the profession and its day-to-day realities.
I came into architecture arguably out of ignorance –a teenager, convinced of nothing except that a desk job would drive me mad. Unlike many, my attraction to architecture wasn’t rooted in a love for the arts, world-building, or creating dream homes. Rather, it stemmed from a rejection of conventional alternatives, bolstered by parental approval, which was grounded more in the profession’s perceived prestige than any knowledge or connection to the field.
In hindsight, I realise that people around me spoke highly of architects – always one relative away from someone who wanted to be an architect when they were younger, yet no one personally knew or seemed fully aware of what it entailed. To me, the architect was an enigma – an embodiment of relatives’ youthful dreams, loosely defined, and thus unconstrained. For me, it made sense to go with something obscure amid immense pressure to choose a career path. I wasn’t sure of much, but I knew that I wanted to be inspired by my work, to engage with my hands, to solve problems, and, if possible, to see tangible results from my labour. And so... architecture.
At university, I thought of architects as visionaries – captivated by the almost mythical figureheads of the 20th century, their manifestos, and their role in challenging societal
norms. I believed that architecture formed cultural building blocks, and consequently, viewed architects as conductors of reform – agents of change capable of directly shaping the future. In many ways, that belief still resonates with me. However, as I grapple with the complexities and contradictions of the profession, perhaps I’m coming to terms that it’s also enough that architecture doesn’t change the world; rather, accept itself as a commodity and re-establish itself as a craft.
I’m starting to find beauty in the mundane aspects of this version of industry, one where the architect searches, not asserts, where we listen, not dictate. A profession that acknowledges infinite possibilities, yet distils them into fixtures, finishes and structure. In my studies, the work of an architect seemed hyper-focused on innovation driven dynamic spaces that held the agency to transform communities. But in practice, much of my time is spent managing budgets, meeting regulations, and massaging stakeholder demands – despite this, I find joy in re-discovering an industry grappling not with societal ideals and lofty ideas, but with the logistics of what can be achieved within narrow constraints. To me, this form of architecture has proven itself to be frustrating, yet inspiring; constrained, yet liberating, conclusive yet open-ended.
I’m still unsure about my perception of architecture or how best to speak about it amid a time marked by the weight of the climate crisis, exploited labour, and the lingering shadows of colonial violence. However, I’ve learned to appreciate its complexities and the quiet satisfaction in navigating them. Buried beneath risk and liability are moments where I get glimpses of the force of change, I anticipated the profession to be. However, since graduating, I’ve become much more familiar with architecture as a quiet presence – an entity that enriches the individual long before it leaves a scratch on the world, a service to steward, not a position to hold, a means of understanding, healing and responding to a changing world rather than contributing to its confusion and destruction. I’m recognising that it’s a profession constantly refining the delicate
balance between creativity and pragmatism, and though I may not fully grasp all its dimensions, I’m discovering a deeper understanding with each passing day. So, what now?
In this evolving understanding, I now realise that being an architect is not about grand gestures or sweeping transformations. Rather, it’s about the quiet decisions, the careful details, and the patience required to navigate the complexities of the real world. It’s a process that challenges me to continuously reassess my assumptions, question my outlook, and grow personally. While the profession may not
always align with the idealistic visions I once held as a student, it continues to reveal itself in ways that I never expected –shaping me as much as I try to shape the spaces around me. Perhaps I’m drawn to architecture not just for the structures I help create, but for the way it teaches me to engage with the world more thoughtfully, to live with intention, and to think critically about the spaces we inhabit, build and un-build.
Architecture is no longer just a career to me; it’s a journey of constant learning and self-discovery, a mindset I hope to present in everything I do.
Tope Adesina RAIA Grad is a Nigerian born, Melbourne-based graduate of architecture, an artist, and a photographer. He actively engages with the public realm through various mediums, exploring how architecture, photography and other art forms can enhance perception of public space.
2. The teacher
Words by Julie Willis
I can’t count the number of times someone has said “I always wanted to be an architect when I grew up”, but those who say it almost never are. It is an idealist aspiration that holds perceptions about what architects do and the value that they bring to the world. For a child, it is the wonder and possibilities of building something tangible and shaping the environment around them. But for adults, the perceptions are that architects design expensive buildings for high-end clients. Most ordinary Australians don’t feel the need for an architect for the design and decoration of their home, instead choosing builders, decorators, or themselves. And so, architecture becomes an add-on, not necessarily required. This can be reinforced by architects themselves, who are sometimes guilty of seeing their profession and practice as a higher calling, an artform that should always seek the pinnacle of aesthetic expression. Thus, the common perception is that architecture is a dream or luxury focused on decorative outcomes, rather than practical necessities or innovative solutions. There are perhaps even more perceptions about academic architects. Like we are somehow incompetent or incapable of practice. That we don’t understand practicalities and spend our time theorising esoterica – and that’s just the profession’s view. Within the broader academic realm of universities, most find it difficult to conceive why architecture isn’t a subservient branch of engineering or indeed what value may come from architectural research, as though the built environment has no impact on them (despite spending the vast majority of their lives in a building, usually one designed by an architect). Architecture don’t really fit neatly into prevailing scholarly hegemonies, sitting somewhere between the arts and the sciences. Like most perceptions, these are erroneous. To teach a complex subject like architecture, you must understand the subject and its craft deeply, as well as have specialist knowledges developed over a long time. It is not enough to be able to design, but to be able to
teach individuals how to design and be able to explain that effectively to those from different backgrounds, abilities, and experiences. Research into architecture helps us understand more about how designed spaces and places impact and influence us, how to ensure they are healthy and safe, and how to design for climate resilience and circular economies. These are valuable knowledges and skills, so why the enduring perceptions of limited value? I know quite a bit about pedagogies and research methodologies and so it will seem strange that I had not really thought about the skills I’d developed through my study of architecture until I worked outside the field. I don’t mean the
Above
Julie Willis and drawing board (2023) Photo by F Symons
obvious skills of being able to design and document a building, teach a student, or undertake research, but the underlying ways of thinking and doing. My reflections were prompted by a non-architect marvelling at the way I thought about problems. In my head, I was thinking and problem solving as I usually do. So, what were the skills that this person admired so much? I realised it was capacities that I took for granted, such as lateral thinking, rapid diagnosis, analysis and synthesis, scenario modelling and being able to propose multiple solutions, even when there was insufficient data. Being comfortable with chaos and disparate pieces of information. Being able to tie together and bridge seemingly different ideas, from the micro to the meta scale. And being able to express it all clearly, in a very short amount of time. The skills necessary to amalgamate site conditions, regulatory requirements, material matters, structural needs, cultural considerations, sustainability performances, client desires, and economic constraints into design propositions. The highly refined thinking skills
of the architect. Once we’ve been taught how to think like this, we do so effortlessly, and it is completely normalised. We forget that others are not trained to think in this way. Indeed, there is now a whole industry seeking to teach designthinking skills into business and information technology. It is promoted as bringing critical and creative approaches to ideation and problem-solving. Oddly, it is not taught by architects nor design professionals, but those who have learnt design thinking as an abstract idea. More and more, as I speak with prospective students, their parents, and indeed anyone who asks what the value of architectural education is, I speak to the extraordinary lateral, analytical and synthetical thinking skills that are learned as part of the curriculum. Skills that combine creative problem-solving with practical needs, able to rapidly prototype imaginative new futures.
As architects, our value is not just the pursuit of high aesthetics, but an extraordinary integration of knowledge and skill to create positive solutions and outcomes.
Julie Willis Assoc. RAIA is dean and Redmond Barry distinguished professor of architecture, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.
3. The regulator
Words by Glenice Fox
Contributing to the creation of a well-designed, liveable, and safe built environment that may subsist well beyond an architect’s own lifetime is a powerful legacy. However, it is also inherently complex.
The personal reflection below was recently communicated to the Architects Registration Board of Victoria (ARBV) by a practising architect.
“…I think our profession is so complex. We go to university and study a course for 5-6 years filled with design aspirations and conceptual frameworks, and then go into the real world and realise university doesn’t give us all the tools we may actually need, or that we are doing things that we hadn’t rationalised about the profession such as about codes, and so we become massive sponges trying to learn about the many different facets we need to have sound knowledge on…”
I wholeheartedly agree that practising architecture is complex. There are so many diverse skills and attributes that a practising architect must incorporate when carrying out their work – including being creative, visionary, technical, detailed, thorough, responsive, collaborative and operating within budget and time constraints. For those involved in practice management, they must also possess business and administration skills. At the same time, architects must also understand and discharge their professional standards obligations.
Appreciating the breadth of skills and knowledge required to practise architecture may be daunting, as suggested in the architect’s reflection above. However, for those that feel daunted, I would say that regulation supports you to navigate the complexities, and it strengthens your profession overall. While an architect cannot know everything from day one of registration, they should be mindful that in professional life it is important to know what you know, as well as what you don’t know, and to practise within the scope of your skills and knowledge.
A vital resource available to architects is the National
Standard of Competency for Architects (NSCA) maintained by the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia. The NSCA inclusive of the explanatory notes describes what is reasonably expected of a person to demonstrate the standard of skill, care and diligence widely accepted in Australia as a competent and professional architect. The NSCA maps the expectations of professional competency at three levels: graduate of architecture, candidate for registration as an architect, and architect post-registration. For practising architects, the NSCA provides guidance to help them assess their level of competency in the practice areas in which they propose to provide architectural services.
The Victorian Architects Code of Professional Conduct requires an architect in charge of a client’s project to have suitable skills and experience. It also requires them to maintain a thorough knowledge of the architectural services to be provided and to matters relating to the performance of those services. Architects who don’t comply with these requirements will be in breach of their professional standards obligations. Therefore, architects must always turn their mind to whether there are any deficiencies in their professional competencies and take steps to address them, for example, by undertaking targeted education or professional development activities, obtaining support from a mentor or supervisor, or engaging a consultant with the requisite skills and knowledge.
Maintaining professional skills and knowledge requires ongoing effort and commitment. As with many other established professions (eg medicine, law), the regulatory requirement to complete Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is integral to supporting high professional standards. While most architects appreciate the importance and benefits of CPD, unfortunately some architects we encounter at the ARBV don’t appear to value registration or CPD.
Some architects appear to take the view that the imposition of regulatory requirements is unnecessary or burdensome. It is not uncommon for ARBV officers following up
unpaid fees to be asked, what do I get for my membership?
Noting that registration boards are not membership bodies and professional registration is mandatory and not optional, the typical response provided by the ARBV is that you will be able to call yourself an architect and earn a livelihood carrying out work as an architect in Victoria.
The regulatory framework applicable to Victorian architects is necessary to protect consumers and the public. Serious safety, financial and legal consequences will arise for consumers, the community and practitioners should the designs of buildings fail. To minimise the potential for harm, a core objective of regulation is to hold architects to high professional standards. Extensive educational pathways and professional requirements must be satisfied for a person to be registered as an architect. And once registered, architects must continue to meet professional standards of practice and comply with applicable laws. They must continue to have regard to the performance criteria in the NSCA and maintain their skills and knowledge by completing CPD requirements.
A comprehensively regulated profession is also in the interests of architects and strengthens the profession overall. Regulation allows architects to participate in a registered and monitored profession, have their credentials validated and visible to potential clients, have their services legitimised over
unregistered persons, have greater protection from unlawful competition, have confidence that appropriate action will be taken to address cases where professional standards have not been met, ensure their qualifications and competency meet national standards, and receive support in ongoing proficiency. Together the ARBV and architects support the attainment of these outcomes.
Knowledge of and compliance with professional standards obligations and applicable laws helps architects to avoid disciplinary scrutiny and, if a legal claim is made against them, it may assist them in their defence. It also serves them well from a more practical perspective by helping them to keep projects on track, ensure their clients are satisfied and successful outcomes are achieved. Several clauses in the Victorian Architects Code of Professional Conduct cover requirements that relate to client relations, underpinning the importance of effective client-architect communications and relationships to achieving successful outcomes. Applying this lens, compliance with a regulatory framework is not unnecessary, or an unwarranted burden, but is very much in the interests of architects.
The importance of regulation in supporting architects to navigate the complexities involved in carrying out their work should not be underestimated.
Glenice Fox is CEO/Registrar of the Architects Registration Board of Victoria and a director of the Architects Accreditation Council of Australia.
Above
Olympic Swimming Pool by Kevin Borland, John and Phyllis Murphy and Peter McIntyre, with engineer Bill Irwin. Photo by unknown
4. The developer
Words by Carl Schibrowski
On my first day of architecture school in the early 1990s the first-year coordinator addressed our whole cohort – Look left and then and look right, and between the three of you, only two will finish this course and only one of you will become an architect. Turned out he was right, and looking back thirtyplus years since, across the whole cohort, the statistics are probably much worse.
My classmate to my left completed the halfway degree (the three-year Bachelor of Science) and left to become a construction lawyer. He said he had confused his desire to live in a nice house with the need to be able to design it himself. The other aspirant went on to become a well-established architect with his own successful practice as we all imagined we would at the time, and I finished the full degree but never practiced.
I headed down a parallel career in originating and delivering large-scale mixed-use development precincts around the world with institutional development companies such as Lend Lease, Macquarie Capital, Charter Hall, Brookfield Properties and now I am running one of the Riyadhbased Giga-projects as chief development officer. My role has meant that I have worked closely with world class architects, but as their client. I have worked very closely with some of the best architectural practices in the market, and always been close to the process of designing buildings and forming cities – so my education has not been wasted.
When my family or friends ask me why I didn’t ever become an architect, after I pull the proverbial dagger from my heart, I generally respond that while I loved being a student of architecture and working with architects, I felt my best contribution was to be the producer rather than the director. This is at least a sensible rationale for the abandonment of my once held dreams. At least I know I have made an enduring contribution in the creation of built form, and the improvement of cities.
All that said – I’m firmly of the view that architects
make the best developers, or at least people with an architectural background are some of the most successful in the industry. They understand the complex synthesis involved in the process of good design, and they understand that returns follow
Above
171 Collins Street by Bates Smart. Wurrundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Photo by Tim Leslie
a vision rather than the other way around. But, going back to the horrible rate of student attrition in architecture, it made me wonder what could or should change so that those who aspire to becoming an architect are somehow retained in the industry and find their place.
While not everyone who graduates film school can be a director, and not everyone can be a lead architect why train everyone solely to this end? Architecture as a field of study or a profession is to improve the built environment for everyone, and there are many roles to be played to best achieve this outcome.
The profession would be well advised to look to engineering, or medicine, law, and accountancy, which are all ultimately more inclusive when it comes to participation – as well as having many specialised disciplines there are design engineers, construction engineers, operational engineers among very many other specialties within the field. They are not all solely focused on dreaming up the next big engineering design concept.
I’m not advocating architecture gives up its primacy as the designer of buildings, to the contrary I think it should expand its inclusion and influence across many sectors within
the built form professional streams to buttress this role. This is the case in other mature markets like the US, Europe and Asia. Architects are included and involved in the entire process within urban planning, concept design, public realm design, place making, construction, design management, technical oversight, contractually, and so on.
If I think to the requirements we expect of the practices we engage, it is always firstly for the quality and innovation of the design – but we also expect and require participation in the planning processes, support in selling the concepts to our customers and investors, involvement in negotiating with stakeholders, guardianship of design, collaboration with other designers and professionals, driving efficiency, support with presenting to our boards, marketing and PR involvement, support in interface with our communities, among many other things. All this shows the diversity of skills required and the opportunity to be front and centre in all aspects of city making.
In conclusion, for the profession to flourish, grow and achieve a much broader influence in the built environment, it has to move beyond a singular pathway from graduate to practice that meets only the needs of residential narcissism for wealthy urban clients – there’s much more to it.
Carl Schibrowski is currently the chief development officer for New Murabba Development Company. He has worked with Lend Lease, Brookfield, Macquarie and Charter Hall on landmark projects in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Madrid, New York and Riyadh.
5. The planning lawyer
Words by Sally Macindoe
Growing up in suburban Melbourne I never gave much thought to architecture; the way houses and buildings were designed or how they sat within their environment. Our home, and those around us, were designed by draftsmen, were utilitarian and were sited on the typical quarter acre block with a Hills Hoist in the back garden.
When I was 15, I spent an exchange year living in a relatively small traditional town in western Japan. Japan gave me an entirely new perspective about how design and nature go hand in hand. The beauty and simplicity of Japanese design, the way it interacts with nature and the materials used were different to anything I had ever experienced. In Japan, nature is paramount. Every tree, rock and plant are sacred in Shinto religion and much thought is given to where towns are sited relative to mountains, rivers, coastlines and other natural features. Often small spaces are defined by the framing of a tree or rock outside an opening in a building. Water, wood, stone, straw, and paper all are incorporated into a simple design subservient to the surrounding natural elements.
I returned from Japan to complete school and majored in urban geography and Japanese at Monash University. I was deeply fascinated in the way we lived, planning for the needs of the population and the potential negative and positive impacts humankind can have on both the built and natural environment. I did not expect to end up practising law. When I completed my articles, however, I was fortunate to work with a partner who had town planning experience, and I realised there was an area of law that incorporated the learnings I had embraced in my urban geography degree. I have now practised in planning and environment law for over 30 years.
I have been privileged to work on many city shaping projects including infrastructure, hospitals, schools, retail and residential developments. Every one of them has involved a different set of considerations to meet the needs of future users while respecting their context. Throughout that journey I have worked closely with architects, urban designers, landscape
architects and other multi-disciplinary consultants whose input into successful development outcomes are essential. I feel most outcomes are improved by going through the planning process. Ultimately, my job and objective is to assist proponents in obtaining planning permission to construct developments that are feasible and capable of being acted upon. It is always on my mind that once something is built, we have to live with it. The bigger it is the more visible it will be. There are not many projects I have worked on that cause me to feel disappointed. There are many that lift my heart and make me feel proud of being a part of the outcome.
Architects are such an important part of the process but some cope with it better than others. There can be difficult and demanding clients who often have unrealistic cost and yield expectations. They see us as taking yield away to improve prospects of success for approval, but I often say you are not losing yield if you have no approval to start with.
The quality of architecture and the ability of an architect to articulate their design greatly improves prospects of successfully gaining planning approval. Planning is one area of law where the decision maker has to make a decision about the future; something they cannot yet see. Therefore, it is important to be able to give them the confidence that the outcome will be good. If it is not, it will bother them every time they look at the built outcome and make them more conservative in their future decisions.
The role of the architect in explaining their design, communicating how it has evolved and how it will sit in its environment should not be underestimated. It is also a critical part of the process to ensure the decision maker does not impose conditions that mean the building cannot be fit for purpose or unfeasible even if the changes (in their opinion) might make the building look better. This is particularly so for institutional developments such as aged care, hospitals and schools where changes to the size and design of spaces, floor levels and the like have significant effects for the end
Ginkaku-ji, Silver Pavilion, Kyoto (c. 1490) by Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa
Photo by : Tim Leslie
users. We need to explain why a building has been designed in the way it has and what thought has gone into the design for those reasons.
Sometimes we need to bring in peer reviewers to remove the perception that the architect is too close to their own design and can’t be objective. Some architects cope with this better than others especially if the independent reviewer has suggestions to make about how the design might be improved. We also need the input of other experts in their fields such as traffic engineers, acoustic engineers and daylight and sustainability consultants, whose opinions need to be considered and accommodated. The best architects I have
worked with embrace this collaboration, put ego aside, yet stand up for aspects of the design that will have a material impact on the built form outcome or the needs of the end user.
I consider myself privileged to have worked with some of the best architects in the country if not the world. We are fortunate that in Australia and in Melbourne many great buildings are built rather than remaining unrealised in planned format, often as part of a design competition. I have learnt so much about what goes into great design. When I travel, I seek out great places, buildings and urban spaces as I see them as art and find them more fascinating than visiting museums and galleries.
Sally Macindoe is a consultant and former partner and chair of Norton Rose Fulbright Australia. She is the current Vice President of the Melbourne Cricket Club and chair of the MCC Foundation Limited. She has practised as a specialised planning and environment lawyer for over 30 years.
Right: Tenryu-ji Sogen Pond, Kyoto (c. 1339) Garden design by Muso Soseki Photo by Tim Leslie
6. The structural engineer
Words by Phil Gardiner
I gravitate towards architects who align with my approach to practice. That doesn’t mean the working relationships have to be all sunshine and roses, they can include disagreements, tension, demanding and irascible characters, but they must deliver good, enjoyable, projects. So, what characteristics deliver on the above.
Creativity is essential, design focused, contemporary. Leads a team through inspiration and collaboration, or sometimes by force of will and proven skills and leadership/authority.
Broad knowledge of all design disciplines and construction, somewhat of a polymath.
A communicator, preferably with a felt pen or pencil, as well as with words.
A teacher, mentor, and philosopher.
Commercially astute and fair.
Values other ideas and design input, lets me be a part of the early concepts.
These attributes are a constant over my career, but how the practice of architecture has been conducted is not. I started with Irwin Johnston and Partners in late 1979 when the practice founded by Bill Irwin in the 1950s still had a strong relationship with many of its original architect clients. Our work came mostly from those established practices of Eggleston MacDonald and Secombe (now DesignInc), Yuncken Freeman, Montgomery King, Peter McIntyre (still a client and friend), Kevin Borland and the other major design practices of that era. There was also a newer generation of practices engaging us (Jackson Walker, SJB, Cocks and Carmichael).
We were engaged by an exchange of simple fee letters. Virtually all correspondence was exchanged by letter. These practices were run and mainly staffed by white, caucasian males. They were hierarchical with class distinctions between architects and technicians. The leaders had corner offices.
Drawings were meticulously handcrafted and coloured. Suggesting a design change which meant scratching out on the tracing, or even a redraw, was a great sin.
Consequently, more design development occurred before final drawings were produced. There was more rigour when change was difficult. Design extended to hand sketches of numerous details to prove up the planning and define simple things like the slab edge or set out. Coordination of architecture, structure and building services happened well before final drawings were produced. We didn’t have other specialists to coordinate with though.
Almost every architect used a standard grid to set out their designs, even residential. Planning was mostly rectilinear, as anything else required complicated mathematics to generate and had to be set out on site with a tape measure, level, and theodolite. Practices were balanced with designers and documenters.
Our practice of 60 people was supported by a fulltime librarian/research assistant, invaluable in the days before the internet. These roles were supported by higher fees. This was still within the era of preset scale fees for architects and engineers before competition legislation precluded their use.
The 1980s brought a newer cohort of architect clients, some started practice earlier but became more prominent, others were starting out. The established practices were still around in the same form as the 1970s. I was aware of more female practitioners but still a minority.
There were more large commercial developments but also a change coming from a shift from Modernism to new philosophies like Post Modernism. The more radical changes were mostly delivered by the emerging practices for residential and institutional projects. The larger commercial projects delivered by established practices were mostly more conservative with classical references, with perhaps the exception of Denton Corker Marshall’s 101 Collins Street.
This decade saw the development of computing and
Photo
CAD. We had used computing for analysis since the 1960s but the advent of desktop processors provided more accessible software and sped up the computational part of design. The introduction of CAD was still mainframe based and started with a handful of practices. The standardisation to AutoCAD on desktops in the mid 1980s was more universal and was adopted by most architects and engineers. This was perhaps the most significant change to documentation practices in my career.
This change was a big step for a lot of technicians. The skills required to use it needed different learnings. The more experienced technicians now produced hand-drawn details. The mastery of CAD mostly fell to newer, specifically trained recruits.
CAD certainly aided the documentation of plans. Changes and coordination between disciplines was easier and complex geometries were more common as the software solved the trigonometry and topology. CAD required considerable skill and ongoing learning, and the users were mostly producing plans not details. This I believe led to a lessening of technical knowledge of detailing and construction as the older technicians retired. I am not sure these skills have ever been fully restored.
The fax machine also arrived in the early 1980s. Certainly faster communication, but it did make everything more urgent. Faxes arrived all day from architects, builders, and clients and answers were expected to be returned promptly. By the end of the 1980s I had my first mobile phone, it certainly improved communication but from then on, I was on-call for much of the rest of my career, as were most of my peers. This era brought more stringent contracts and the previous agreements we used were replaced by new contracts drafted by construction law specialists.
Major contractors were engaged earlier in the process and were sometimes the developer. This changed the way projects were led and procured including design and construct (D&C) procurement. It was an exciting change for me at that time, and I delivered quite a few industrial buildings across Melbourne. Engineering was the primary discipline for these and the architecture secondary. It seemed like a good idea at the time! I am not sure they had much architectural merit.
The client was the contractor, and I learnt a lot working with them. The first major government D&C buildings also came in this era. I worked on prisons and office buildings with contractors using recently developed precast concrete solutions. The architect was more prominent in these projects but were not the leaders. The design management role was with the contractor, albeit often from a design background.
The early 1990s brought a recession that led to major redundancies. A lot of skills were lost to our industry as practitioners either went overseas or changed careers. The mid-1990s saw a resurgence with the release of Postcode 3000. This changed Melbourne to a more residential city and started the high-rise residential push. I spent much of this era working on city fringe apartments with good practices. These were new and exciting to begin with but later became repetitive and commoditised.
This change saw a few architects claim leadership in design and delivery and maintain a fair degree of control in this sector for a period. This was also an era where the government sectors invested more heavily and there were some great education and health projects. The tertiary sector encouraged more creative design solutions, procured via traditional contracts with the architect as principle. I appreciated working with architects in the institutional sectors where design outcomes were as important as budget. I still look for those opportunities. This decade saw the growth of project management, taking the role from what was traditionally in the architect’s scope. Many of the early project managers had either been architects, quantity surveyors, or builders, and could add value to a complex project. Was this role inadvertently let go or was it inevitable given the increasing complexity in contractual relationships, projects, and the addition of specialist consultants? A good design manager is an asset to any project regardless of where they sit.
The 1990s saw the architecture profession become more representative of gender and ethnicity. The 2000s saw another recession, but unlike the 90s this was compensated for by government investment in health and other infrastructure, which was great if you were a beneficiary. This decade also saw the introduction of 3D modelling, mostly via Revit, as the main form of documentation.
Large government projects adopted public-private partnerships as the preferred model with a financier lead, and contractor driving design and construction. These contracts pushed considerable obligations on to the contractor for compliance with brief, quality, extended maintenance, and program. Under novation much of this risk then passed to designers. This increased the contractual risk for architects and understandably they sought to share this risk with subconsultants.
Starting a project debating contract terms and insurances was not conducive to collaboration and cohesiveness. There was a temptation to shed blame and risk. It was also a barrier to innovation as new ideas come with risks that are not always allocated to the beneficiary of the reward. Recessions brought heavier competition which drove fees ever lower. We managed scope to suit, and the quality of documentation trended further downwards for architects and engineers. Overlay this with the reduction in documentation skills that started in the 1980s, fewer site-trained builders, and a change of emphasis by project managers to contract administration rather than design management, and we see with hindsight where our industry could be heading.
I was fortunate to contribute to some great projects at this time, such as the Royal Children’s Hospital and the Shrine Galleries. The structural challenges excited our team. These were well led at design, client, and contractor level. Heritage structures like the Shrine, State Library and Royal Exhibition buildings became, and continue to be, a significant part of my career.
When I designed Darwin’s first high-rise I was
introduced to the challenge of tropical and cyclonic conditions. This project was for a developer/builder client, with a designer with vast experience of the environmental principles that made a good building in Darwin. It was a great collaborative experience. The team backed it up again with the world’s tallest modular building (28 levels) in 2015. Lots of experimentation and risk, but with a team that was happy to work together. I don’t think we could have delivered it in Melbourne. The architectural designer, Hans Voss reminded me of what I had read about Bill Irwin’s architectural collaborators, with early projects like the Pool, the Dome, the Bowl – rolling up our sleeves to design together with some adventurous risk taking and supportive clients.
2010 onwards has been more of the same but with a growing realisation that things could be better. Reports of significant defects in completed works, litigation and government enquiries leading to new regulation is certainly not just an Australian problem. I trust there is a realisation that project procurement, scope and fees for professional services, and contracts should become better aligned.
What still interests me is the emergence of designfocused architectural practices, and the repositioning of existing practices, with a commitment to sustainability and issues like carbon, waste, housing affordability, education and resilience. With some of these issues needing a large number of specialists, it seems unlikely that architects will take back full control of the process without changing the emphasis of what the architect’s role is.
It would be a pity if the creative role of the architect is diminished by excessive focus on project management and administration. Do we need (good) project managers after all? Would it be better if they were managed by the architect? The architecture profession is now mostly gender and racially neutral. My engineering profession still fails on the gender front, with only marginal annual improvements. I hope it can be made more attractive to all at some point.
I am enjoying this part of my career. I love the frugality of design that carbon and waste reduction bring. I value the work I am doing with modular housing for remote communities. The product is better and more culturally appropriate but still has room for improvement. I am spending time trying to crack the nut of affordable housing using DfMa and modern methods of construction. Lots of groups are close. I think the teams I work with are developing solutions that can be adapted to low- and medium-rise developments that are hard to make viable.
This takes me back to the beginning. Developing new systems and designs can only be done with full collaboration of proponent, architect, engineer, specialists, and manufacturers. And cannot be done under onerous contract conditions with fees that are not commensurate with the task.
I don’t want to romanticise the past over the present, there are some things we have lost on the journey but many more we have gained. The technology and specialists we have available now make solving complex problems so much easier. My hope is that we will find a better way to navigate the issues that constrain our professions.
Phil Gardiner is a structural engineer with over 45 years of experience. He is a principal director at WSP in Australia, formerly IrwinConsult, director Structex Australia, and Industry Fellow at Swinburne Engineering Excellence Group.
7. The builder
Words by Jen Marks
Throughout my career, I have had the privilege of leading property projects of various scales and types – greenfield, brownfield, multi-storey, industrial developments, heritage, fitout and complex refurbishments. All procured in different ways – guaranteed maximum price (GMP), design and construct (D&C), early contractor involvement (ECI), and even a combination of each.
My observation is that the most successful projects require a shared understanding and equal input into design resolution and decision making by all contributers. Even with amazing designers, great clients and delivery partners, the optimal project outcome may remain out of reach if all perspectives have not been considered in the design resolution and understanding of the client needs.
I think of architects as amazing translators and creators – able to define the client’s needs and translate them into a design vision, balancing planning, function, and compliance requirements within a project budget. This is not an easy feat, especially trying to consider the future use of a building from a range of possible perspectives. It is a great skill and somewhat of a superpower of architects. The role as a translator doesn’t stop at the interface between client and designer – it needs to be shared with the design team and contractor/delivery partner to translate the design vision into the physical property.
The architect interprets the design aspiration for the contractor, who often joins the project team after several years of the architect defining and refining the design concept for the client. It is important for a contractor to understand the client drivers, their translation, and why early decisions were made. The greater the understanding of the project history, the better the translation the better the preservation of the design intent throughout project delivery, as the delivery partner understands the 'why'.
The process of novation is a point of change for the well-established design team when the design is transitioning
to the control of the contractor. This is a phase when the risk responsibilities for delivering the project shift to the contractor. Contractors are often engaged under different terms to the design team, with primary risk and accountability for delivering the project within time and changing market constraints. The risk allocation and accountability for execution can often conflict with design priorities.
Up until this point, the design team has been addressing client needs directly and commonly without formal agreements. The subsequent process of re-aligning risk, responsibilities and commercial obligations can create discomfort and tension. It is crucial to articulate the client’s needs and design vision and clearly assign the roles each party plays in bringing the project to life. Clarity of roles allows for the seamless transition from design creation to documentation and delivery.
Open collaboration, with mutual respect of each stakeholder’s perspective, is a critical ingredient for a smooth and successful project. The contractor’s in-house design managers are often architects, and they support the contractor in translating the design architect’s work. The design vision can be understood between fellow architects, and with empathy for the effort taken to create the design to this point. In-house design managers can further interpret the priorities in the design for the contractor to identify any opportunities available to optimise the key construction parameters – safety, time, cost, and quality – while respectfully preserving the design aspiration. Now more than ever, the construction costs of a project are driving the viability of developments. Costs have increased disproportionately to the value of property. There were many project benefits realised by contractors employing architects to deliver D&C projects. Therefore, perhaps now is the time for another process shift or merging of expertise to enable future project viability. How could the role of the architect shift to improve project outcomes? Is it more design or less? Is it earlier involvement by the contractor? Or possibly designers employing
building expertise? The best projects have greater collaboration and respectful consideration of all perspectives to develop the design. Perhaps structures like alliance contracting, where the design is collectively progressed and resolved between all parties with equal share of delivery risk, could provide the best project outcomes in the current economic environment.
It’s best to be equally represented at the early design stage, and if not possible, the role of the architect can assist with a well-defined vision and open translation and inclusion of the contractor. There needs to be an opportunity to contribute to the design resolution, with the contractor’s perspective in mind. The project network, including specialist suppliers and subcontractors, can also be drawn upon to ensure the ultimate success of a project. It is a balance of so many factors for each party and, like each cog in a watch, each group has an equally important function to connect, turn and work together, for the whole timepiece to perform at its best.
Many key project decisions are made in the early phase and may seem insignificant without having the perspective of the contractor at the time. Likewise, in the construction
phase daily decision making continues, often by individuals not directly controlled or employed by the contractor. The rules of engagement and design priorities need to be understood by the entire project workforce so that the design vision is maintained when decisions are made.
Ultimately, all stakeholders need to play an equal and balanced role for a successful project. Aligning early on key project outcomes creates an environment where everyone is striving towards the same goal. Mutual respect between each contributor and their specialist roles encourages project outcomes to be prioritised over individual agendas.
The role of the architect, from a contractor’s perspective, is gateway to the early design decisions and approach, a link to client aspirations, and to evolve the design vision based on collective input.
It takes courage and trust to be open to alternative views and to realise that a design vision can be realised by a collective effort from a variety of perspectives and experiences.
A collective approach is an opportunity for diversity of thought and shared success.
Jen Marks has over 25 years of experience leading highperforming teams in property and construction. She holds board appointments at Women’s Property Initiatives and is Chair at RMIT University PCPM industry advisory committee. Her diverse experience has spanned client/end-user, consultant, project management and developer roles.
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8. The communicator
Words by Jefa Greenaway
Having spent three decades in the architecture profession, it is clear to me that industry has changed markedly from the one I entered in the early 1990s. Back then there was a solid focus on technique – be it hand drawing, airbrushed renderings, or hand-cut card models. Tectonic understanding was required, technical resolution through detailing was understood, the written word was given great primacy, while a blinkered view of architectural history was still predominant.
The most evident change has been the embrace of computer technology, which has transformed the industry in the production of drawings, the embrace of parametric modelling, and endless time-sapping emails. While I miss the sense of achievement of starting with a blank A1 piece of tracing paper and through the manual dexterity of the use of a rotring pen to create a complete crafted set of drawings, the march of time and inevitable change has been unerring.
The past decade has also seen a rapid reckoning of history, particularly as we have sought to tell our stories through the power of conceiving an architecture truly of place. A small cohort of practitioners like Dillon Kombumerri, Kevin O’Brien and Alison Page, shook us out of our complacency, from a form of cultural amnesia, to finally acknowledging our deep histories in the pursuit of an authentic architectural language of connectedness and depth.
It took me a while to realise that we are collectively in the communication business. The ability to distil complex ideas into accessible, engaging, and relevant language is at the core of what we need. We have a litany of tools to draw upon, however the seductive capacity of a well-conceived sketch, plan or section can still penetrate the density and complexity of what we practice. Coupled with some evocative language, a simple word journey of discovery can emerge.
There is an abiding sense that we operate within a social compact with the communities we serve. It comes with an acute sense of responsibility – to the environment, to the challenges we confront and to the clients on which we rely.
Having come to architecture via political science it is evident that architecture in the hands of previously under-represented cohorts is indeed a political act.
Having co-founded a practice, Greenaway Architects, which was fixated on the bespoke interrogation of the single dwelling it became clear that the emotional investment of the minutiae of architecture was all consuming. The intimacy forged with the client is key, with the need to constantly prosecute the difference between cost versus value. The dance of managing expectations requires a level of diplomacy never canvassed as part of the curriculum of architecture. It has, however, crystalised the importance of utilising our collective skills to unlock this typology for the betterment of society. Architects have effectively vacated the space of unlocking the potential of medium and higher density housing, rather than focussing on models wholly dictated by market driven approaches, devoid of the poetics of innovation. It is heartening to see that the profession has become mobilised in recent times to explore the potential design thinking to interrogate the wicked problems we are facing in support of the need to uphold the core tenet that housing is a human right rather than solely a speculative capitalist endeavour.
As our practice matured, an appetite to engage within the public realm emerged. There was a distinct change in perceptions within larger, civic and community orientated projects – from being a nice-to-have to a must-have. While more prosaic constraints exist, a level of implied trust became apparent. Coupled with a cultural anchoring, the ability to prosecute or encode a philosophical or polemical position could be explored. With this newly held status came an acute sense of obligation. In parallel, a dialogue with the academy was explored, demonstrating the value of knowledge exchange – a particularly undervalued role of the architect. The ability to become an advocate, an educator, a communicator is a significant role in which few would automatically attribute to the role of the architect. It does reiterate the multi-faceted skill sets in which we are trained.
Ngarara Place by Greenaway Architects, RMIT, Melbourne. Wurundjeri
Photo by Peter Casamanto
There is, however, a cautionary note of the shift to specialisation, of the view that one needs to stay in their lane, to stick to a small spectrum of project types. Usurped by the project management industry, of novated contracts there is a pernicious view that the architect needs to be monitored, controlled, and generally diminished, resulting in core skills becoming eroded. To my mind, this is where we need to hold our ground, to prosecute the value of maintaining creative agency to support design excellence.
Finally, on an optimistic note – the emerging cohort of cultural attuned practitioners is demonstrating that fresh
ideas, the optimism of youth, can be entrusted to step up and showcase that design equity is indeed a matter of tangible significance. The perception of architecture will continue to evolve. There are the perpetual headwinds of economic cycles, of the constant push towards deregulation of the protected role of the architect, however, where we align to community needs, work to support innovative solutions beyond exclusivity airs, we will maintain a relevancy of the critical role that we play.
The earlier musing of an architect reiterates in my mind, that the profession is in safe hands and that the perceptions of the architect should be a positive one.
Jefa Greenaway RAIA MDIA is a founding director of Greenaway Architects, an adjunct industry fellow at Swinburne University, and an honorary fellow of design at Deakin University. Current projects include the North East Link and the UTS National First Nations College, winner of the 2022 WAFX Future Infrastructure award and 2024 WAFX Cultural Identity awards respectively. He was a 2020 Design Institute of Australia’s Hall of Fame inductee, signifying an outstanding contribution to Australian design.
9. The heritage architect
Words by Sam Westbrooke
Backpacking through Europe and while visiting Verona, Italy, I chanced upon Castelvecchio, a museum located in a Medieval Castle and restored by architect Carlo Scarpa 19591973. What I saw in that museum captured my imagination –the sublime juxtaposition of the layers of historic fabric, with the new insertions to convert the castle to an exhibition space, simultaneously highlighting the qualities of each. It was from this point that I knew that the interface between old and new design was my calling in architecture and I was eager to put that into practice in my final years of university.
Studying at Deakin University in Geelong allowed me to hone my heritage skills alongside mainstream subjects, such as the History of building construction and the Burra Charter. The architecture course was run in the same faculty as building, so the students also took practical and service engineering subjects, such as, and a personal favourite, Building faults. I was also able to undertake the final year Master thesis that was primarily research and analysis based. This allowed me to play to my strengths and assist with obtaining work in the heritage field once I left university.
Many of my fellow students didn’t seem to consider a focus on heritage and conservation as pursuing an architectural career. However, not only did I register as an architect (albeit seven years after completing my degree), but as my resulting career has demonstrated, working with existing architecture is as architectural as you can get!
After 27 years of a career in architecture, focusing on heritage and conservation, I can safely say that I still love going to work and find my job endlessly fascinating and fulfilling. The thing about working in heritage and conservation is that it is incredibly diverse. Through my work I have put myself in the shoes of lighthouse keepers, explosive factory workers, quarantine station inmates and workers, defence workers, farmers, artists, school teachers and students and numerous homeowners with homes from the 1850s to the 1970s. Each time I undertake a project my brain grows another dimension
with yet more insights into how people have lived, created, built, worked and played throughout history.
The work of a conservation architect involves understanding a place to determine why it is significant and identifying opportunities for change so it can remain relevant and useful into the future while retaining that significance. This requires delving into all elements of the place, its materials, the people who designed and built it, the occupants, the influences – environmental, economic and social, and the context in which it was built. This forensic process of investigation and analysis is so compelling and provides a deeper understanding of how we have lived and changed, our diversity and the many ways people interact with the built environment.
Above Castlevecchio, Verona (c.1354-56, 1959-73) by Carlo Scarpa (restoration) Photo by Nicole Wiseman,
Dealing with the lifecycle of buildings and working so closely with materials and tradespeople to understand specific construction methodologies to undertake like-for-like repairs also equips conservation architects with a detailed understanding of materials and how they perform. There is nothing more satisfying than finding the root cause of a building issue and being able to specify and facilitate the repair work to halt deterioration – to feel the building breathe a healthy sigh of relief. The conservation of an original detail or feature, so expressive of its period of construction, that could never be recreated in the same way is also a beautiful thing – retaining the authenticity of our buildings that represent our rich architectural history.
These key skills of conservation architecture, understanding place and materials, play a vital role in the everyday practice of architecture. However, they are generally merely touched upon or even absent from architectural education today and sadly it seems, the perception that they are not really architecture, prevails. This baffles me when in practice, architects primarily deal with existing buildings and the problem-solving mindset required at the interface of old and new, leads to the most creative and innovative design solutions.
The housing crisis, and climate and development challenges we face demand that architects meaningfully value, understand and feel confident to work with existing buildings and this needs to start at university. We also need to encourage and celebrate the multi-faceted nature of architecture (not just in conservation), to support students with the diverse skills that can be applied to the profession. Many talented architecture students have been lost before completing their degree because they do not fit the mould of the stereotypical architect who designs hero buildings.
The opportunity for students to engage with the history of a place, and conservation processes, is invaluable whether they plan to work in heritage or not. It will enrich their learning, equip them with practical tools for future practice, and provide more diverse pathways into future employment.
So, why would we continue to deprive our current and future architects of learning about and experiencing such a joyous, compelling, and relevant aspect of architectural practice? I challenge any architect to not be captivated once they start delving into the history of the people and place of the projects they are working on.
Sam Westbrooke is the Executive Manager, Conservation and Advocacy, National Trust of Australia (Victoria). She is an architect with over 25 years of experience working in the heritage industry with involvement in all aspects of professional conservation architecture services including work in not-forprofit, state and local government as well as private practice. She is also an experienced heritage advisor for local government.
10. The advocate
Words by Sam Redston
Melbourne is a good city to be standing in when thinking about architecture.
Reflecting on the MPavilion and Open House Melbourne, I see them as having robustly proven, through countless encounters with architecture by the public, that good design matters. It is proven in people’s responses to great architecture, and how that shapes the way we live. And it is proven across the thousands of events that look beyond the built environment to explore other ways architecture and design thinking can influence our society. Design is for everyone, and it can make the world a better place.
This sparked a realisation that has underpinned my conviction that the most complex of the challenges confronting us may be well met with design at the nexus. This is where, in my view, the aspirations of the profession have the most potential to be realised particularly where siloed structures such as those of economics, academia, government and industry seem to create impenetrable barriers to change.
With a background in creative installations and festivals, the initiation of Melbourne’s MPavilion in 2014 by Naomi Milgrom AC was a magnetic force that drew me in for nearly a decade as I played my part in bringing it to life each year. Melbourne is also home to another major design festival that I am proud to contribute to: Open House Melbourne. Both design festivals entwine architecture as a process of creating built forms, with architecture as a process of design thinking and advocating for community participation in design decisions that determine how we live together.
From 2014 until the conclusion of the ninth season, a significant part of my year was focused upon the high-speed design and construction process required for each MPavilion design. The architects, upon accepting Naomi’s commission to create a temporary pavilion in the Queen Victoria Gardens, each had approximately 12 months to complete design and construction, supported by an outstanding local team. The aim
was to allow each architect to exemplify their practice, while being constrained as little as possible by pragmatic concerns. The combination of each architect’s visionary gift to Melbourne and the tireless commitment of all involved, resulted in a series of pavilions that have been recognised worldwide for their contribution to architecture. Each is then deconstructed and Above
MPavilion 4 by OMA, 2017. Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country. Photo by Gavin Green
Photo by Gavin Green
relocated to a permanent home, a gift from the Naomi Milgrom Foundation to a range of universities and public institutions and the gardens returned to their original condition.
The experimental series was also an exploration of architectural methodology, as the design and the architect’s practice inspired the creative direction of the summer design festival. As I watched visitors experiencing each pavilion, I saw fascinating contrasts in their responses that demonstrated the ways in which architecture can affect us. Presenting a new building in the same place to host a free public festival of design events is an opportunity to test architecture at the human scale in the urban realm. The festival includes an open call out for community participants, a series of design commissions responding to each pavilion, and features hundreds of performance art, fashion, talks and creative events. As a defining aspect of the initiative, the program extends the architectural experiment, sharing knowledge and sparking debate, and becoming an entry point to discover architecture.
The functionality of the MPavilion 4 (OMA, 2017) which was so exciting to work with as an event producer signalled to some that it was a busy working building and perhaps less inviting to visitors between events. Carme Pinós’ design the following year was set upon grassy mounds allowing seating to wrap around, and I frequently saw firsttime visitors perched outside taking in the scene gradually edging their way around to participate. Glenn Murcutt AO’s MPavilion 6 (2019) seemed to reveal the surrounding park anew, the landscape brought to the foreground. MPavilion 9 (allZone, 2022), designed in response to the challenges of social isolation during the pandemic, was infused with happiness and colour, a place of reconnection, release and fun times – and personally significant to me as it was my last. The tenth commission by Tadao Ando in 2023, another contrast in the series, can still be visited for the duration of the coming summer season.
The Open House Melbourne weekend, staged every July and now entering its 18th year, is one of the largest design festivals in the region. Every winter another 300 buildings, places, landscapes and institutions open their doors for the public to explore and discover the fabric of their city. During the weekend and throughout the year, Open House Melbourne
also presents a program of keynotes, walks, podcasts and films showcasing local architects, major projects and significant design issues. Another platform for community engagement around architecture and issues of the urban realm, working to enable a collective impact on the decisions that shape the way we live.
The experiments of the MPavilion demonstrate at a modest scale how architecture can take seemingly incompatible inputs and pressures and create an elegant, complete solution. Similarly, there are buildings revealed by Open House Melbourne across Victoria that show where architects have successfully transformed an impossibility into beauty and function. I have seen thousands of people enthralled and inspired by the insights and solutions offered by architects who have chosen to extend their professional focus, to areas as diverse as economics, big data, public policy, housing equality, decolonisation and social justice.
The most compelling profession shift relates to the way architecture can engage with the impacts of climate change, and our urgent need to adapt in anticipation of a world that is three degrees warmer by the end of the century, if not a good deal earlier. +3° is not new information, and we are not short of scientific proof and solutions. To find an effective, sustainable path forward for successful adaptation, we must consider sustainability in the most holistic sense. This might also achieve social justice and biodiversity, while simultaneously pursuing every possible effort to minimise climate change through ongoing mitigation. Understanding competing demands and collaboratively synthesising new solutions is a challenge that is well matched by the architecture profession. It is often said we don’t have time to start again. We must use what we have, to achieve transformative change, to successfully adapt to climate change. The built environment, and the systems of urban consumption have proven to be among the largest contributing factors to climate change. It could also present the most effective lever to adapt to, and mitigate, human-induced climate change. Reflecting on my experiences with architecture, the potential of architects to create and enable new cross-disciplinary approaches to dissolve barriers to climate action is its greatest potential as part of a revitalised effort to successfully adapt.
Sam Redston has produced creative projects for 30 years, running his own business to produce events and installations, and collaboratively creating new programs. From 2017-2023, Sam led the MPavilion team as CEO of the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. He continues to advocate for architecture and design as president of Open House Melbourne.
The leader
Words by Ted Baillieu
Victoria has brilliant architects. Worthy of acclaim. Deserving of our collective respect and attention. Capable of leading and with followings that stretch across the world. Of that, I, as an architect, have no doubt. But is this view true for the broader community? And if not, why not? It is a legitimate and confronting question. But arises from telling observations, I, after 30 years of public life, and others increasingly make. Victorian architects:
Do not enjoy the exclusive province that other professionals do eg. doctors, lawyers, engineers, and nor do they fight for it
Are responsible for only a tiny fraction of new buildings
Have little and declining influence on our community
Have little and declining engagement with civic life
Are distant from and not highly regarded by decision makers
Are reluctant to speak out
Have been displaced as leaders in the development process by project managers, contract novation, value managers and design competitors
Are not well rewarded
Face enormous, compliance burdens and insurance costs
Are not the most impactful advocates or communicators
Have few strong, outspoken leaders
Are largely unknown by the public, with little social media presence
Are silent, or very selective, on issues that directly impact their profession
Are increasingly vilified for failings of the broader industry
Struggle to explain their value
Appear unaware or unconcerned about such impressions.
Post settlement, Victoria was blessed with arrivals from around the world who established our State’s quintessential character. They were courageous, ambitious, aspirational, keen to establish businesses, build a future and had a remarkable focus on
excellence. They were also multicultural and very young. Those young, emboldened architects and decision makers were front and centre, establishing a remarkable civic legacy in Victoria.
But today, the architectural profession in Australia has become the quiet art. Its practitioners inclined to the mute and thoughtful. Even studios are places of screens, headphones, and silence. Industry publications are the staple platform, and even they seem to speak quietly, with tortuous descriptions and black and white photographs. In this day and age when architecture has become too often just the science of accommodation, the built environment and the benefits of good design need architects to speak up – indeed to shout.
It is fair to ask, on what issue relevant to the profession has the profession actively and specifically campaigned in the last 20 years? Sustainability has certainly been enjoined. But perhaps the biggest particular campaign of the profession’s recent choosing was over the proposed security fence around Parliament House in Canberra. A strange choice indeed, given both the circumstances and the fact that the Institute eventually and predictably rolled over.
So, who has been selling the profession in the last 20 years? Who has been leading the charge? A handful of good but not widely viewed television programs! Brave radio hosts! The odd documentary! Some very good people but sadly none are household names. We read often of new Institute presidents outlining new agendas. But their terms come and go too quickly. Change is only ever incremental.
Leading an issue, changing opinion, taking a stand, and having an impact requires vision, deep commitment, time, resources and powerful communication. Writing a letter, issuing a press release, attending a meeting, doing an interview isn’t enough.
And there is so much that warrants involvement. Some views may be tucked away on websites. If there are views, how accessible have they been or are they mostly internally held? Do the public, stakeholders or media know the profession’s view
on (and if so where is/was the campaign) any of the following, and if so, what has been achieved?
Strategic issues: Population, settlement and cities policies
Supply issues: loss or lack of competition in glass, brickmaking, timber, steel, aluminium, cement, energy, and manufacturing industries
Planning issues: Planning policy failures, activity centre policies, transport. Infrastructure needs, blow outs and failures, precinct structure plans
Procurement issues: tendering, unsolicited bids, public budgeting
Development issues: Shared ownership, inclusionary zoning, build-to-rent, modular formats, off-site construction and assembly, 3D printing, social housing, public housing, tower demolition
Construction costs: Escalation, world-wide relativities, high density/rise, cottage construction, differential costs, productivity
Housing issues: Housing targets, household size (planners v RBA), facilities, amenities, types, car parking, personal transport, warranty insurance, Affordability: definition, options, target markets, minimum standards, interest rates
Key development drivers: young families, downsizers, work forces, ageing cohorts, family proximity, schooling, health
Quality issues: Cladding, systemic defects in multiresidential, air quality
Regulatory and compliance issues: Code short comings, application of standards, enforcement, trade registration, exclusive province, monitoring
Taxation issues: Property tax dependence, land tax, levies, capital gains, negative gearing, stamp duty, foreign investment, charges, fees, rates
Education issues: Architectural courses, international students, competencies, recognition
Professional issues: Contract novation, value managers, project managers, insurance costs, WFH, Government Architect independence, powers and resources
Industrial issues: Awards, costs, impacts, site agreements, government benchmarks, CFMEU
Local government: Sidelining, local policy priority, VCAT.
Of course, some will say that there is no need for the profession to have a view on all issues. That may be so. But unless the profession is comfortable with declining influence,
respect and reward, strong views and strong advocates are essential. At present the media simply don’t instinctively know who to call. And those who might speak up, go largely unheard by the public.
Has the profession encouraged or supported those who have engaged in the broader polity – in the public sector, councils, or the State Government? It is certainly my view that an architectural education and professional background is an ideal foundation for a political career – part science, history, art, philosophy, theatre, planning, law, cultural, wellbeing, and part politics. And of course, the key part is the inquisitive, challenging, and creative mindset of an architect. Bear in mind, the simple skill of reading and understanding a drawing, on screen or paper, is currently almost non-existent in the decision-making world. But those who do take up the challenge need better support.
Over the last 25 years in particular, the built environment has been shaped, impacted, and led more by the cost of construction, accountants, realtors, the odd cult and the whims of uninformed politicians than by thoughtful planning or good design, let alone compelling architects. And that is a very vicious circle.
Now, my aim is not to smother you with gloom, but simply to face some uncomfortable truths, set aside the rosecoloured glasses and encourage the profession to speak up, to aim higher and to lead again. How best to do that? Simply be what you aspire to be. Be the architects of your own future. It’s time to go back to the drawing board. Invest in the next generation. Invest in new skills. Make training in communications, media, civics, relationship building, political activism and community networking as much a part of architectural education and every practice’s own continuing education commitment as training in materials, CAD, BIM and other technologies. Encourage those who embrace such training. Elevate their skills. Support them in the public arena. Reward them in the commercial world, travel them. Exchange them internationally. Let them lead. And as a profession, look again at the promotional platforms. Find the inner creatives. Reach out to the public. Not just to the comfort of peers. Cultivate the theatre of architecture and its adoring audiences. Find new ways of celebrating greatness. By all means write but write for the widest possible audience. Be available. Drop the reticence. Relish criticism. Shout, by all means scream. But sing as you do – songs that tell the story, music that moves public minds, stage sets that dazzle, and stars that know how to take a standing ovation with humility, gratitude and love. Be again the ambitious, aspiring leaders of the built environment that Victoria’s first new world architects were. It’s what Victorians have always been best at.
Ted Baillieu AO LFRAIA was the Premier of Victoria from 2010-2013. He serves as adjunct professor at Swinburne’s school of design and an honorary enterprise professor in the faculty of architecture at the University of Melbourne.
Reflections on an architect Section 4/4
The psychologist
Words by Anita Tesoriero
My perception of architects has been formed through many interactions in my capacity as a leadership advisor, career coach, team development facilitator, consultant, and counsellor. Overwhelmingly, the architects that I have met are passionate about their profession, proud of the contribution they make and are highly engaged in their work. As with any profession, the diversity of people and projects within these settings makes it difficult to distill a singular description for those that I have worked with.
I always notice a sense of style, an appreciation of the world of beauty and excellence that surrounds an architect. Often, when entering the foyer of a design studio I notice the photos displaying the projects built. I notice a beautiful chair or a highly polished floor. I notice some model buildings encased in glass – miniature versions of something that will soon appear. There is a mixture of creativity, functionality, and attention to detail. It sounds superficial, but I always notice the style of the architect that I am working with. I pay attention to the paper, pens with special nibs, and the particular block handwriting that even make the pages look stylish. However, these are just the superficial observations that come well before I begin my real work, beyond appearances and into the more accurate, real, messy, vulnerable, and complex parts of people, personalities, workplace politics and project pressures.
This involves challenges and heavy psychological loads. Architects are not only responsible for aesthetic outcomes but also for ensuring that their designs meet functional, safety and regulatory standards. In this high-pressure environment, I am often sought out by individuals or organisations to assist with:
Interpersonal conflict – which can arise due to subjective differences in opinion surrounding design, competing interests from various stakeholders, poor behaviours under pressure and ineffective communication and emotional intelligence skills.
Professional self-doubt – which emerges at times due to the pressure to continuously produce high-quality
outcomes. This can create a significant fear of failure, impossible perfectionistic standards and a story of unworthiness or feeling like an imposter. This insecurity can undermine confidence and hinder an individual’s ability to take risks and ultimately stifles work.
Workload stress and burnout – the long hours, clients demands, and tight deadlines can lead to a cycle of overwork, emotional exhaustion, negatively impacted personal relationships and reduced professional effectiveness.
When dealing with these challenges, the goals are always around the personal wellbeing of the architect, the creation of a healthy team culture, and the successful delivery of the project. There is great satisfaction experienced when playing to their strengths, working in a collaborative environment and producing high-quality outcomes. The consulting interventions I use work best when they are multi-layered and involve:
Individual coaching – working with an architect to explore their own personal values, career aspirations, motivations and communication style preferences. This creates a high level of self-awareness and an ability to focus on their own wellbeing, resilience, and mental fitness.
Team dynamics – working with teams to create a shared understanding of the desired behaviours and ways of working that are particular to their environment, such as a stronger understanding of each other’s communication styles and needs. There is also an opportunity to create programs that build emotional intelligence and focus on effective interpersonal communication, healthy conflict resolution skills and collaborative problem solving within teams. This works particularly well, when we bring together cross-functional teams involving architects, clients, project partners and consultants. Organisational culture – working with the wider organisation and senior leadership teams to define and embed a desired culture. This work takes a more strategic lens and involves developing employee engagement initiatives, professional learning programs, performance/feedback
protocols and competency frameworks that emphasise the equal importance of both relationships and results.
When this work is done proactively the outcomes are evident. Rather than waiting for ill-health to emerge in individuals, teams, or organisations, we are intervening proactively. This translates into a fulfilling, sustainable and successful career for the architect – marked by both inspiring achievements and formidable challenges. I feel privileged to continue to be invited to work with individuals and organisations who are playing a vital role in shaping the future of our built environment.
Anita Tesoriero is the founder and director of Mindspire Psychology and Consulting. Anita works with individuals, teams, and organisations to create psychological health, positive environments and to ensure that workplaces can truly be the engine room of wellbeing. Anita is insightful, empathic, and able to build strong, trusting and enduring relationships with her clients.
13.
The thinker
Juhani Pallasmaa is considered one of the great architectural thinkers of our time and his works Questions of Perception, The Eyes of the Skin, and The Thinking Hand are seminal architectural texts of the 20th century. Juhani, who was born in 1936, has had the privilege of knowing many of the great philosophers and architects of our time and as a young man he also knew the master Scandinavian architect Alvar Aalto. His reputation has meant he has also been a Pritzker Prize judge from 2009-2014, the award of which is considered the highest accolade an architect can receive.
In April 2015, I had the good fortune to meet Juhani Pallasmaa at the Abedian School of Architecture, Gold Coast, Australia, and to ask him several questions regarding what has shaped him as an architect, his thoughts on technology and beauty, and the role of evidence-based design. This meeting led to an interview with him, via correspondence once he returned to Finland.
Helsinki, 4 May 2015
Tim Leslie: Juhani, thank you for so kindly agreeing to answer these series of questions about your own perceptions on architecture. To begin with I would like to understand what shaped your youth and how this may have influenced your decision to become an architect and shaped your developing worldview. I am interested in understanding three key areas: books that shaped your early thinking, memorable places and spaces of your youth, and any pieces of architecture that you believe were catalysts.
Juhani Pallasmaa: Books
At the time I was in high school age, it was still customary to read the great classics of literature, which regrettably is not the case anymore. Books like Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, Fjodor Dostoyevski’s Crime and Punishment, and Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, opened entirely new worlds to a young mind and suggested that the world I was
experiencing around me was just one of the possible mental worlds. These great books also concretised issues of human fate and ethics for me. Later, I also began to read English and American literature as well as writers from other countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Hungary, and Turkey. Still later, books from Japan, South America and China became available in the Nordic countries.
During the past 25 years, I have read books in philosophy, psychology, anthropology and psychoanalysis, and most recently also in the neurosciences, in addition to literature. As a young architect I organised my books in two categories: architecture books and other books. Soon I realised that the other books where more inspiring and important for the understanding of the human and mental essence of settings and buildings than books on architecture.
Architecture books tend to present buildings as aestheticised objects through a distinct formalism, whereas literature presents buildings as lived experiences and part of the lives of the depicted human figures. In the past decades, I have read more texts by philosophers, poets, painters and film directors than architects. Architects simply do not write books like the essays of Joseph Brodsky, or the autobiographies of Jean Renoir, Luis Bunuel, Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, or Andrej Tarkovsky’s book Sculpting in Time
My full list of recommended reading would be too long to be included here. As I was Dean of the School of Architecture in Helsinki, I sent all the accepted new students a list of forty books to be read before entering the school. Still, I often recommend a few books to my students, such as Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Anton Chekhov’s letters, Joseph Brodsky’s Watermark, Jorge Luis Borges´Labyrinths, and Paul Valéry’s Dialogues, especially the dialogue Eupalinos, or the Architect. But I could just as well recommend Vincent van Gogh’s letters, or Henri Matisse’s and Paul Cézanne’s short essays, or numerous other books by artists.
I feel that the important thing is to keep reading,
An interview with Juhani Pallasmaa by Tim Leslie
Kiasma, Helsinki
Architect: Steven Holl
Photo by Tim Leslie
not so much what you read. Reading widens and empowers your imagination, sensitises your emotions and strengthens your capacity of empathy and compassion. Looking at great works of art and listening to great music is equally important; it simply makes you a better human being. Be like me, is the imperative of a great poem, Joseph Brodsky suggests. All arts, including architecture, are engaged in the same task, and that is the attempt to make our mental lives more true and dignified. I have 10,000 books in my office library and each book is valuable to me in its own specific way. Books are not primarily for information, as their greatest value is that they permit us to imagine narratives of culture and lived life.
Places
For anyone, places of childhood and youth are significant; they are part of our very constitution. I lived the war years 1939-45 at my farmer grandfather’s humble farmhouse, and the settings and situations of ordinary farm life were engrained in my memory, no, they became engrained in my entire body. Now, approaching the age of eighty, I can still return to these places and spaces and recall their sounds, smells, and temperatures. I have been fortunate enough to travel the world for 50 years and visit most of the places that one would wish to visit as an architect. For me numerous places have made a decisive impact, from the temples of Luxor to the Dogon villages at the Bandiagara Canyon in Mali, and from Machu Picchu to the Rio-an-ji zen garden in Kyoto. I carry these places with me no matter where I am. I have also been fascinated by deserts from Sahara to the Sonoran Desert in Arizona, and from the all-snow landscapes of Lapland to the metaphysical emptiness of the great oceans; the imaginary line where the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean meet outside of the Cape of Good Hope, emanates a special magic.
Architecture
I have understood the simple functionality and beauty of the farmhouse and auxiliary buildings of my grand father only later when I was already studying architecture. In my youth I did not understand architecture as a specific art form. On my daily school trips by streetcar in Helsinki, I passed the Serpent House, a meandering apartment building designed by Yrjö Lindegren in 1952, and this building fired my imagination; the building seemed to be moving instead of myself, sitting in the streetcar. I had been thinking of becoming a medical doctor, a surgeon to be exact, but I entered architecture school instead, and I believe that it was this serpentine apartment block that twisted my mind. I have realised that I did not go too far from my original intention as both the medical doctor and the architect aspire to improve the human condition.
Later on, when I was already studying architecture, the great works of the modern masters impressed me greatly. I must say sincerely that I began to value historical buildings, such as those by Brunelleschi, Michelangelo and the baroque masters, only later; I first learned to see the timeless qualities
of architecture through modern buildings. I believe that through experience my appreciation of architecture has deepened from aesthetic values to existential qualities. The deep melancholia of Michelangelo’s works moves me especially strongly, and for me, he is the greatest of architects.
I have been fortunate to know many of the best architects and architectural writers of our time personally. I can say that it is easier, or emotionally more clear, to have an admiring relationship with buildings of designers, or works of art by artists unknown to me than by my friends. It seems to me that great works exist in an autonomous universe of their own, and that distance or autonomy tends to weaken if you know the maker.
My first great architect idol was, of course, Le Corbusier, and then Mies van der Rohe. Only later I have learned to appreciate the less orthodox architectures of Frank Lloyd Wright and Alvar Aalto, for instance. I used to regard Louis Kahn as a curiosity, but now he is in my Pantheon of the greatest. His Kimbell Museum, Salk Institute and the Parliament of Bangladesh in Dacca are supreme works of architecture for me. They are of our time, but at the same time, they invigorate the entire history of art. That is the power of all great art works; they make us see the entire history of art in a new light. We are conditioned to think of art in general in futuristic terms –the influence of predecessors on us, but an equally important influence is the reverse perspective of how the great modernist artists from Cézanne onwards have changed our views of the history of art. The modernists have resurrected the Neolithic cave paintings, for instance.
TL: Technology is allowing for the cost-effective creation of complex geometries at scale, previously often only available through the low-cost labour markets of centuries past. Threedimensional printing, multi-axis robotic arms, sophisticated computer programming, are providing a range of efficiencies within the industry. What are your thoughts about the opportunities and potential challenges that technologies bring to architecture?
JP: Technology
I realise the possibilities that the new technologies are opening for us, yet I am somewhat skeptical. Architecture is still in its very essence the art of the mind, the hand, the heart and human imagination and compassion. Great architecture arises from existential wisdom, sensitised senses and a poetised mind. Art and architecture are about the poetic essence of the world and life, not of technology. It would be foolish not to use the newest technologies, but architectural qualities continue to be mental, experiential, and poetic. The architect’s imaginative and empathic capacity is still more important than any technology.
TL: Evidence-based design has been a developing area of investigation in architecture, particularly in health care projects. Part of its success in being supported by clients, lies in the ability to quantify faster healing times through good design measures
such as access to light, views to landscape, natural materials. Do you see this ability to quantify the benefit of good design happening more often and is it occurring in other building types?
JP: I have myself written quite a lot on the new scientific views of the qualities in design, as seen for instance, through research in neuroscience, but I want to say that subtle creative minds have always understood how atmospheres, spaces, places, materials, forms, and colours work on the human nervous system and mind. The poetic intuition is always ahead of the scientific mind in the existential perspective, and in fact, they are interested in different things. Poetic imagery explores human existential experiences, while science studies the logical and functional structure of things. I believe in the continuity of humanist architecture based on human empathy, compassion, and intuition. I do not believe that evidencebased design can create a better healing environment than Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sanatorium of the early 1930s, based on empathy and “designing for man at his weakest” as Aalto wrote.
I do not want to underestimate evidence-based design, but our empathic imaginative power is still our best bet, and remains so, as we are bound to design for human bodies and minds, not numerical or statistical conditions.
TL: In one of your lectures, you discuss the problem of contemporary architects being too focused on seeking beautiful buildings and the pursuit of celebrity. Today [2015],
my observation is it is rare to hear of architects directly discussing beauty or stating they are striving for beauty in their projects. It is common to hear an architect state they wish their buildings to be iconic, even interesting or controversial. I would contend it is far easier to design an interesting or controversial building than it is to strive for a beautiful or sublime one. Beauty, many Modernists may state, is not universal and lies in the eye of the beholder and therefore it should not and cannot be explicitly pursued. Do you think beauty is a vexed word in relation to architecture and should we be seeking something else?
JP: Beauty
I have argued that architecture is threatened today by two opposite tendencies, total functionalisation and total aestheticisation. But beauty is a fundamentally deeper notion and experience than mere aestheticisation. I think in the same way as Joseph Brodsky, that beauty is the driving force of evolution. But, as the poet also writes, beauty cannot be targeted, as it is the consequence of other concerns, and often of quite mundane ones.
In our time the meaning of the notion of beauty has become quite confused. The modern era has not been consciously or theoretically interested in beauty, whereas beauty was the self-evident goal of art until the industrial era, or perhaps, the Romantic movements of the late 19th century.
For me, beauty is a primary concern, but I understand it as integrity, wholeness, singularity, or universality. Beauty reveals the timeless essence of things.
Juhani Pallasmaa SAFA Hon. FAIA Int FRIBA born 1936 in Hameenlinna, Finland, is a Helsinki-based architect, exhibition designer, and town planner. He is also a prolific essayist and the former director of both the Finnish Museum of Architecture and the architecture program at Helsinki University of Technology, where he graduated in 1966. A winner of the Finnish State Architecture Award, he taught at the Helsinki University of Technology.
Tim Leslie FRAIA is principal adviser of the Office of the Victorian Government Architect Design Review and board member of the Architects Registration Board Victoria. He is a former studio director of Bates Smart, founder and former president of Open House Melbourne, and former Victorian state manager of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Skyspace by artist James Turrell, Canberra.
Photo by Tim Leslie
What does the concept of home mean to you?
Home, to me, is a safe space. I guess it is an extension of my identity and my family and is reflected in how we have set up the space we live in and the objects we surround ourselves with. Our home is a place of refuge where I can retreat and completely unwind. Although it is also where I do a lot of my design work and admin, perhaps because it is a comfortable and safe place. In the past few years, we have moved multiple times, but we have maintained and created this consistent sense of home in each location.
As someone who creates pieces of furniture for the home, how does your creative process start with each project? For me, it is really important to connect with the client to understand the purpose
Thomas Lentini
of the commissioned piece, its end use, and its meaning to the client. My process usually begins with a site visit of existing spaces or gaining a sense of a new build project from the architect or interior designer. Often, I'll be able to respond to a palette of a room, a material selection that is consistent with the project and an overall feeling of a space. Sometimes, the prompt is an existing piece, such as a chair or artwork, and I design to respond. Getting a sense of who I am creating an item for and understanding the values of that person and place is very important to me. I like to build a rapport with the client to ensure my piece contributes to their space's narrative. A large portion of my commissions are dining tables. So often, the dining table is the central object within a home. Therefore, it's even more important for my clients and me to have a relationship and
to ensure that our engagement underpins the piece. From my perspective, the table is perhaps the most important object within a home – it's where people come together and meet or share meals, or maybe because it is usually the largest object in someone's home. I love it when I return to visit a piece and can clearly see that it has been used and loved. Most of my jobs come through direct contact, referral, or an existing relationship with architects and designers.
How do you choose the pieces you surround yourself with in your own home?
I often discuss this with my family and friends. My partner and I both work in the craft and design industry, and a lot of the pieces we are surrounded by are directly related to projects we have worked on, special relationships with makers, or they are pieces I have made – sometimes odd
Furniture maker at home
Interview and photography by Elizabeth Campbell
bits and pieces or an experimental prototype. Our home has never been curated, but rather, the pieces are an outcome of our work relationships, gifts from friends or chosen because of an emotional or gut response – we've had a few of those moments where you look at something and because it makes you feel a certain way that's enough to be able to be like "yup, let's have it in our home.” Most of the pieces in our home have a story behind them, and assembled together, they reflect us and our community. Together, they create good vibes.
How do you hope your pieces contribute to someone's home? Can you give us an example through a project you have completed?
At the very least, the ambition of a piece is to enhance a space and evoke a response from people when they see it for the first time, but the ultimate goal is that the piece works within a space and is loved and used.
Something that has evolved over the years and is more commonplace now is that I have the freedom from most clients
to get quite sculptural and create pieces that, as well as have a function, are also a form of sculptural art (in the words of a client). It’s wonderful and a privilege to do that with the dining table - a piece that means so much to people. I often receive photographs from clients when they’re hosting friends or family, or I might get invited back for a drink or a coffee every so often to say hello and see how things are going. I love to see the signs of life happening around an object.
An example is a recent dining table I created for a project with Flack Studio. Richie designed the house, and it's unlike anything I've been a part of or seen in Australia. The table sits in a room with a double-height glass wall, marble floor and a three-story spiral coreten steel staircase. The table needed to match the boldness of the space, so we turned to strong sculptural forms and the use of colour. We considered the table design from various viewpoints, as it can be viewed from the street, living room, garden, and mezzanine. The piece is of scale at 4.5 metres long and proudly sits as a centre point of the house.
Elizabeth Campbell RAIA is a senior architect at the City of Melbourne. She is a contributing editor of Architect Victoria.
Thomas Lentini is a furniture maker and designer specialising in solid timber dining tables. His designs draw inspiration from architecture, nature, and materials to create direct and meaningful heirloom pieces that respond to an intended space.
Architect Victoria
Right Timber shelves house gifts from friends and chosen objects.
Pictured: Prof. Dana Cuff at 2024 Australian Architecture Conference
