20 Years of Great Places

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20 years WHERE WE BEGAN - ROBERTSDAY CELEBRATES 20 YEARS OF PRACTICE ACROSS AUSTRALIA

6 DEVELOPERS AND PLANNERS SHARE WITH US WHAT REALLY MAKES THEM TICK

5 IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED THE FIRM 4 PEOPLE & 5 PLACES THAT HAVE INSPIRED US

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We’re passionate about place.

This issue we reflect on 20 years of shaping great places and some of the people who’ve been part of that journey.

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10_ great people

In the 20 years we’ve been working on great places, we’ve worked with a lot of great people. From a planner working on city renewal to visionary founders of exciting new towns, here are six Australians quietly shaping the way we live.

07_ where it began

The founders of RobertsDay recall how it began, what kept it together and some thoughts on where it’s going.

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04_ 4 people who have helped shape our ideas & approach.

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5 places that have enriched our thinking & creativity.

5 ideas 5 ideas that continue to drive our practice

It takes the right kind of team to marry the art of planning and the science of design into a union that sets the foundation for a truly great place.

Here's ours.

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Whether the task is urban renewal or designing a new town, we apply a repeatable process that gives an unrepeatable outcome.

introduction_ In this issue we reflect on 20 years of shaping great places and profile some of the people who have been part of that journey.

RobertsDay celebrates a double milestone this year: 20 years since its founding in Perth on Melbourne Cup Day 1993 and over 10 years with studios in Sydney and Melbourne.

From humble beginnings around a dining room table to a national practice with studios in three key states, together we’ve built a culture that has nurtured an incredibly talented and passionate team of people.

It began with a partnership that endures today. Our two founders, Erwin Roberts and Mike Day, have shared with us their insight, values and goal of making a difference, for two decades.

Of course, like a great place, the RobertsDay journey is all about a broad community of people – particularly our loyal and supportive group of likeminded clients and network of colleagues in government and industry.

These friends have shared and championed our work.

This edition of great places magazine is a showcase of that journey and a mark of

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gratitude to that community of people who have made it possible.

From the early days in WA exploring better ways to respond to the coastal setting, to sharing the latest international breakthroughs tailored to the Australian context and branching out to the east coast and international shores, it’s a journey that has been packed with adventure.

It’s also a journey that will continue as we adapt and innovate, finding better ways to grow and develop our towns and cities.

We hope you enjoy this special edition of great places magazine and we look forward to continuing the journey with you.

Deon White Managing Director

“It’s also a journey that will continue as we adapt and innovate, finding better ways to grow and develop our towns and cities.”

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03_ Peter Cala, landscape architect

RobertsDay has been inspired by a number of people over its 20-year journey. Here are four colleagues who have helped shaped our collective ideas and approach.

“The late Peter Cala was the consummate professional: well researched, eloquent, considered. He always acted in the best interests of his clients whilst adopting an inclusive, engaging and collaborative style.

Complementing these skills was a wicked sense of humour that underpinned his refusal to take life too seriously – which brought great pleasure to those of us fortunate enough to work with him!”

Erwin Roberts

01_Margaret Feilman, planner “Margaret’s achievements in the town planning profession are unique in Australia. Throughout her career she was at the forefront of town planning practice, leading by example and serving as a role model.

Margaret was appointed to design Kwinana, the first new town in Western Australia and she strove to make towns throughout Western Australia better places to live. Margaret’s approach to town planning was collaborative, embracing kindred professions in the planning process and it stemmed from an avid interest in natural and human habitats. In 1983 Margaret was appointed Chair of the Town Planning Board of Western Australia, enabling her to apply her extensive knowledge and expertise in the areas of planning policy, heritage and environmental management. She had a lifetime of progressive practice that has inspired us all.”

Mike Day

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02_ George Seddon, academic and author

“Long before American planning guru Andrés Duany ‘invented’ the transect, Australian academic George Seddon (seen above in the portrait I painted; a finalist in the 2007 Archibald Prize) had issued the clarion call for its use in his seminal book Sense of Place. Described by the ABC’s Robyn Williams as ‘the professor of everything’, Seddon deeply inspired a generation of planners in the 1970s to plan with an understanding of country, but with a respect for the human dimension.”

Peter Ciemitis

04_Martin Bowman, environmental scientist “Martin brings an inimitable pragmatism to environmental science. A leader in defining the role of his profession in the land development industry, he has had a profound, guiding influence on planners aiming to strike the right balance between ecological outcomes and commercial and social aspirations. His interpersonal and meticulous approach to business has a steadying influence on all who work with him – none more so than those of us at RobertsDay.” Duane Cole

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03_East Perth “The redevelopment of East Perth involved turning around a significantly contaminated and dilapidated site and creating a vibrant example of quality mixed use development. As advocates for mixed use development, particularly within inner city areas, when the time came for the company to seek new office space, we saw the opportunity to ‘walk the talk’ by relocating our office to East Perth.

Today, we still find East Perth a vibrant and enriching place to be.”

Erwin Roberts

Some places leave an indelible impression.

Here are five places at home – and around the world – that have enriched our thinking and sparked our creativity.

01_Seaside “In March 1995 I attended the inaugural three-day seminar on the Technique of Traditional Town Planning convened by the Seaside Institute on the Florida coast. That forum was a planning epiphany for me. The entire team that had designed, founded and were marketing the town of Seaside, willingly imparted the lessons learnt in designing and building the most successful new community in America for 50 years. Each of the presenters demonstrated a level of conviction and enthusiasm I had not previously experienced in the industry in Australia, or the US. Moreover, it was readily apparent that Andrés Duany was the driving force amongst the town founding team and that he had comprehensively researched the origins of neighbourhood unit - the most effective vessel in laying the foundation for compact, connected, mixed use and walkable communities. Since that visit we have returned to Seaside on numerous occasions with our co-consultants and clients and tailored many of the Seaside design techniques to our practice in Australia.“ Mike Day

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02_ Rottnest

“I grew up in the older coastal suburbs of Perth and I have very fond memories of learning to swim at Cottesloe Beach and holidaying at Rottnest every August. Those memories were at the fore particularly as we worked on Jindee. Back in 2002, my first week at RobertsDay was spent at the Jindee Planning Design Forum. We were exploring the opportunities to create an authentic coastal village with a community-based lifestyle that respected and celebrated the natural terrain and coastal vegetation. In many ways, we were reinterpreting the design elements of traditional coastal settlements like Rottnest, in a contemporary manner.”

Martine White

04_Surry Hills & South Melbourne

“When we established in Melbourne and Sydney 10 years ago we were instantly drawn to the grit and eclectic character of Surry Hills and South Melbourne and their industrial warehouse workspaces.

It was a deliberate move, which symbolises our intense interest and involvement in urban regeneration and placemaking. The experience has put us at the centre of two incredible ‘urban laboratories’ where we have witnessed the creative renewal and re-use of century old building stock, the sensitive integration of new, high density development and it has introduced us to the creative entrepreneurs that drive the street art, galleries, roasting houses, bars and cafés that make these lively, neighbourhoods so sought after. It has shaped a whole new wave of thinking in our team.”

Deon White

05_Copenhagen “I first visited Copenhagen in 2001 and I was struck by the way its regulatory framework really encourages people to embrace sustainability; the way the city plans for ‘people places’ not cars and parking and the way it has demonstrated that cycling can work anywhere if there is investment in the right infrastructure.

Today, it continues to be an enduring source of inspiration for me and others.”

Stephen Moore

five ideas_ Some ideas resonate so strongly they become the foundation of an approach that not only endures but also develops over time.

Here are five ideas that continue to shape the ethos of RobertsDay. 01_place The character and life of the places in which we live fundamentally shapes our quality of life. As a firm, we’ve acknowledged this since our inception. In the history of the planning profession there has never been more interest in, and exploration of the art of designing places for people.

02_neighbourhood If ‘place’ enhances the experience, then ‘neighbourhood’ is the natural building block of the human habitat. Whether it’s the blank canvas of a metropolitan growth area or the rich palette of the inner city, how we activate and integrate the neighbourhood is our most important contribution to shaping a great living environment.

03_walkability The desire to explore our communities on foot or by bike is now a global phenomenon. Whether for human interaction, cost, health or joy, walkable neighbourhoods are the most sought after.

04_adaptability One of the core ideas we’ve long held true to, is adapting to context to deliver more than plans and theory.

It’s a hallmark of the practice and a consistent focus of our approach to blend vision with practical, built outcomes – innovation in practice.

05_collaboration Collaboration is the hallmark of our practice and the rocket fuel for innovation. It’s the vital ingredient that allows you to reveal the underlying qualities of a place, building a wider vision for the future and ultimately, creating great places.

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where it began

Erwin Roberts and Mike Day have had an enduring partnership. While the firm is now far bigger than the two of them, here our founders recall how it began, what kept it together and some thoughts on where it’s going.

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where it began_mike

We set up RobertsDay on Melbourne Cup Day 1993, the same day we left Feilman Planning Consultants. It was sudden. We resigned, were asked to hand in the keys to our company cars and we finished up that day. I’ll never forget standing there in the carpark; Erwin holding his cardboard box of bits and pieces and his mum coming to collect him in her little yellow Ford Laser. It was like we were being picked up from school.

Erwin and I had met 13 years earlier. We both worked in the state planning department; not closely, but we were there together for five years. I then joined Feilman Planning Consultants and a few years later after a long discussion over a pub lunch Erwin joined me. We spent 5 years together at Feilman Planning as associate directors.

The genesis of RobertsDay for me began about a year before we left the old firm. I was working for a client designing a coastal village and we were asked to explore international best practice. That research project exposed me to the fundamentals of timeless neighbourhood design being used by the leading planner and a town founder in the US.

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A few months later when I began working on Ellenbrook, I proposed the adoption of the same design principles.

Incredibly, they were embraced and the subsequent plans endorsed in record time. The experience showed me that if you have the right team around you and passionately believe in what you are doing, then you can bring about change.

I’m strong willed and flighty.

Erwin’s measured. And that’s what I knew would be our strength, that Erwin would temper my exuberance. I also knew that we had a huge amount of respect for each other; we fed off each other, we always have.

It was a pretty frugal beginning.

We bought a couple of mobile phones and worked off my dining room table for the first few weeks.

Our only means of transport was a second hand Subaru wagon we leased for $100 a week from a planning mate. When we did move to our first office in West Perth we sat on cardboard boxes.

We had a shared vision from day one: shaping walkable places that would change people’s lives. It was about designing for humans; creating places that people would

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live in for generations. It was also founded on developing a culture within RobertsDay where people enjoyed each other’s company and felt they were creating places of lasting value.

My most endearing and enduring memory of Erwin is a gift he shared with me. In our first week of business Erwin’s dad penned him a very personal, father-to-son note. He wrote about the lessons learnt during the 30 years he’d spent as a director of a leading Australian quantity surveying firm and that the journey Erwin was about to embark on was akin to marriage – as Erwin would be spending more time with me than with his wife. In sharing that letter with me I could really see that Erwin was a ‘chip off the old block’ and it reaffirmed my decision to partner with him.

I’ve kept my copy of that letter close over the past 20 years, often reflecting on the phenomenal commitment Erwin has made to building some of our strongest alliances and being the steadying influence throughout our time together. The note is also special to me as I lost my dad the year before we set up RobertsDay. I look forward to partnering with Erwin for many more years.

“I’m strong willed and flighty. Erwin’s measured. And that’s what I knew would be our strength…”

where it began_erwin

The early days were certainly modest beginnings. Starting from day one and needing to call Mum to give me a lift home (having handed back the company car that morning), through the first couple of weeks when we were working off Mike’s dining room table. This was our first ‘office’, shared for a while with my new colleagues: Mike’s three cats. Those that know me well know cats and I don’t see eye to eye; we’ve never really clicked. In planning for the challenges of establishing a new business, I can safely say that sharing space with three cats was not on my radar.

Mike and I are yin and yang.

Whilst we are quite different we complement each other. Mike’s flamboyant, impulsive and engaging. I’m more reserved, measured and considered. His expertise is in design; mine is the statutory side and negotiation of approvals. We do however share an optimist’s view, but even then we differ. I see the glass as half full, but as always Mike sees it overflowing. We are different and that’s why it works.

For him, nothing is impossible.

There’s always potential; always an upside. It’s not that he doesn’t

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“I see the glass as half full … Mike sees it overflowing. We are different and that’s why it works.” see the obstacles but that he just insists on making it happen.

And Mike always sees a bigger, bolder picture.

I’ll give you an example. About 18 months into the business we had our first strategy meeting to consider the future of our fledgling company. I’d given a lot of thought to it, a lot of preparation. I said, ‘Look, I can see us growing to eight people.’

And Mike, with no hesitation, said, ‘Oh, it would be 12.’ And I’m thinking, ‘That’s 50 per cent bigger than I figured. How can he be thinking that?’ But that’s Mike’s view of the world: there are opportunities out there and nothing is going to stop us.

Of course over the journey there have been ups and downs.

In those formative years, establishing a cash flow was an ongoing challenge. The first nine months were particularly stressful. The reality was that

there was very little money coming in at times and that’s when the magnitude of what we were attempting to achieve, and how hard this thing might be was hammered home.

We started the company believing there was a better way to do the business – excellence in design, a priority on service and adopting a collaborative approach as our business model.

Reflecting on the last 20 years there is much I am proud of.

That includes being part of a team that has built a successful national practice and brand, attracted and worked with great people, delivered great places on the ground and influenced the way people live their lives.

Has Mike changed much? No. He’s still the same passionate dynamo who 20 years ago agreed to embark on this journey together.

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great people

In the 20 years we’ve been working on great places, we’ve worked with a lot of great people. From a planner working on city revitalisation to visionary founders of exciting new towns, here are six Australians quietly shaping the way we live.

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Peter Monks Just lucky? Or super-achiever? Peter Monks says his long list of achievements is more the result of serendipity.

Peter climbs mountains, swims oceans, hikes, cooks, likes modern art and waxes lyrical about music. He’s a can-do kind of guy. He’s taken this spirit into town planning roles in Fremantle, Rockingham, Perth and now Sydney. As Director of Planning and Environment for Waverley Council, he again joins forces with RobertsDay. He cites his work in the early 90s with architects Patric De Villiers and Agnieshka Kiera in historic Fremantle as his most formative. Then a five-year spell in Rockingham set him up for the ‘big end of town’.

“It was a tremendous time to be working in Perth. In the early 2000s, if it got approved, it got built,” Peter says.

With Perth chock full of developers, Peter began to make his mark. On the back of

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strong leadership from Perth City Council he built his resume on some prestige projects. They include the St George’s Terrace upgrade, Perth City Link, Perth Waterfront, Forrest Place and Perth City Library, as well as several laneway and strategic visioning projects such as the award winning What If project.

However, he says his proudest achievement was bringing back the people. His work involved literally bringing the community back to the city of Perth.

Peter’s approach to planning was seeded in childhood and his father’s role was pivotal.

He grew up in Port Hedland, then a dusty mining town of 500 people, where his father, the founding harbour master, helped build the foundations of the town that would become known as ‘the engine room of the nation’.

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As Port Hedland boomed, Peter saw planning attempts to deal with the growing population become a lesson in what not to do.

“A master plan was done for a town of 40,000 and of course [the new town] South Hedland never got that big,” he says. “It’s a classic example of two things: over-designing and having no appreciation of the local climate or culture.”

With town planning in his blood and South Hedland on his mind, he enrolled at Curtin University, where he met Mike Day and Erwin Roberts. Their paths would cross from time to time during Peter’s career in Perth. Fast forward to Waverley, NSW, and RobertsDay has now undertaken the Complete Streets Study, a holistic transformation of the public domain of Bondi Junction.

After completing his degree in 1980, Peter went “out into the world to see how this all worked.” He settled for a spell in a divided Berlin, travelled the Trans Siberian Railway through the then Soviet Union, and took himself so far off the beaten track he ended up in South Sudan teaching English.

“It was a great exercise linking good health to good planning and convincing a community their lives could get better…”

There, he witnessed a firsthand example of how planning at grassroots level can change people’s lives.

He met a British volunteer town planner called Tim Allen, who was doing "this wonderful program” where he demonstrated to the local community the link between their

poor health and lack of any system of toilets.

After some memorable negotiations with the local witch doctor and a series of surveys, Peter recalls how Tim managed to convince the people they could save half their income usually spent on medical bills, by

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digging simple pit latrines away from drinking water.

The experience had a significant impact on Peter who subsequently named his first born son after Tim. “It was a great exercise linking good health to good planning and convincing a community their lives could get better, even if you have to be a bit unorthodox about it,” he says.

Peter continues to challenge convention. For instance, using innovative, interactive

art installations and pop up public spaces the Bondi Junction community is able to 'experience' the look and feel of the impending transformation. If it likes what it sees, RobertsDay’s Bondi Junction Public Domain Improvements Plan will begin to take shape.

Progress will be slow and steady though, Peter says, with full consultation every step of the way. He laughs, “one street at a time, one witch doctor at a time.”

01_The future Bondi Junction main street.

When I was ten I wanted to be….

My greatest achievement…

The only thing I ever wanted to be besides what I became was a cricket commentator; there still might be time for me!

I’d probably say raising two sensible, level-headed and lovely children.

On RobertsDay

My greatest regret….

“When we put the brief out [for the Bondi Junction project] they came back and said, ‘we can meet the brief or we can do an awful lot more if we take a far more holistic view’. They were integral to broadening this study out and making it a ‘whole of place’ type study,” Peter says of collaborating with RobertsDay on the Bondi Junction project.

I’m motivated by…

Getting something through the system, getting something built and seeing the thrill of people’s reaction to something new and unexpected.

There are a few but I won’t ever tell!

The legacy I want to leave behind…

Leaving the place better than it was when I arrived.

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As lead consultants for the project, working with project collaborators Anderson Hunter Horne, RobertsDay prepared the Bondi Junction Complete Streets Report, pulling together a plethora of urban development data to outline the council’s public domain improvements plan for the next 20 years.

“They put forward a very innovative plan and they followed through the whole way,” Peter says. “They helped us with some pop ups, some demonstrations, and public art projects, just as an example of getting the community on board; that their fears needn’t be founded.”

The Bondi Junction Complete Streets Plan is currently out for public ‘experience’.

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Tony Carey From Bankstown-boy to CIC’s COO and more. Tony Carey shares his story.

Whatever Tony Carey and his colleagues have been up to over the past decade, it’s worked. In an economic downturn they flourished. In fact, they’ve been so successful that WA-developers Peet completed their total buy-out of CIC earlier this year, paying $76 million for their final tranche of shares in the process.

But just how did a scrappy kid from Bankstown go from starting out in property in a new company called CIC with five staff and no profile, to being the COO of that same respected corporation, responsible for some of the more progressive developments in the country?

“We had a very good core team,” Carey says, deflecting any credit for the company’s success.

“We had a shareholder in the Guinness Peat Group under Sir

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Ron Brierley that was committed to the growth of the company.”

However, Carey also says that at a time when developers were becoming as loathed as used car salesmen, he and his colleagues earned respect and financial rewards due to innovation and insight.

“Key to the success was that we offered the services of our most senior people; you weren’t shoved down the line. Being good corporate citizens we made an early commitment to sustainability, plus we offered new, affordable housing.”

Unlike some of their contemporaries, what CIC offered was a people-centric mindfulness in design and planning; they weren’t churning out ugly, dysfunctional, sprawling neighbourhoods. The Googong project in outer Queanbeyan, on

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which RobertsDay collaborated, reflects this mindfulness.

“There’s been a lot of pretty poor urban development in Australia over the last 20 to 30 years. They weren’t creating terribly liveable, safe or attractive places and planners and the development industry bore the blame for a lot of that. And rightly so,” he says.

“If government had an attitude of facilitation rather than regulation and that was driven by an objective of ‘town founding’ then that would alter the perception of developers and planners.”

“If you think back to the great places and towns and cities throughout the world, you’ll find they were founded by forward thinking people.”

The UNSW graduate isn’t unnecessarily idealistic and he unapologetically describes himself as a capitalist. His 25 years in the industry coupled with his earnest desire to do better has also given him the practical insight on how to achieve this.

“Communities have become more sophisticated in the 21st century and expect more of government and industry than the fairly

“Communities have become more sophisticated in the 21st century and expect more of government and industry than the fairly average stuff that was delivered from the 60s to the 90s…”

average stuff that was delivered from the 60s to the 90s, which has spurred the industry on to delivering high quality outcomes.”

It’s not rhetoric. Tony has lived for the past 24 years in one of CIC’s first communities in a home and neighbourhood he helped design.

“It’s also spurred the political environment on to demand projects and places that are more attuned to people’s needs and aspirations.”

Now having resigned from CIC, Tony is leaving Googong in safe hands. However his pretend retirement involves Tony Carey Consultancy and collaborating

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again with RobertsDay on a major project in West Belconnen for the Riverview Group.

“If you talk to Mike Day, developers should consider themselves as town founders, and I like that terminology because that’s what we do.”

“Every road we build, every house we design, and every path we create, can add positively or negatively to the environment and it’s incumbent upon us to make sure it’s a positive contribution.”

Carey takes his role in planning people’s lives seriously. He attributes this sense of moral responsibility to his mother

Noelle, whom he describes with the warmth of her hugs.

He cites Frank Lloyd Wright and Marion and Walter Burley Griffin as professional influences and defers regularly to colleagues for the roles they’ve played in his success.

Undoubtedly a different tale will be told as the kid from Sydney’s southwest pens the next chapter in his life. The constant will be those same ethics and influences underscoring the success of his life’s work, guaranteeing positive outcomes for everyone involved.

01_ & 02_ Googong town centre

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On RobertsDay When I was ten I wanted to be….

My greatest achievement…

The legacy I want to leave behind…

Well it certainly wasn’t a town planner! At that age I probably wanted to be a pilot.

My family and my kids and seeing the quality of young adults they’ve become. I’d say Googong too, but no, I’m proud of all of the communities we’ve established.

Professionally I’d have to say I’d like to be remembered for creating great places.

I’m motivated by…

Achievement; in seeing the fruits of my labour benefiting the families who have created their communities.

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My greatest regret….

Attempting to sing Frank Sinatra in karaoke, or not traveling more earlier in life.

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CIC collaborated with RobertsDay on Googong, the largest contemporary urban development in the Sydney to Canberra corridor. RobertsDay was engaged to craft a vision, lead the structure planning team and set the development agenda.

As a firm, “the good thing about them is that they’re very open to discussing the commerciality of the proposals and ensuring the end result delivers not only a great place to live but a financially successful project,” Tony says.

In addition, he recalls, “Mike’s philosophy on what is required to create great communities, great places for people to live and those timeless principles around walkability, connectivity, mixed-use density, safety, high quality housing diversity and the like, grabbed me.”

RobertsDay is again collaborating with Tony and his client the Riverview Group on a project in the ACT’s West Belconnen area.

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Peter Tapiolas We are family. Peter Tapiolas shares a story that really began in Spain over a hundred years ago.

In 1911, the Tapiolas family celebrated the 100-year anniversary of 19-year old Bruno Tapiolas’ immigration from impoverished Sabadel on the outskirts of Barcelona.

Described as a gentle, loving man with no education but an enterprising mind, Peter’s grandfather Bruno and his three sons would go on to forge the Parkside Group, now one of the largest development and home building companies north of Brisbane, and one of the biggest private hardwood sawmill companies in Australia.

“We grew up knowing that our future was the family business,” says Peter. He and brother Robert and sister Dianne, their 83-year old father Joe, cousin Wilfred Jnr and his father Wilfred Snr are all still actively involved.

Peter says he was the only one of his siblings not to go

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to university. “I wasn’t smart enough to do those things,” he says with a laugh. “I finished school on the Friday and started in the business on the Monday as a junior clerk. I learnt, made lots of mistakes and got kicked up the arse by both my grandfather and father, plenty of times.”

When one of their building material branches in Ayr needed a manager, Peter landed the job. It was swim or drown, Peter says.

“That’s where I cut my teeth in the building material business and I learnt a lot from people I was working with at Parkside.”

Cut to today, and the family business’ most recent triumph has been developing Greater Ascot, a 350-hectare site 10km from Townsville’s CBD. It’s a project that Peter says “turned

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the world upside down” at council and that he faced a real challenge in trying to change ingrained thinking.

Twelve months in and 80 homes built, and Greater Ascot has re-written the Townsville Council rulebook.

From the verandas, community orchards and herb gardens to the open grid design, ban on cul de sacs, rear laneways and the reintroduction of the granny flat, the project has cut a swathe through conventional thinking in Queensland.

“We had a large opposition from elected councillors, to officers and bureaucrats who were against changing the rule book. ‘This isn’t how you do it; this is how it’s done,’ they told us in regards to density or street width or whatever,” says Peter. “It took some years but in the end we convinced them.”

Peter says the key to that win was the RobertsDayhosted trip to WA’s Ellenbrook.

Sustainability, connectivity, walkability; these basic tenets of modern urban design are used to full effect in Greater Ascot.

Simple things like verandas,

“The art of town making is a lost art and we have to go back and look at how our forbears developed and designed neighbourhoods…”

which disappeared from our homes long ago are mandated at Greater Ascot.

Ellenbrook was a powerful demonstration of “the way that towns and suburbs used to be designed before the end of WWII and that this does work.” This is Peter’s passion.

“The art of town making is a lost art and we have to go back and look at how our forbears developed and designed neighbourhoods and that’s what we aimed to do with Greater Ascot.

Now council has come on board and is embracing those ideas.”

great people_peter tapiolas

Peter’s also passionate about family. Clear, direct and warm, Peter recalls that growing up, “the company was everything; Parkside was everything… all family members were acutely aware of where we came form, the hardships we’d endured, and we grew up with that work culture and ethic.”

Today, Peter and his wife Rosemarie have three highachieving children; a doctor, an engineer and a lawyer, who clearly make this third generation immigrant proud.

“I’d love for them to come and work with the company, but I’ve always said it’s up to them.”

01_Masterplan for Greater Ascot

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When I was ten I wanted to be….

My greatest achievement…

I can’t remember. Can you remember? Crikey, I have absolutely no idea. I probably wanted to work at Parkside.

My family. I have a most glorious, wonderful wife and the most wonderful three children.

I’m motivated by…

Success. Development wins.

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My greatest regret….

I guess it’s not spending more time with my grandparents, especially

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my grandfather. To understand his aspirations and what drove him to leave Europe at the age of 19.

The legacy I want to leave behind…

To leave behind a successful business and family as my grandfather did, as my father did.

On RobertsDay Peter has worked with RobertsDay on Greater Ascot, the Townsville-based project that will include 2,600 mixed housing types within two walkable neighbourhoods that support a town centre and employment district.

The project will also feature the first genuine main street built in the region for decades.

Peter says that working with RobertsDay, a firm he considers to be at the forefront of creative urban planning is “a great educational experience.”

“They challenge you to stop doing what you’re doing and ask the question, ‘Is this sustainable? Is this how we should be developing?’”

"They challenge you to stop doing what you’re doing and ask ‘Is this sustainable? Is this how we should be developing?’"

Peter Tapiolis

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Fiona Roche She comes from a business family. Her work has been called revolutionary. Yet talk to Fiona Roche and you will find a modest, hard-working woman who just wants to create towns of joy.

You could say Fiona Roche was born for property, but that doesn’t mean she took a direct path toward it. After all, “I had no idea what I wanted to do,” she says. “I’ve been through various careers. No matter what people start off doing, they don’t have to do it for life.”

From a family that entered the property business in the 1920s, one of Fiona’s earliest memories is of weekends crammed in the back of her father’s car with her two sisters being carted from one estate to another. But her first career step wasn’t property.

“I remember deciding to study law and that was at the David Jones sweet counter,” she recalls. “I was in Year 11 and someone told me you didn’t need Latin anymore to do law.

So I thought, ‘Well, I can do law

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then’. That was the depth of my thinking on that.”

Once qualified, the young Fiona quickly realised her destiny was not in a courtroom. “I hated court,” she recalls. “I’m just not a good person in terms of public speaking so I was never going to be a litigator.” Instead, she concentrated on commercial law, particularly property before trying investment banking. It was only later that she moved squarely into development and subsequently some interesting board positions.

While her days once began at 5am and finished well past the cocktail hour, today Fiona leaves much of the day-to-day business to her CEO and instead concentrates on her passion.

And for her, that’s creating towns that will stand the test of time.

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“It’s a long-term thing that you’re doing … what you’re working on now will be around for generations to come,” she explains. “For me, it’s about creating an environment that has a soul to it, that has a strength to it, that people will grow to love and respect.”

It’s not the usual parlance for a developer and Fiona certainly likes to push boundaries. (“Oh I do. I do.”) Her belief in doing things right or not at all is also one that has not always proved the easiest path.

“It can be exasperating,” she admits. “You can either follow all the rules that are laid down for you, in which case you can get your developments up and running quickly and without difficulty. But if you try and do something different, every hurdle in the world is put in your way.”

The kind of ‘different’ things Fiona likes to do might be summed up in two ways: creating suburbs designed for the future over the present, and creating suburbs designed for people over cars. In her view, it has been traffic engineers who have led Australian development since the 1950s, resulting in a plethora of car-oriented, unwalkable suburbs filled with ‘garaging’.

“Creating suburbs designed for the future over the present and ... designed for people over cars.”

“If you go back to the old places around Australia, and you look at what people love about them, you ask yourself, ‘Why did this occur?

What is it about this place that people have become attached to?’”

“And then within the context of something modern you try and reintroduce those old aspects,”

she says. “Yes, you have to deal with the fact that everyone now has cars so there are garaging issues, traffic issues, and car parking issues, but should they dominate or define the physical outcome? I don’t believe so.”

Fiona’s greatest legacy is set to be Jindee. Her planned Western

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Australian coastal village, sits on a striking piece of land. Her peers describe it as groundbreaking, revolutionary and bold, but Fiona remains modest as she describes it.

“It’s a matter of just wanting to get the right thing in the right place. It’s a great piece of land that should be handled as best we can. I’ll just try and do what I need to do to get it done to the best of my ability.”

When I was ten I wanted to be…. eleven.

I’m motivated by… humour.

My greatest achievement… putting up with my husband.

My greatest regret…. not learning to ski.

The legacy I want to leave behind… more joy and beauty.

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On RobertsDay Fiona Roche began working with RobertsDay on her Jindee coastal village in 2000 and the two are still working together today. Along with Studio LFA’s Ludwig Fontalvo-Abello and planner Andrés Duany, she cites Mike Day as a major influence upon her development approach.

“He introduced me to a different way of thinking,” she says, recalling trips to Europe studying design and examples of the new urbanism.

As for Mike, he believes Jindee will be a crowning glory not only for Fiona but also for Australia. “Fiona’s doing something there that will finally respect and reflect our unique coastal setting. It will be a model for contemporary coastal communities in the country,” he says. “There’s never, ever been anything done like Jindee in a hundred years.”

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01_Street down to the ocean_Jindee

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Darwin King Primed for the role: Darwin King has been working towards Flinders since his early teens.

His family are the owners of large landholdings in south east and northern Queensland and yet Philippine-born Darwin King is as down-to-earth as you can get. He’s taking time out from the Future Cities seminar, which he and RobertsDay are hosting at Bond University, to discuss his life and the subject of the seminar, the Flinders project.

Flinders will be released in stages in five years’ time. The visionary community for 50,000 people will be self-contained, self-sufficient, self-monitoring, walkable, connected, and as much as possible, futureproofed. The seminar resonates with exciting ideas and a genuine buzz.

“What I didn’t expect was the level of reception we got from the local and state governments and our innovative partners from Bond, CSIRO, MIT and IBM,”

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says Darwin. “I think everyone took something away from it; at the very least it’s given people a different perspective on their disciplines and what’s possible.”

The current futuristic vision for Flinders in Queensland was seeded way back in 1983 by the original landowner, Arthur Earle, and his vision for the 4,000-hectare pastoral property.

“Originally it was called Undullah which is the aboriginal word for Silver Leaf Ironbark Tree.

When my dad first saw the property back in the 90s he fell in love with it and Arthur Earle’s vision. I suppose he challenged us to see that through.”

Darwin has been primed for this role since his early teens.

He’s aware of his privileged upbringing, but there’s no ego about him. He’s far more focused on results.

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“It’s not about us, myself or Flinders,” Darwin says as he offers his interpretation of custodianship. “It’s really about what we want people to say about the decisions we made one or two or three hundred years down the track.”

According to those at the seminar, from the MIT representatives to the CSIRO and IBM contingents to local councillors and university representatives, it’s this attitude that makes him both a rare and exciting partner to work with.

“My father taught me to think big, to not put limitations on yourself.”

Clearly Darwin comes from a very close, loving family. He talks very warmly of his father and his bigsky thinking. His mother brings the warmest smile as he credits her for his emotional intelligence.

“Part of my Chinese culture is bringing honour and respect to the family name, especially to your parents. So no matter how long it takes or how many setbacks there are, I will do what I can to make it a success.”

That success is coming via what Darwin considers one

“It’s really about what we want people to say about the decisions we made one or two or three hundred years down the track...”

particular strength of his approach; surrounding himself with great people.

“What we hope to get from our association with these great organisations is a rough approximation of the future. It’s ludicrous to think we have it all figured out already; it’s a puzzle

and this process will get us to the solutions we need. More importantly it will make us ask the right questions.”

Darwin isn’t in a rush.

“I don’t think the Mona Lisa was painted in one day,” Darwin says.

“Great painters come to a blank

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canvas and they add on to it.

That’s the way I look at Flinders.

It’s a blank canvas at the moment, we’re putting in a few figures and colours here and there, we’re not quite sure how it’s going to end up but one thing we are sure of is that if we keep going the way we’re going now, it’s going to be a masterpiece down the track.”

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When I was ten I wanted to be….

I probably wanted to be an astronaut or a cop. Kids have strange ideas.

I’m motivated by…

I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not be scared of what I see.

My greatest achievement…

My greatest regret….

On RobertsDay

Success and failure are the different faces on the same coin and I believe you make progress through failures.

“When you go to a restaurant you look at who the chef is. For us it was about finding the right urban planner because they’re like the chef. In this case, we came across Mike Day who I believe is one of the best in the world,” says Darwin about the origins of RobertsDay’s involvement in Flinders.

The legacy I want to leave behind…

RobertsDay, working with Darwin and a team of local experts, has led the master planning and visioning for Flinders Grove, accelerating the realisation of a brand new city southwest of Brisbane.

I want to be known for living authentically, to have had a deep and meaningful impact on people’s lives.

At 4,000-hectares, the site of Flinders is located some 50 kilometres south west of the Brisbane CBD. Around a third of the site is within the recently designated Greater Flagstone Urban Development Area by the Urban Land Development Authority.

Doing right by others and making a difference in people’s lives.

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“Mike talked to us about his learnings and he showed us his best project to date in Ellenbrook in Western Australia. It demonstrated that we need to have the end in mind,” says Darwin. “We can’t start not knowing how it will look in 20 or 30 years or we’ll lose our way. This vision has been fleshed out over the past four years that we’ve been intensively planning the first part of Flinders.”

01_Masterplan for New Flinders Town

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Tony Hickey Compelled to make a living from the age of 13, Tony Hickey rolled up his sleeves to become a major force in Gold Coast business and property development.

Now he is tackling a new skill with the same gusto he’s always applied; how to slow down.

I’ve probably got too active a mind,” says Tony Hickey with modest understatement. He runs Hickey Lawyers, the largest legal firm on the Gold Coast and admits his natural pace is running 120 miles an hour, 24 hours a day.

“I’ve always had to work hard, it’s just the way I am,” he says. He got through school winning scholarships and worked his way through university too. He’s committed, driven and very specific about what he is and why he has been so successful.

“I’m a businessman,” he says, “but my business is the law.

We’re no different from many other businesses in that we provide a service.”

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Tony says it’s this mentality that has given him the edge over his competitors.

“Many legal firms have put themselves on pedestals. I think that’s a big shortcoming.”

Tony is a lawyer by training but his practice specialises in acting for absent, overseas property developers involved in major developments, mainly on the eastern seaboard of Australia.

“I’ve really had to roll up my sleeves in understanding how the development process works,” he says.

It’s a knowledge that’s been built over more than 20 years and during that time it was probably inevitable that Tony’s path should

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cross that of RobertsDay. It was Bermuda Point that brought them together. The 5.5-hectare site is the final precinct in the Varsity Lakes development on the Gold Coast and Tony’s overseas client was looking for something special.

“We needed to transform it from a fairly boring, conservative approach to something exciting that would generate more density which would help the owner make the project more successful on all levels, including financial.”

It was a convergence that was to prove pivotal when Tony began to understand the extra dimension that creative, thoughtful design can bring to a project.

“The work I did with RobertsDay has really opened my eyes to the fact that place making is not just about designing and building buildings, it’s about establishing places and the buildings flow from that,” he says.

By chance this new realisation emerged in parallel with a new vision for the Gold Coast that had been stagnating under the global financial crisis.

Not any more though, according to Tony. He cites a council bold

“He put down on some drawing paper more creative ideas for the site than I’d got working for three months with two different architects…”

enough to make a global call for designs for a new arts precinct, something it is anticipated will lead to a cultural renaissance and capture world attention.

“It shows this place is a place of big ideas and that’ll have a real effect internationally,” he says.

For Tony there’s a personal dimension too. For the last 20 years he has owned a small piece of vacant land on Chevron Island.

“It didn’t excite me. I had no idea what to do with it and it didn’t make money,” he says.

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A designer who worked closely with RobertsDay said it had the potential to be something of international significance. “I said ‘hang on, you’re joking!’”

The two sites are connected by a bridge providing a natural walkway but for Tony the drivers also included the same elements that have brought his client’s developments to a successful conclusion; the project has to be environmentally, socially and economically sustainable.

When I was ten I wanted to be…. top of the class.

I’m motivated by… people who are good at their job.

My greatest achievement… is my family.

My greatest regret….

The building phase for Chevron Island will begin later next year yet Tony is adamant he is not a property developer.

In fact the only thing he’ll admit to being good at is building relationships.

Of those it’s his family relationships that go deepest of all. He has four children.

Two are lawyers and three of them work in the firm.

He credits basic meditation techniques as well as his family with helping him try to slow down, and he’s maintained a guiding philosophy that has never wavered.

“I say to my children you shouldn’t focus on your entitlement but rather your responsibility. I think a lot of business people are just so obvious in focusing on getting something out of this and if you just focus on the relationship and your professional responsibility, the rest of it will flow.”

I don’t have any.

The legacy I want to leave behind… is a happy family.

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On RobertsDay “I was looking for something out of the box that was not being delivered by other architects,” Tony says of the Bermuda Point project, a commercial office precinct developed on the eastern shoreline of Lake Orr, in Varsity Lakes, Queensland.

This was when he was introduced to RobertsDay, and it was to be a turning point in his understanding of ‘place making’, rather than architecture.

“I began to understand the extra dimension they add to a project,” he says.

“I sat down with Stephen Moore in Sydney and I recall that in 30 minutes over a cup of coffee he put down on some drawing paper more creative ideas for the site than I’d got working for three months with two different architects. That’s what my client was looking for and that’s what I delivered.”

01_Bermuda Point

A process, no matter how well designed, is nothing without the right people to bring it to life and deliver it. It takes clients with vision and tenacity and people with a passion for place, whose way of working is to share and consult: people who lead and innovate, who listen, take ownership and are frank and honest; people who can see the vision – and understand the bottom line. It takes the right kind of team to marry the art of planning and the science of design into a union that sets the foundation for a great place.

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32,000 hectares. 300,000 homes.

1,0000,000 people. 1,300,000 square metres of commercial floorspace.

150 community groups. 1,600 parks.

62 cycle ways. 400 pieces of public art. 900 approvals. And... 600 clients, 35 people and 52 awards, in just on twenty years. Our projects get approved. They get built. They get acclaim. They’re on the ground.

They’re lived in, commercially viable, vibrant, loved. They’re not just places: they’re great places.

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Sometimes a project fact sheet fails to convey rich stories – like how a barren sand quarry was transformed into a thriving town of 25,000 people for example.

Our great places magazines, with their images, video and words – those of our clients and the people who live there – tells those rich stories.

To see more issues of great places magazine go to 'browse issues' at the bottom right of your magazine screen.

We’re passionate about place. Let’s talk about yours. Connect with us via phone, email or social media.

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