Making the leap from employee to self-employed or even employer is a challenge in any industry. Architecture is no exception. It requires a long shopping list of items ranging from the utilitarian to the esoteric: most are necessary and many others are at the least very important. This is the 1st instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

1. Chutzpah

When: Immediately
Importance: Critical
Cost: Priceless
Difficulty: Low

Chutzpah, the yiddish word that combines guts, verve and cheek, is an essential ingredient in your new architecture practice. It will help you convince potential clients that you have what it takes to wisely spend large amounts of their hard-earned money. Once they sign you on, it will help you as you guide them through the dangerous waters of architectural design. It will help you in your relationships with builders and other professionals, many of whom will know much more about construction than you do. It will help you as you market your work in an endeavour to win peer praise.

Chutzpah means believing you have what it takes to run a successful architecture practice, even if you must wait a number of years for this belief to come true. It relies on your guts and verve being balanced by a careful dash of cheek: too much is arrogance, an unpleasant characteristic even in those who might justify it; but the right amount is the perfect ingredient to help you build your practice.

The most obvious example that demonstrates the fineness of this balance comes whenever you have the opportunity to speak with a potential client. This person may not even be thinking about building, but perhaps one day she will: it’s important that when that day comes, she contacts you. Too little cheek and you will miss the opportunity. Too much cheek and you will appear forceful and unattractive. Just the right amount will convey your passion for what you do and an understanding that you are interested in helping. You will walk away from the conversation one business card lighter and, who knows, one potential project richer.

A colleague of ours relates the story of Peter Maddison, director of Maddison Architects, who disappears whenever the practice grows a bit quiet. He schedules lunch after lunch after lunch, catching up with old friends and acquaintances. He asks what they’re doing and what’s happening in their lives. In so doing, he implicitly reminds them that he’s open for business. Weeks or months later, when that restaurant site is purchased or new office space leased, his lunches pay off.

Above all, you will need chutzpah to carry you through the long stretches between new projects. Architecture is a long game, the turnaround between projects often taking years, but many of the other activities you will undertake in your practice are fleeting. Chutzpah will help you navigate the many opportunities that populate these activities and will assist you while you wait for those business cards to manifest into work.

This is the 2nd instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

2. Clients

When: Immediately
Importance: Critical
Cost: Priceless
Difficulty: High

With the exception of a small number of studios that carve a successful career through competition work, clients are your gateway to income. These are the miraculous people prepared to pay you to do what you love: make architecture. In the beginning, they are likely to be your family and friends. As time goes on, your circle of clients will expand to include friends of your friends, then to colleagues of your friends, and finally to complete strangers.

The number of clients you need differs depending on the sorts of projects they are offering you and the magnitude of your fees. As discussed previously, our friend and colleague, Steve Rose, started his practice with four projects. We established ours with three good ones worth between $500,000 and $1,500,000 each. The two more expensive projects turned out to be pipe dreams and soon died, but the smaller project survived and was joined by others, generally more modest in scope.

If there’s any secret to be uncovered that will help you attract new clients, it’s to do good work then put it where people can see it. We put ourselves out into the physical and digital worlds as much as we can, talk passionately about architecture with our friends and family, and generally stay open to new opportunities. It’s rare that any of these activities result in direct commissions, and almost certainly not straight away, but it’s important you build your presence in the minds and lives of people around you.

Nurture your opportunities carefully: each client embodies the potential for many more. Strangers years down the road will come to you based on the work you do for your family today.

There is one small but outrageously important detail concerning clients that we never fully appreciated until we started our practice. When you work for someone else, a project that goes on hold for town planning or pauses for a lengthy client consideration period means little: your boss simply gives you some other work to do. When you work for yourself, projects on hold = no work = no income. Such lulls can be filled creatively: we entered a design competition during a quiet month at the end of 2011. These days, our financial obligations make such lulls harder to endure. It is important therefore to maintain momentum on your projects, keep them moving along as quickly as you can, and if you’re able, space them out so you always have something to do.

This is the 3rd instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

3. Identity

When: Immediately
Importance: High
Cost: Very low
Difficulty: Easy

Your identity covers all things that represent you and your work: your name, your logo, your stationary, your digital presence. This part, put simply, is fun.

What will your practice be called? You might name it after its principal architects as we have done, or after the location of its gestation, or perhaps after a driving philosophy of design. Our decision here went like this: we felt our work should speak more loudly than our name, and, considering that we were not interested in locking ourselves into one single idea, nor creating a dynasty to outlast us, we wanted our name to be tied to who we are. Hence Warwick Mihaly and Erica Slocombe became Mihaly Slocombe.

What will your domain name be? Ideally, it will be the same as your practice name: it’s worth checking availability prior to deciding. We opted for a .com.au suffix because we felt the .com version is more American than international. We also suggest observing the lesson that we, to our detriment, ignored: you will need to spell out your domain name many times via phone, so keep it short and phonetic. Reserving your domain name will cost around $20 a year. Hosting an email account – infinitely more professional than a Gmail account – will cost around $110 a year.

What will your logo and letterhead look like? To start out, design these yourself: it’s cheap, satisfying and will equip you with all the digital files you need to tweak your contact details as you evolve. This is what we did. Once we’re more established and can afford the outlay, we will have a graphic designer put together an holistic identity package: logo, letterhead, business card, website, twitter feed and blog among others. This is likely to cost anywhere upwards from $5,000. When we do so, we will try very hard to treat the designer in the way we like to be treated: we will brief her with our aspirations, then let her surprise us with her ideas.

How will your website function? Undoubtedly, the website is to the 21st Century what the business card was to the 20th: it is where your entire public profile begins, so make it good. We built ours ourselves (with the help from a few tech friends to get over the really tricky bits) using a freeware content management system called Drupal. It’s like a skeleton website onto which you bolt the components you need. However, having now spent a lot of time managing both it and this blog, we suggest WordPress is an even better way to start: it has a sophisticated back end that lets you track every manner of usage statistic, but is fast and easy to set up and allows you to build in complexity as you need it. WordPress.com sites are free.

Finally, keep in mind that your work should and will speak much more loudly than your identity, so don’t take it too seriously. As you mature, as your practice evolves and your tastes change, you can always update it.

This is the 4th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

4. The law

When: Immediately
Importance: Critical
Cost: Moderate
Difficulty: Moderate

Boring but important, to get started in your new architecture practice you will need to address a number of legal requirements. Many architects skip elements of this step, possibly judging that the legalities are time consuming and obstruct true creativity. Be wary of anyone who tells you to “just start working and worry about the law later”. The whole point of the law is to have it set up right from the beginning: we take the view that true creativity flourishes when we’re not worried about being uninsured, having a poor client agreement or getting sued.

The following list is only relevant for Australian readers; for everyone else we recommend you check your local tax, registration and insurance legislation:

• You need to incorporate a company, create a partnership or at the very least register as a sole practitioner with an Australian Business Number. We opted to set up our practice as a company. It was more expensive but offered the greatest financial flexibility and legal protection: its very purpose is to protect its directors and staff from being sued. A simple company will cost in the order of $2,000 to establish.
• You need to be a registered architect in the State or Territory where you are practicing. Registration as an individual costs around $200 a year.
• You need to have professional indemnity insurance. It is a requirement for registration and is designed to protect you in the case of professional negligence. We use M and R Insurance Brokers and pay $1,350 a year, though for comparison’s sake, Architeam offers an interesting cooperative insurance package that is cheaper but requires you to donate some time each year to various activities.
• Public liability insurance is also a good idea and protects you in the event that a guest hurts herself in your studio or if you and your staff damage something outside your studio. It costs around $400 a year. If you have staff, you will also need WorkSafe insurance, which is designed to protect you and your staff should you or they get hurt.
• You need to have templates for contracts with clients, employees and builders. We have gradually and continuously refined ours to reflect the way we work and embody the lessons we’ve learnt from past mistakes. The Australian Institute of Architects have very good contract sets available for purchase, along with a vast array of useful practice notes available to members. The awkwardly named Blue Turtle Management and Consulting, whom we have discussed previously, also offers some useful contracts and templates tailored to the architecture profession.

Additional insurances and legislation requirements, of which there are many, can be addressed when you need them. There’s no need to pay for director’s insurance, register for GST or register to practice in other States and Territories any earlier than necessary.

This is the 5th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

5. The studio

When: Soon
Importance: High
Cost: Moderate to high
Difficulty: Moderate

Though it’s entirely possible to work at your kitchen table in your pyjamas, do your printing at the local Officeworks and meet your clients in a local cafe, you will soon find that these are rituals of distraction. Do not be fooled by the warm sense of accomplishment you get after cleaning out the fridge or hanging out a load of clothes: these are tasks for before 9am and after 6pm. Put effort into developing alternative rituals of productivity: we have found that performing our work in a dedicated working environment is the first step to achieving this.

In your working environment, at the very minimum you will need as many desks as you have workers and a separate space to take meetings. You will also need storage space for your project and administration folders; samples and trade literature library; and stationary.

We have yet to take the leap to a formal studio, but have reached a compromise that at the moment works perfectly for us: our studio is in our spare bedroom (16sqm) with sufficient desk space for two people together with all our storage requirements, while our dining room (13sqm) doubles as a meeting room, with a wall of architecture books bestowing a satisfyingly architectural energy. Not quite as official as a separate studio space, this setup is much cheaper than having to pay the additional rent and utilities, has a 10 second commute time and allows me to be around whenever our 1 year old son does something new and amazing.

We dress for work every day: jeans and a shirt are sufficient, only architects meddling in corporate environments need be slaves to the suit. This might go without saying now that we employ a student, but beforehand there was always the temptation to stay cosy and snug in tracksuit pants and hoodie. Resisting this temptation lends a noticeable improvement in attitude to the day’s work.

For hardware, we make do with an A4 colour bubblejet printer, though should probably upgrade to an A3 colour laser. We have an account with the inestimable Creffield Digital Print for anything larger. We have staplers, hole punchers, paper stock, envelopes, arch lever folders, cutting mats, model making material, stamps, plastic folders and plenty of pens. Printers are not expensive, though ink cartridges are. Do a bit of shopping online for these consumables, and you will save a great deal.

For furniture, we have a pair of beautiful Aeron chairs, an investment in good posture and healthy backs. For the rest, remember you’re an architect, so your desks and bookshelves can be both well designed and extremely cheap. Our friends and colleagues at Foong and Sormann use Ikea legs with a sheet of formply as their desks. Bookshelves can use strips of plywood strung between stacks of bricks.

This is the 6th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

6. Electronics

When: Soon
Importance: High
Cost: High
Difficulty: Moderate

This is the most expensive part of establishing your architecture practice, though you can save costs by utilising electronic hardware you already own. As a minimum, you will need a computer, printer, modem and camera. Probably the biggest decision you will make will stem from the operating system you choose: Mac or PC. With the resurgence of Apple market share over recent years, most software is now available on both platforms. The exception to this rule is Autodesk’s Revit, though its competitor, Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD, is and has always been built for the Mac.

We were introduced to Apple’s OS operating system while working at Perkins Architects before we established Mihaly Slocombe. We have never looked back: we run Macs and only Mac-compatible software. We would be lying if we said we weren’t seduced by the Apple product lineup, though their reliability, seamless hardware / software relationship and sophisticated interface are also very attractive. A decent Macbook Pro will set you back around $2,500. A similar iMac will set you back around $2,000.

Unfortunately, specialised software is an almost impossible financial ask for a young architecture practice. To purchase the minimum necessary software packages like AutoCAD, SketchUp, the Adobe Suite and Office for two users will cost around $30,000, plus ongoing annual upkeep. This is easily equivalent to your entire first year of earnings. This reality makes us angry: software manufacturers are clearly out of step with the buying power of small businesses. Suffice it to say, you will do what you need to do.

Invest in the best internet connection that’s available to you, and couple it with a good modem, wireless router, wireless printer and network attached storage device. We recently purchased Mac Airport products that together establish a very reliable wireless network, far superior to the Netgear devices they replace.

The need for a physical server is a thing of the past. We use Dropbox and love it: automatic syncing across all our computers and mobile devices, instant backups of our work, zero hassle. A 100Gb account with Dropbox will cost you $100 a year, nothing compared to what you would have had to spend on a server. The network attached storage device is for those of you who, like us, are pedantic and paranoid: a tertiary backup system on site just in case the internet breaks down. We have discussed the advantages of Dropbox and Cloud computing in general in this recent article.

Finally, while the camera attached to your smartphone is adequate for most circumstances, it won’t be of much use in low light conditions or in the tight confines of internal rooms. We recommend you invest in a compact digital SLR like the Sony NEX range of cameras: they are significantly cheaper than their larger digital SLR cousins, but still boast interchangeable lenses, full manual functionality and great image resolution. The Sony NEX3N costs $950 including one prime and one zoom lens.

This is the 7th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

7. Cashflow

When: Soon
Importance: Moderate to high
Cost: Cashflow does not cost, it earns
Difficulty: Moderate

To put it bluntly, you are not going to make much money during the first few years in your new architecture practice. Dare we say that you may not make much money during any years of your architecture practice. In fact, if making money is your goal, we recommend you stop reading this blog right now and become a project manager: according to My Career, you will earn on average $55,000 more per year than you will as an architect. Architecture is a great source of passion and happiness but it is not a great source of income.

If you’re still reading, we take it you’re still interested in starting your own architecture practice so you’ll need to know about cashflow. Evidence shows that only 50% of small businesses survive five years and only a third survive ten. A big part of this is to do with cashflow, that is, the money coming into your bank account so that you can spend it on the endless things that keep your business afloat.

This list will include some or all of: salaries, rent, utilities, insurances, registration, memberships, library, professional development, equipment, petrol, stationary, consumables and many more. Most items are spaced out fairly evenly across the year, but some, like insurances and registration, arrive in the form of annual payments and require forward planning to accommodate the extra financial load.

Invoices to your clients should be regular, monthly is ideal. Invoices spaced out according to project milestones will make your cashflow more erratic than it needs to be, as well as demand large, concentrated payments. You will do well to avoid sending out invoices for project phases whose output your clients have not yet seen, but otherwise don’t be afraid to charge for the work that you’ve done. Much easier for your clients to swallow (and consequently much more likely to get paid) than a $15,000 invoice every six months are $2,500 invoices every month.

Our invoices are due within 14 days of receipt and on average are paid within 11 days. In the event of invoices that are not paid on time, be diligent about sending out reminders: hopefully your clients have simply misplaced / forgotten the first invoice and will remedy the situation immediately.

If you find, as we do, that despite your best efforts your project invoicing is haphazard, or even if you don’t have quite enough work to keep you busy, we recommend you seek complimentary salaried work. The emphasis here is on complimentary: if you can avoid it, don’t get a job working at McDonalds. You can seek part time contract work with other architecture practices, you can teach, you can write. We have been teaching construction and design subjects at the University of Melbourne for the past 3 years. In addition to helping our cashflow considerably, during semester making up about 30% of our income, teaching provides a welcome outlet from, and re-energises us for, the regular work of our practice.

This is the 8th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

8. Support team

When: Progressively
Importance: High
Cost: Moderate
Difficulty: High

A big part of your success as an architect stems from the people with whom you surround yourself. This goes for your accountant and lawyer as much as it does your consultants and builders. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut to achieving harmony within your professional relationships: your only reliable path is years of trial and error.

Your accountant and lawyer will help you set up your company if that’s how you choose to establish your practice. Then accompanied by your banker and insurance broker, they will provide ongoing support for your tax returns, business activity statements (BASs), salaries, contracts, insurances and banking needs. We do our own banking and 3 of the 4 BASs each year. We have our accountant do the June BAS, along with our tax returns, to make sure everything adds up at the end of each financial year.

Having the right accountant is important: avoid those who think of themselves as a facsimile of the taxman as much as those who are happy to cheat him. Your accountant should be able to help you realise as many tax efficiencies as you can within the reasonable confines of the law:

• If you are doing very well financially, and earning within the highest (45c in the dollar) or second highest (37c in the dollar) personal income tax brackets, having a company structure might allow you to keep money in the company at a lower (30c in the dollar) tax rate.
• Even if you are not doing so well, you can still benefit from tax deductions and GST input credits. You will need to keep all your receipts of course, and possibly a logbook for some activities like transport and travel, but there is no reason why you can’t claim the GST back on all of your business expenses, as well as deduct: architecture books, stationary, printing costs, lectures, conferences, office equipment, travel to and from building sites, and architectural pilgrimages overseas. Architects may not get paid much, but loving what we do means plenty of potential tax deductions.

When it comes to specialist consultants, there are as many as you can possibly want: structural engineer, quantity surveyor, land surveyor, environmental consultant, landscape architect, traffic engineer, geotechnical consultant, mechanical engineer, fire engineer, heritage consultant, disability access consultant, town planning consultant… Just to name a few. You will generally need to seek quotes from multiple consultants for each project to satisfy your clients that their fees are fair, but it is worthwhile pushing for those who do good work, understand your needs and work well with you.

It is good to maintain contact with at least a couple of each type of specialist consultant. Some projects will be more suited to particular consultants and there is always the possibility that a consultant might be too busy to take on a new project.

One realisation that has dawned on us over recent years is that putting up with inferior work from your consultants, or trying to reduce their fees for your clients by reducing their scope, only means that you spend more time covering the holes, time for which you are unlikely to be paid. The fairest outcome for everyone involved is to do your job as an architect as diligently and thoroughly as possible, and expect the same from your consultants.

Builders should be carefully selected and nurtured as with all of the aforementioned individuals, but doubly so. To put it in the clearest possible terms: the wrong builder will ruin your life. He will transform what should be the most enjoyable phase of any project into the most upsetting. You will be stressed, overworked and unhappy; you will dread visiting site, the place where your dream of many years is taking physical shape; and worst of all, you will very likely end up with a building that falls well short of your expectations. We have had one such experience, about which we may one day write a lengthy article, and we will never work with the builder in question ever again.

Finally, learn to speak the language of everyone in your support team. This is most relevant for your project work. Architecture is a complex animal, with many stakeholders possessing many priorities. Learn to speak client, planner, engineer and builder and you will go a long way to helping those around you buy into you project and, in so doing, help you make it better.

This is the 9th instalment in a series of 10 articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

9. Community

When: Later
Importance: Moderate
Cost: Varies
Difficulty: Varies

Almost every aspect of your architecture practice, from the quality of your designs, to your marketing strategies, to your financial management, can benefit from your involvement in the right communities. By this we do not only mean the people who live next door, but your cultural and professional communities too. In other words, other architects, designers and the institutions that support them: collectively these people are a ready-made source of advice, assistance and feedback.

The types of communities in which you might take part can be roughly divided into five categories: design, business, marketing, culture and tribal. To make the most use of these, be prepared to juggle the full breadth of media the world has to offer, from online forums and social media, to international awards programmes and local lecture series. You will need to spend plenty of time in front of your computer screen, but just as much time getting out to actually meet people.

You will know you have chosen the right communities when you find they keep overlapping. The truth in this was neatly displayed when we attended the Presentations to Juries a month or so ago: shuffling from room to room with us were people whom we follow on Twitter, with whom we share blog discussions, attend lectures and seminars, present at design talks, studied and worked.

Design communities are those that allow you to present your design work and review the work of others. If all that happens once a project is presented is a round of applause, you are not participating in a design community. Reciprocity is essential to the success of these communities, as is the willingness of their participants to be critical about one another’s ideas. Given architects’ reluctance to subject themselves to negative criticism, even constructively offered, they are very hard to come by. We suggest you start one yourself, perhaps with friends from university whose journeys into architecture practice parallel your own. Every couple of weeks we catch up with one or two friends over lunch to discuss design and practice in a loose but longstanding arrangement affectionately referred to as the Round Table. We entered the Flinders Street Station Design Competition together and, we must confess, could do better in heeding our own advice by presenting our work to one another more often. Design communities cost whatever you’re having for lunch.

Business communities are those that help you get better at any of the myriad skills and processes you need to keep your architecture practice afloat, from big picture things like time management and fee negotiation, to detail things like filing systems and contact lists. We take part in the Australian Institute of Architects‘ Small Practice Forum, a group of 30 or so architects that meets every two months to discuss subjects like marketing, fees, office manuals and, most recently, cloud computing. The Institute also runs plenty of continuing professional development events that are well worth attending: the oddly named but business-savvy Blue Turtle Management and Consulting (BTMC) have presented a few such events, one of which we discussed here. The cost of Institute membership varies and is generally hefty (we pay around $1,000 a year), however we feel its value is priceless.

Marketing communities are immensely abundant, require a huge amount of time to maintain and rarely pave the way for new projects. We say rarely, because every now and then they do, which will render every hour spent previously worthwhile. Houzz is an interesting tool that allows designers to upload photos of their work (1,000,000 so far an counting) to an indexed and searchable database that other people selectively add to ideas albums. It is also a useful way to have clients give you a summary of their tastes and design interests. New Architects is a series of casual design presentations run every couple of months with a strong emphasis on young designers. A website is on its way, however invitation is currently by email list or word of mouth only. Various agencies around the world, including Houses Magazine, Design Institute of Australia and Australian Timber Design Awards here, and World Architecture News and Architectural Review overseas, all hold annual awards programmes for both speculative and built work. There are many, many others. Finally, 70% of Australians own the houses they live in: the more you connect with your neighbours and local community, the more likely you are that you will get work from them. Houzz and New Architects are both free to join, though most awards programmes will cost $200 – $400 per entry.

Cultural communities will not necessarily win you new projects nor allow you the opportunity to present your work to the world at large, but they will increase your appreciation of good design and generally nurture your soul. Melbourne is blessed with a large number of organisations that foster such communities, including the Robin Boyd Foundation (RBF), Parlour, Melbourne Open House (MOH) and C + A. Each has its own dedicated focus: modernist architecture for RBF; women in architecture for Parlour; public open days for MOH; and concrete for C + A. All run lecture and seminar programmes, publish journals and offer access to some of Melbourne’s best architecture both past and present. The cost of events varies, from nothing in the case of MOH’s annual open day to $65 for Parlour’s upcoming Transform workshop.

Finally, tribal communities are those you start yourself. They are generally online, often emanate from a blog or Twitter feed, and focus on one issue or interest area. They are not necessarily central to the architecture work you do, but revolve around it or are related to it. There are two important qualities of the tribal community: first, you are its chief; and second, you are its chief because you have been talking about its interest area before anyone else was. To paraphrase Texan artist, Austin Kleon, to whom we have paid tribute here, if everyone is talking about apples while you’re interested in oranges, you should start talking about oranges anyway. Eventually, when the rest of the world catches on to how great oranges are, you will be an established orange guru and natural chief.

Participating in any or all of these communities will grow what we have come to call your cultural capital i.e. the value you have to the culture around you. As your presence in awards programmes, forums, lecture series, blogs and design organisations grows, so too will your cultural capital. This capital will not necessarily win you projects and will certainly not turn you into a starchitect overnight. However, if you enjoy your communities without thought to future stardom, you will find your capital grows of its own accord, a development that we believe can only have a positive impact on your future design career.

This is the 10th and final instalment in a series of articles where we attempt to categorise chronologically and thematically the list of things you will need to start your architecture practice, and furnish it with the glimpses of insight we’ve accrued during the first three years of our architecture practice, Mihaly Slocombe.

10. The future

When: The future
Important: High
Cost: Priceless
Difficulty: Low

You will not be a young architect with a new practice forever. One day you will be middle-aged and successful. One day you might even be old and a legend. What sort of success do you desire? What sort of legend do you want to be?

As we have discussed previously, there is no better time to think about the shape of your future than today. Architecture is often ruled by word of mouth, meaning each project you undertake and complete will pave the way, daisy-chain style, to future projects. Glenn Murcutt puts it slightly differently, arguing that the projects you reject have the greatest impact on your future projects. Either way, it is rare that a house renovation will lead to a stadium, or a restaurant fitout will lead to a museum: if these are things you want, then you need to plan for them.

A lesson in what happens when you don’t plan was examined in our recent article about Donovan Hill, recently merged with (read: acquired by) much larger practice, Bligh Voller Nield. From craft beginnings and the sublime C House, Donovan Hill accepted opportunities as they appeared, moving into commercial tower projects far removed from their previous sensitivity towards culture and climate. Merging with BVN was perhaps a natural subsequent step, but there is no getting around the fact that their old stuff is much better than their new stuff.

To help us avoid this honey trap, we have a 20 year plan that we put together in early 2011 and describes where we want to be in the year 2031.

• It describes characteristics of our studio: sufficiently flexible to pursue new project typologies; comprising more than 10 staff but less than 20; structured to give us the freedom to study, teach, write and travel.
• It describes our projects: most in and around Melbourne, some in other parts of Australia, and a few in other parts of the world; a mixture of project typologies, including regular entries into design competitions; firmly rooted in design research and experimentation.
• It talks about our roles beyond our studio: we are leaders in our architectural community; we are heavily engaged with the wider profession; we encourage our staff to be the same.
• It talks about recognition: we are worth waiting for at Presentations to Juries events; we are widely published; our reputation among our clients is for good design, environmental sustainability, adaptability and reliability.

If we want to achieve any of these ambitions by 2031, we need to be prepared to lay the necessary groundwork now and over coming years. We are well on our way in some areas (we are heavily engaged with the wider profession and regular entrants to design competitions) but not so much in others (our projects are almost exclusively residential and we have so far only entered the Presentations to Juries once).

Your future is what you make it. Understanding where you’re heading is essential, as is referring regularly to your goals and updating them as your expectations evolve.

Dunescape by SHoP Architects, New York, 2000

What was it?

The second Dean’s Lecture for 2013, courtesy of the University of Melbourne’s faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. Held on Tuesday night last week, the speaker was Gregg Pasquarelli, one of the five founding directors of SHoP Architects based in New York. He presented a selection of projects with a collective narrative describing ways in which the office is seeking to establish new business models for architecture practice.

SHoP Architects were formed in 1996 by Pasquarelli and his wife, Kimberly Holden, a second couple, William and Coren Sharples, and William’s twin brother, Christopher. All five came to architecture through other disciplines, including history, finance, science and engineering; a diversity they continue to encourage in their close to 100 staff, many of whom also have past lives in other fields. This cross-disciplinary interest is closely tied to SHoP’s relentless pursuit of  opportunities beyond pure design: including construction, manufacturing, finance, business and media.

Pasquarelli presented an eloquent argument for this strategy: the more they know about the broad socioeconomic armature of architecture production, the more liberated they can be in design, the more free they can be in “exploring beauty, aesthetics and art”. SHoP ask questions like: how big is an uncut sheet? What are the 8 ways two panels can be connected? What thickness loss occurs when a sheet is bent around a radius? How many fittings come in a box? How is a box lifted off the back of a truck? By understanding the answers to these questions, they can design to minimise waste, maximise efficiency and improve the quality of their buildings.

A key manifestation of this philosophy, in which Pasquarelli referenced Robert Venturi’s both/and language, was the creation in 2008 of SHoP Construction, a sister company that focusses on construction management and factory fabrication of building components. The two companies share staff, expertise and office space. The use of sophisticated digital technologies like parametric modelling, CNC routing and as-built laser scanning has liberated complex form from the noose of expensive labour: if SHoP can minimise disruptions on site or eliminate waste from a facade system, they can deliver sculptural buildings for standard industry construction costs.

What did we think?

Pasquarelli’s discussion of the armature of architectural production – his constant and refreshing references to construction and finances – resonated deeply with us. It touched a chord that goes all the way back to a theory class we took while studying architecture at the University of Melbourne, The Political Economy of Design. Taught by Professor Paolo Tombesi (who participated in a follow up round-table discussion to Pasquarelli’s Dean’s Lecture on Thursday afternoon), the subject examined the history, politics and economics of architectural production and urged us to consider both the storm of influences that inspire, and the far-reaching consequences of, any architectural work.

Tombesi’s systematic method for thinking about architecture is exemplified by SHoP’s output. Here is a practice determined to expand their role and influence beyond the traditional confines of practice, and in so doing sustain and improve the quality of their architecture. It seems there is no arena that SHoP won’t explore. Indeed, Pasquarelli structured his entire presentation around their incursion into the associated territories of consultant, builder and client: he spoke about incorporating financial management into their facade designs, where parametric modelling engines return realtime material costings; he articulated in great detail the various pre-fabrication processes in which they have become expert; and he discussed the increases in apartment sales revenue that their designs have generated.

Two project examples are particularly worthy of note:

Porter House, New York, 2003

Porter House is a 5,100sqm apartment building, part renovation to an existing, 6 storey heritage building and part 6 storey addition (with 2 storeys overlapping). This is one of an increasing number of projects where SHoP acted as their own client, establishing a joint venture partnership to share both the risk and rewards of a speculative residential development.

Pasquarelli related the story of the new building’s facade, which is clad in zinc. When SHoP approached local zinc installers during the design process, they were told that it would be far more expensive to install than a standard steel or aluminium skin. Where a steel system might cost $700/sqm, zinc would cost $1,000/sqm. But, they asked, zinc is only marginally more expensive a material than steel, so why should this be so? The response was polite disinterest, so their next question was, Where does the zinc come from? France. So they got on a plane to France, met up with a supplier and returned home to New York with 1,000 sheets of zinc. They then designed a complex cladding system with 12,000 panel pieces divided between 750 unique templates, parametrically tweaking the system to eliminate waste.

Porter House, facade detail

Pasquarelli noted that a simple brick facade costs $500/sqm, while a slick Richard Meier curtain wall might cost in the order of $1,200/sqm. The Porter House zinc cladding system cost $430/sqm. Ultimately, the project was delivered with a 0% increase over standard construction costs, but thanks to its high quality design outcome, returned a 17% increase over budgeted sales revenues. For the first time, SHoP had hard data to back up their argument that good design has quantifiable value.

Barclays Centre, Brooklyn, under construction

Barclays Centre is a basketball stadium for the Brooklyn Nets with a procurement story straight out of a book on the world’s most improbable buildings. Originally a project designed by Frank Gehry that comprised the stadium together with four residential towers at each corner, the start of the global financial crisis in 2009 crashed funding for the apartments and the project had to go back to square one. But the client now had another major financial issue: if the building were not in the ground within 7 months, a change in the local tax laws would remove $400m of tax incentives and kill the project entirely.

So Gehry bowed out and the client went to a major stadium builder in the United States. Even they said 7 months for design and documentation was too short a timeframe. However, if the client wanted, they could hop in a helicopter and visit all the stadiums the construction firm had previously built, pick one they liked and use the existing shop drawings to get construction underway. Which is what happened.

Enter SHoP Architects. The client went to them for some assistance with a new facade design, the catch being that all the steel had already been purchased. SHoP said no. But that night, Pasquarelli and his fellow directors went to a bar, had a few glasses of wine and started drawing. Ideas emerged. The following morning they called the client back and said, We’ll give it a go. Give us three days and we’ll produce one image. If you like it, you engage us to redesign the building in its entirety: structure, facades, interiors, the lot. The client agreed, an image was produced, and the project was awarded.

SHoP now had 7 weeks in which to design and document a $1b stadium. A staff of 26 worked in two shifts around the clock to deliver the project on time. They got the work done, were in the ground before the 7 month deadline and the tax drama was averted.

The Barclays Centre story doesn’t stop there however. This is a project that offers further surprises and fascinating insight into the way SHoP have embraced cutting edge digital technologies and construction delivery processes.

Fabrication and assembly line for the Barclays Centre facade

The stadium’s facade is made from thousands of unique panels of weathered steel. SHoP commissioned a factory to build these panels and run them along a production line that subjected them to successive wash and heat cycles to achieve the desired weathered finish. They then built an iPhone app that permitted the barcode of any given panel to be scanned, and detailed data returned on where the panel was up to in its weathering cycles, how many coats of finish had been applied, when in the construction process it was expected etc.

This system relied on the installation on site of a very precise structural frame. A series of connecting cleats matching each panel had to be absolutely perfect or else it could not be installed. SHoP undertook a three-dimensional laser scan of the entire construction site and overlaid it against their digital model. This process revealed that 15% of the cleats across the project were out of place, an error that would have resulted in a 3 month project delay. The timely discovery of the misalignment saved the delay and many millions of dollars in additional costs.

The lost apartment towers have since been reintroduced to the client’s agenda, with a commitment to a citywide best 50 / 50 division between market and affordable housing. SHoP have proposed a unitised (or modular) design, with the potential for broad rollout across the Atlantic Yards site. So interested in examining the potential cost savings of unitised construction were the client that they commissioned two teams within SHoP, a firewall between them and entirely separate consultants, to document the project in both traditional and unitised formats. Both documentation packages went out together, in competition against each other, and the unitised package came back 30% cheaper than the traditional. Construction of the first towers is underway.

B2 at Atlantic Yards , Brooklyn, in design

What can we learn?

SHoP embodies a radical approach to architecture practice, an approach that arises in conversation regularly amongst our friends and colleagues, albeit on a much smaller scale and always with more questions than answers. The approach is to do more, to take back territories stripped over recent decades from the architect’s realm of operations. Once upon a time, architects used to be builders and engineers, we used to be environmental consultants, project managers, heritage advisors and quantity surveyors. Thanks to the global tendency towards specialisation, together with significant periods in history of our own malaise, expertise in these roles now falls on the shoulders of others.

Pasquarelli criticised architects for being risk-averse and challenged us to push the boundaries of our comfort zones: he believes architects are great generalist with far more to offer than the mere beautification for which we are regularly employed. Why can’t we employ engineers, landscape architects and quantity surveyors within our practices? Why can’t we take on construction management roles for our projects? Why can’t we finance our own speculative developments? Architects do not, after all, build buildings. We prepare drawing sets from which other people build buildings. The more we get involved in this complex transition, the better our architecture can be.

Dunescape, in context

To this end, SHoP no longer draw plans, sections and elevations. They regard these as obsolete methods of building communication. Since their early project, Dunescape, a temporary pavilion for MoMA PS1 that explored the potential of digital technologies to achieve complex spatial forms via simple means, they produce elemental documentation more akin to aircraft design, or to our mind, the instructions accompanying a LEGO set. We wonder even if the systematised directions for Dunescape were inspired by the installations of 1960s conceptual artist, Sol LeWitt, another New Yorker.

Straight Lines in Four Directions and All Their Possible Combinations, Sol LeWitt, 1973

We imagine SHoP would be pleased with these associations. For them, success is a documentation set that goes straight from their computer to a CNC router, neither paper nor dimensions required, followed by a construction site populated by builders without tape measures.

Dunescape might also provide insight into the origins of SHoP’s restless, outwards gaze. It taught them the value of experimentation, a lesson they have carried through to many later projects, Porter House and Barclays Centre included. And it taught them the value of engagement with the socioeconomic armature surrounding their projects. Speaking with their client, they discovered that their pavilion attracted 8,000 people each weekend, compared to the previous year’s pavilion, which attracted only 2,000. What did this mean for MoMA’s revenue?

6,000 people
x
12 weekends
x
$20 average spend
=
$1,440,000

SHoP’s earliest demonstration that good design has value.

Ultimately, the goal of SHoP Architects is to create good, sustainable architecture. For them, sustainability doesn’t mean installing photovoltaic panels on a building, but “creating buildings that people love, that don’t get torn down every 10 – 20 years”. It means promoting high density living and healthy cities. It means exploiting the opportunities presented by new technologies to engage with the built environment at every scale.

Pasquarelli concluded his Dean’s Lecture by observing that we are standing on a precipice of radical change in the construction industry, driven by emerging technologies and rapidly evolving demands on our cities. He believes that architects, “guardians of culture,” are perfectly equipped to ride the waves of this change and must not be afraid to step up to its challenges.

What was it?

A round-table discussion held at BMW Edge last Thursday, part of the Agenda series courtesy of the University of Melbourne’s faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning. It followed on from Gregg Pasquarelli’s excellent Dean’s Lecture held earlier in the week, discussed here, and addressed the changing role of technology in design and construction.

Chaired by Professor Donald Bates, the event comprised a hefty 9 speakers (originally billed as 10, but Nonda Katsalidis had somewhere else better to be) across two panels: Pasquarelli of SHoP Architects, Professor Paolo Tombesi and Paul Loh from the University of Melbourne, and Michael Argyrou from Unitised Building in the first; Hamish Lyon from NH Architecture, Ian Steedman from Brookfield Multiplex, Andrew Tsakmakis from ARUP, Rob Phillport from Aconex and Dominik Holzer again from the University of Melbourne in the second.

We believe the round-table was organised with very short notice to capatilise on Pasquarelli’s time in Melbourne, so kudos must go to Bates for gathering such prestigious panels of diverse expertise. Following on from the successes of the Dean’s Lecture and first Agenda in March, our expectations were high: we arrived early looking forward to an insightful and meaningful discussion.

What did we think?

Unfortunately, this Agenda was not as well executed as it might have been. With each panel member making a brief [sic] presentation prior to discussion time, the allotted two hours evaporated quickly and there was insufficient opportunity for vigorous debate. What little there was did not delve deeply enough into the topics raised, nor provide the multi-faceted dialogue we had anticipated.

Of the presentations, Pasquarelli was, once again, engaging. He steered clear of territory already covered in his Dean’s Lecture, instead elaborating on the unique relationship between SHoP Architects and SHoP Construction. On Barclays Centre, their stadium project in Brooklyn, the former worked for the client while the latter worked for the builder. This finely balanced independence reminds us of SJB‘s corporate structure here in Melbourne: a group of five companies (architecture, interiors, urban design, planning and administration) at times working together and at others separately. For both SHoP and SJB, this arrangement permits the development of unique ideas and skills within each arm, while also affording a significantly more holistic approach on project delivery than is otherwise possible.

Tombesi, who took us for both design and theory subjects during our architecture studies, presented a densely packed analysis of the relationship between key elements of the construction industry: client; design; manufacturing; construction; and regulation. Making us feel like undergraduates all over again, he described how innovation occurs either within these realms of activity or across the links between them. Link-based innovation crosses the boundaries between elements via both push and pull mechanisms: SHoP occupy the centre of the construction landscape and act across multiple fields, pushing design and manufacturing innovation into construction territories.

This framework stems from the key understanding that the design of buildings relies on, and is produced for, people. There is no building without people and no construction industry without building. This ecology is so tightly woven that architecture is fundamentally limited to only be as good or as bad as the society that commissions it. As Tombesi put it, “We get the architecture we deserve”.

Lyon spoke thematically about his recent experiences across large building projects in Melbourne. He touched on the impact of time on new construction ideologies, noting how the Melbourne Convention Centre was still being designed and documented while construction was already underway. He discussed the impact of location on the Myer Bourke Street redevelopment, which incorporated issues of access, streetscape and ongoing commercial activities in the rest of the department store. And he addressed geometry, specifically the dimensions and proportions of Margaret Court Arena, which all revolve around the confined precision of a tennis match.

Lyon concluded with the observation that despite the pervading nature of new technologies, construction today is not that different from construction at any other point in history. Gravity still exists, we still have to lift things up, things still get wet, wind and weather still get in the way.

Melbourne Convention Centre by NH Architecture, Southbank, 2009

What did we learn?

With the exception of the aforementioned presentations, we found the rest to be dry. Most remarkable was the difference in paradigms embodied by the architects and academics on the one hand, and builders, engineer and software developer on the other. Whereas Pasquarelli, Tombesi, Lyon and other academics spoke intelligently about the broader issues of architecture production and their ambitions for high quality cities, the builders et. al. showed themselves to be incapable of seeing beyond the confines of their specific interests. Argyrou, Steedman and Phillpot did not argue against the value of well built cities, they were simply disinterested in it.

Argyrou focussed entirely on the technologies used by Unitised Building to facilitate construction of its unitised construction system. The company has a dedicated factory that looks after every element of a building, from superstructure to joinery. Each step in the assembly line is carefully managed: even the number of minutes it takes to a weld a join is estimated, monitored and reviewed. Apartments arrive on site fully built, even furnished, and assembly takes 16 days instead of the 110 it would take to build the same building using traditional methods. Despite this, the unitised apartments are marketed and sold like normal apartments: the buying public are not aware of the innovations that have taken place under their apartments’ skin.

Following discussion of this system, Pasquarelli asked a telling question: do many clients seek to use the efficiency of Unitised Building’s innovative construction process to achieve better design outcomes rather than cheaper construction costs? Argyrou confirmed that unitised construction is between 5 – 15% cheaper than traditional construction but dismissed the possibility of better design. His clients are only ever interested in the bottom line.

Tombesi also highlighted a potential hazard of the advent of unitised fabrication. Shifting construction off site and into factories has the reverse consequence of reducing in-situ expertise: manufacturing innovation pulls change from construction territories. If we want a construction industry that can achieve both low cost volume building and high cost craft building, we must be aware of the broad changes affected by individual innovations. Again Argyrou was disinterested, barely even registering awareness of the implications of Tombesi’s critcism.

The Nicholson by Unitised Building, Coburg, 2011

Steedman and Phillpot were similarly tedious. Both touched on building integrated management (BIM) documentation, extolling its virtues, but their discussion ventured no further than their own areas of interest: construction costs, timely delivery and profits. It would have been enlightening to have Pasquarelli’s demonstrated expertise and Tombesi’s encyclopaedic knowledge pitted against such impassive self-interest.

We left this Agenda with more questions than answers. Most importantly, we ask what impact BIM and unitised construction will have on our built environment. Given the tendency for the profit incentive to drive decision making at every stratum of Australian society – from politics, through finances and development, to markets – what will prevent these innovations from doing nothing more than decreasing costs at the expense of quality?

During question time, we asked Pasquarelli whether there are any secrets to SHoP’s success in doing the opposite, in maintaining construction costs while increasing quality. His answer was notable for its reverberations echoing back across every technological innovation of the modern era: “We need cheerleaders for a high quality built environment. We need to advocate for this outcome with clients, builders and governments. Architects are the guardians of culture.”

So as always, poor built outcomes are still possible and advocacy is still necessary. It may be a brave new world, but quality vs. cost is still the same old battle.

The Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre

What was it?

The Australian Institute of Architects‘ national architecture conference, held two weekends ago at NH Architecture‘s polished Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Creatively directed by Sandra Kaji-O’Grady and John de Manincor, it explored the subject of material, asking questions like: is fog an architectural material? What would a brick answer to a robot that asks, “What do you want to be?” In the wake of asbestos, what scope is there for architects to experiment with new materials?

The conference website stated:

The materialisation of built form is but one strand in the complex web of our discipline. Architecture’s material presence weaves around individual experience and defines the fabric of the city. The 2013 Conference will explore contemporary applications and ideas surrounding material in architecture.

Kaji-O’Grady and de Manincor elaborated on this broad agenda on the morning of Day 1 by recalling the late 1960s conceptual art of Robert Barry, whose sculptural materials included inert gas, radio waves and telepathy. This reference underlined the directors’ interest in fringe interpretations of material, a natural continuation of Kaji O’Grady’s early-noughties research work into meat and architecture. Thus widened, the scope of the conference looked well outside the familiar: mud, pollution, air pressure, plastic hose and windmill blades were a few of the materials presented in the two days following.

What did we think?

Aiming to “avoid fixed styles in the selection of presenters”, Kaji-O’Grady and de Manincor assembled a heterogenous group of speakers: from Matthias Kohler’s research into robotics, to Kathrin Aste’s sublime interventions in steel and concrete, to Cesare Peeren’s radical approach to upcycling. The collective presentation material cannot be said to lie along a single gradient, though fellow delegate, Sarah Herbert, made this valuable offering. Instead, we felt that three clear themes emerged to both align and distinguish the speakers’ areas of interest:

New technologies
Billie Faircloth, United States of America
Jose Selgas, Spain
Virginia San Fratello, United States of America
Philippe Rahm, France
Jorge Otero-Pailos, United States of America
Matthias Kohler, Switzerland

Sustainability
Cesare Peeren, the Netherlands
Emma Young, Australia
Tim Greer, Australia

Aesthetic form
Yosuke Hayano, China
Carey Lyon, Australia
Manuelle Gautrand, France
Kathrin Aste, Austria

We will examine in detail these themes in future articles, together with some of the ways they were explored by the speakers, and what relevance they might have to contemporary practice in Australia. For brief summaries of the presentations, we recommend Michael Smith’s blog post here or Robert Bedon’s article for Architecture AU here. For now, we have restricted ourselves to discussing the broad scope of the conference and the insights we took from it.

One such insight was the contrast between Australian and international speakers. As might be expected from a conference aiming to exhibit ideas and individuals unfamiliar to its audience, the bulk of the speakers were international. Inevitably, though perhaps unintentionally, the Australian representatives in Young, Greer and Lyon embodied the classically Australian practice of research through built work. They communicated a gritty determination to build first and extract architectural intelligence second, a frequent side effect of the wealth of construction opportunities in this country.

It might be argued that we would benefit from the considered resourcefulness of the Europeans, as displayed by Peeren’s repurposing of windmill blades as play equipment, or the scholarly exuberance of the Americans, as conveyed by Otero-Pailos’ development of scents for Philip Johnson’s Glass House. Certainly, the presentations of Young, Greer and Lyon had far more in common with China’s Hayano, who with MAD Architects builds large and fast and often, than they did either their European or American counterparts. However, this regional association might not be such a bad thing: on the one hand, the hurdles of finance and construction diminish the possibility of truly radical ideas, yet on the other they permit an evolving dialogue between design, theory and the built environment. A subject for a future conference perhaps.

The lecture theatre fills on day 1 of Material 2013

To our minds, only a few of the speakers were as persuasive as the best speakers at the World Architecture Festival we attended in 2010, whose focus on urban renewal continues to resonate with us. Unfortunately, we suspect this was as much a reflection on delivery as it was on content. A worrying number of the speakers ignored the first and most basic rule of design communication: Show it don’t say it. The worst offenders were Faircloth, whose rapid speech rate at times made her unintelligible, and Rahm, whose data-heavy slides were repetitive and tedious.

In stark contrast, San Fratello was captivating, a seemingly unanimous audience favourite. She discussed some of her practice’s delightful small building work before dipping into her more recent interest in 3D printing. She wove stories around each project, unpacking their ideas, processes and executions: the homeless man whose first, negative reaction to Sukkah of the Signs gave way to advocacy; or the recycled glass tubes in SOL Grotto whose combined market value of half a billion dollars made it the most expensive art piece ever. She spoke a lot about materials, as well as contexts for their use: the ideas for the temporary Straw Gallery, whose gestation tracked through two other projects, and whose hay bales were ultimately returned to the farm from which they originated.

Straw Gallery by Rael San Fratello, 2011

Selgas, Peeren, Young and Aste were also stimulating. Together with San Fratello, they each presented fascinating projects, and were able to communicate their essential qualities while also addressing the conference subject.

This is not to say that none of the other speakers presented interesting ideas, only that their presentation styles failed to fully engage. Though Paul Finch managed to do it at WAF, it is difficult to suggest how this might be systematically avoided: we suspect Kaji-O’Grady and de Manincor wanted to host speakers from whom they had never heard, uncovering interesting architects without knowing for certain that they could perform in front of an audience. They did take a tentative step towards thematic integration, with most speakers sharing paired lecture slots to highlight common investigations. This could have helped break into the content of prepared lectures and initiate cross-examination of ideas. Unfortunately, it proved to be little more than a scheduling device as negligible opportunity was provided for the speakers to respond to, or critique, one another’s work.

Kaji-O’Grady and de Manincor explained that in order to accommodate all twelve speakers within the two days, inter-speaker conversation and question time were to be limited to a single discussion panel at the conclusion of the conference. They invited delegates to relay questions for the panel via Twitter and SMS, a clever idea that encouraged #material2013 related commentary. Again however, it appeared only lip service was to be paid to true conversation. The panel, hosted by the verbose and densely academic Nadar Tehrani, whose collaborative work with John Wardle on the University of Melbourne Architecture building we have discussed previously, was wearying and managed to ignore all but two of the delegates’ generally excellent questions.

This oversight capped a thought-provoking and uplifting conference with an unnecessarily sour ending. Delegate questions were displayed on the big screen behind the panellists, scrolling by as the discussion panel studiously ignored them. Having requested the questions in the first place, it seemed as if Kaji-O’Grady and de Manincor thought they were unworthy of responses: both insulting and untrue.

What did we learn?

Attended by around 1,000 architects from around Australia and across the Tasman Sea, the conference is the most substantial national event run each year by the AIA. Its value lies not only in attending the lectures, but in discussing the merits of their content with both old colleagues and new. Over the course of lunch or evening drinks, indecipherable presentations were reinterpreted with new meaning, glamorous presentations were deconstructed into trivialities, and banal presentations became contentious.

Rahm’s lecture was an example of the former. It may have been badly mis-aimed, but the ideas behind it, of an urban environment scientifically tailored to counter undesirable climatic conditions, were worthy of lengthy discussion. Gautrand’s lecture on the other hand exhibited a succession of beautiful forms and playful textures, which upon closer examination proved to be without context or reason. And finally, Kohler’s lecture on robotics appeared to be interested primarily in the sensational, but managed to divide the audience between those who saw him as wasteful and those who saw him as a visionary.

We commend Kaji-O’Grady and de Manincor for undertaking what would have undoubtedly been an organisational task of mammoth proportions. In their closing address, both noted how much time was required of them to do it justice, with Kaji-O’Grady even disturbingly referring to their children as conference orphans. It is immensely gratifying that the role of creative director for these conferences is so highly sought after, and draws individuals of such diverse and productive interests.

To offer some constructively critical feedback: a notable absence in the themes covered by this conference was the traditional material (and perhaps dying art) of building. We would have liked to hear from architects who are unequalled in their ability to direct craftsmen in the use and execution of physical matter, who, like Le Corbusier, “can control tonnes of concrete like an artist controls tubes of paint.” Given his recent Pritzker Prize, Toyo Ito might have been a big ask, but Peter Rich of South Africa or Brian MacKay-Lyons of Canada would have offered meaningful voices to this complex subject.

Material 2013 boasted only a few disappointing misses and many satisfying hits. The dull discussion panel and poor use of social media were unfortunate lapses that need to be significantly improved for next year. However, the conference was suitably glamorous, with glossy lanyards, slick visual introductions and high quality food imbuing it with the gravitas it deserved. Intellectually and socially, it was a great success. We enjoyed meeting Michael Smith, Bobby Shen, Neph Wake, Sarah Herbert and others, all architects whom we had previously only known online. That such a community can exist, geographically divided across Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Auckland, but united by shared passions, is a testament to the hypermodern world of communication.

Despite our various criticisms, our overall impression of Material 2013 was very positive. Learning what we don’t like is at times as important as learning what we do. This was our first AIA national conference, but it will not be our last. The 2014 conference, to be directed by Adam Haddow, Helen Norrie and Sam Crawford, will be held in Perth for the first time in a decade and explore the theme of making: “the dirtiness, directness, and honesty of architecture.” We’re excited by this announcement, the chance to visit the west coast and attend a conference whose theme might speak to our own interests in architecture.

We can’t wait.

Sir Thomas Gresham by Anthonis Mor van Dashorst (1565)

What is it?

A paraphrasing of Gresham’s Law, an economic principle proposed in the 16th Century by adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Thomas Gresham. The law, bad money drives out good, described the devaluation of the precious metal content in circulating coins. When new, low precious metal content coins were issued by the Queen, Gresham observed that older, higher precious metal content coins quickly disappeared: either hoarded by the public as a primitive form of savings, or retained by the government to melt down and create more of the new.

We first came across the principle in 2004 while studying The Political Economy of Design under Professor Paolo Tombesi at the University of Melbourne, a subject and a teacher we recently discussed here. Now only offered sporadically within the Master of Architecture program, the subject “seeks to position and discuss architecture in relation to the world of production, economic interests and community benefits, at a local and global scale”. As evidenced by this article, written nine years after we took the subject, it has imparted lasting influence over our interests and values.

If you are a student at the University of Melbourne and The Political Economy of Design is offered in coming semesters, it would be a crime for you not to enrol in it.

Gresham’s Law may be a simple observation, but it has sophisticated ramifications that describe the devolution of production in almost any corner of industry, architecture included. The analysis that follows owes much to Michael Benedikt‘s excellent article on the subject, Gresham’s Law and the Logic of Efficacy.

Bad architecture drives out good, an illustrated story

A house comprises 1,000 qualities, set N, which collectively enable it to function. These qualities include things like bedrooms, insulation, robustness, waterproofing, solar orientation and timber benchtops. Each quality costs its builder $1,000 to produce, equalling a total construction cost of $1,000,000.

As is true with any product the world over, the purchasers of the house are cognisant of fewer qualities than it contains, set n. The qualities of which they are not aware are hidden from their layperson’s sight, like the thermal mass of its concrete slab, the anti-rust properties of its stainless steel hinges or the acoustic insulation in its internal walls. The precise size of set n varies between purchasers, however in all cases n < N. If there are say 600 qualities the purchasers appreciate, each worth $1,000, they are prepared to pay only $600,000 for the house.

Thus the builder of the house faces a dilemma: the gap between its total and appreciated qualities, N – n, represents a financial shortfall. While the house costs him $1,000,000 to construct, its purchasers are only prepared to pay $600,000.

So how does the builder address the financial shortfall? According to Benedikt, there are two basic solutions.

Builder #1 pursues the first and simplest: the strategy of contraction. This strategy reduces the number of qualities built into the house so as to reduce its construction cost. By eliminating the 400 qualities unappreciated by the purchasers, he need only spend $600,000 in production and will thus recoup all costs upon sale.

Builder #2 pursues the second and more complex: the strategy of education. This strategy maintains the full number of qualities built into the house, but seeks to inform the purchasers of their importance. Once the purchasers appreciate all 1,000 qualities, they are prepared to pay the $1,000,000 production cost and, once again, he will recoup all costs upon sale.

The two strategies do not promise equal success. Contraction enables builder #1 to reduce the cost of production up front, diminishing his financial risk. It also permits his house to be sold more cheaply than the house of builder #2, an easy and effective marketing advantage. In contrast, builder #2 must bear the risk of a more expensive production cost, together with the additional cost of educating potential purchasers. Further, there is no guarantee that once suitably educated, they will indeed purchase his house.

This imbalance is magnified when extrapolated over time. The strategy of education is a long-term approach, with better educated purchasers interested in houses containing all 1,000 qualities at best a distant benefit. The strategy of contraction promises much faster returns: the cheaper house of builder #1 attracts more purchasers more often. Soon enough, the market is saturated by his houses and the better quality houses of builder #2, unable to compete, disappear from circulation.

It doesn’t matter that the purchasers benefit from the 400 discarded qualities, nor are disadvantaged by their absence, only that they don’t appreciate them. Presented with two houses side by side, with nothing discernible to distinguish them, the cheaper house inevitably wins. Ultimately, Gresham’s Law prevails: education is expensive, risky and time-consuming; contraction is cheap, virtually risk-free and fast. Bad architecture drives out good.

What do we think?

Our contemporary built environment has been shaped over recent decades by no force more influential than Gresham’s Law. We see it everywhere. It is the reason volume housing, which represents around 95% of all new housing construction, is of poor quality. It is the reason for down-skilling in young tradespeople. It is the reason that the majority of new building systems and materials substitute quality for efficiency. It is the reason that McMansions exist; that housing estates are filled with poor-performing, flimsy buildings.

A commercial timber window fabricator told us recently that his company abandoned solid timber jambs in favour of finger jointed pieces around 3 years ago when his competitors made the change first. It doesn’t matter that solid timber offers a more uniform finish and superior durability to finger jointing, only that the purchasers not know this. Since the downgrade, not a single customer has complained.

Gresham’s Law is also the reason that architects and boutique builders are incapable of competing with volume housing construction rates. We regularly encounter potential clients who weigh up our bespoke design services with the contracted services of draftspeople or products of volume builders. Despite our strident efforts to explain the unevenness of this comparison (in which we make ample reference to the analogy of the suit), we find ourselves on the losing side of an ongoing and long-lasting battle. One recent potential client was outraged that our proposed fee could possibly be 6 times more expensive than that of a draftsperson. No amount of frank discussion explaining the services we provide could sway them: we missed out on the commission.

Our experience is evidence of the depressing but not surprising truth that the Australian public does not appreciate the value of good architecture. Gresham’s Law has been at work for far too long here, the lure of cheap houses having displaced for decades the benefits of true quality. One need look no further than any of the new housing estates springing up on the fringes of Melbourne to see the truth of this.

Mernda, a Metricon community 30km north-east of Melbourne

Dear reader, can you imagine one of these houses, or any of the thousands like them, serving generations of inhabitants in the way that the worker’s cottages of the early 1900s have? Can you imagine them being renovated and updated for changing tastes through the decades, but being essentially retained? No? How about the idea of them being demolished in 10 years, dumped unceremoniously in landfill and replaced?

This is the legacy of almost 500 years of Gresham’s Law, and it all started when the Queen discovered that a coin with negligible precious metal contact can be worth its face value simply because she said it was. Translating this concept into the realm of architecture reveals that marketing and spin are more important than the truth, that the Australian public desire quantity over quality and precious few can tell good architecture from bad.

What can we do about it?

Opposing the relentless forces of contraction is a time-consuming, expensive and risky undertaking. Asking individual architects to do this within their practices is an almost impossible task. The sheer numbers are against us here: 140,000 new houses are built each year in Australia, but architects are involved with only 7,000, or a mere 5%. One cannot fight cancer one damaged cell at a time.

Gregg Pasquarelli observed in his recent Dean’s Lecture at the University of Melbourne that the most environmentally sustainable action available to an architect is to “create buildings that people love, that don’t get torn down every 10 – 20 years.” This is certainly a significant part of the equation, but it is a philosophy most architects are already practicing. Perhaps in areas of dense architectural involvement, specifically the city and inner suburbs, this has already translated into an appreciation of good design. Such is not the case the further out one travels however. How can we pursue the difficult strategy of education amongst the vast majority of people – from Mernda to Caroline Springs – who are ignorant of architecture and disinterested in its value?

We have three suggestions:

Media advocacy. In public forums and across all forms of media, advocacy provides the opportunity to talk to people about architecture. The Architects radio show on Triple R is a shining example of this approach, as are Houses magazine, Melbourne Open House and the Robin Boyd Foundation. The most striking shared quality of these enterprises is their appeal to laypeople. 70% of attendees at the Robin Boyd open days are non-architects, while the MOH weekend last year recorded 135,000 visits.

As such, a key quality of successful advocacy is accessibility: it is not avant-garde theory or collective back-patting; it is a concerted effort to engage the public with their built environment. Despite its mandate that asserts otherwise, the Australian Institute of Architects is not good at advocacy. It expends great effort in lobbying government but neglects popular media. Every time Jon Faine discusses an issue concerning the built environment, an AIA representative should offer an opinion; daily newspapers should provide more visibility to the AIA and seek quotes as a matter of course; and television shows about design should involve architects more heavily and celebrate them in the way reality-TV cooking shows do chefs.

Beyond design. We came across a blog article recently noting that in the past 50 years only one United States federal politician was an architect. The article associated the marginalisation of the architecture profession with our conspicuous absence from roles of public office and common interest. Having government architects at state and federal levels is a good start, but we need to step up into positions of wider responsibility: in politics, universities, major institutions and company boards. In our practices, we seek creative solutions that are long-term, wide-ranging and socially responsible. If this rare paradigm can work for buildings, why can’t it work for government portfolios?

Perhaps our undoing in this regard is, ironically, our love of architecture. Being an architect is so rewarding that we are not prepared to leave it for elections, committees and policies. Certainly, there is ample evidence to suggest we love the practice of architecture sufficiently to put up with being paid terribly to do it. Nevertheless, public office is a serious responsibility in which we are obliged to take part: more of us need to accept its burden.

School education. Finally, the education of young minds. Every individual in his or her life will engage with architecture more frequently and meaningfully than he or she ever will with calculus, sound waves or organic chemistry. Why then is architecture not taught at school level? Why does every student not graduate from high school with a basic knowledge of sustainability principles, the history of Australian architecture and the innovations of the Sydney Opera House?

A number of years ago, we successfully introduced a term of architectural design into Year 11 Visual Communications and Design at Caulfield Grammar School. Though we are no longer involved, we believe the subject is still running. Looking back on the experience, we realise that an arts subject is not necessarily the best place to learn about architecture: after all, our agenda is not to create more architects but to inspire more interest in architecture. If we are to reignite our teaching involvement at school level, we will aim to do so not just through the arts, but science and history also.

With an entire socio-economic framework founded on the principles of Gresham’s Law, it will be no small task to reverse the status-quo of architectural ignorance. Working as individuals, we cannot afford the time to educate every potential client that walks through the door, nor accept the risk that once educated he or she won’t go elsewhere. If we are to have any success at all, we must work together as a profession. We must also realise that our design work is not in itself sufficient to affect fundamental change. To do that, we’ll have to step well beyond our comfort zones and accept positions of responsibility in the wider community.

What is it?

The long awaited release of the shortlisted entries for the Flinders Street Station Design Competition. Public voting on the entries opened early last week, with full documentation now available on each of the six projects. In addition to the project boards, we are able to access drawings, area summaries, project descriptions and digital animations.

After ten months of secrecy, it is a relief to finally see these design proposals, however it remains puzzling to us that competition organisers Major Projects Victoria elected to keep them and the 111 unsuccessful entries under wraps for so long. How much positive media attention was missed in discouraging public discourse? Also puzzling is the decision to keep the jury and public votes separate from one other. While the former will ultimately decide the competition and the $700,000 prize money still to be awarded, the latter will have no influence on the jury decision. A more cynical commentator might suggest that this strategy is archetypically political: appearing to involve the public without really having to involve them.

Minister for Major Projects, David Hodgett, has made the dubious promise that public feedback will “be used to refine the design belonging to the winner.” How this will be achieved and whether such a strategy is even desirable remains to be seen: should Zaha Hadid add a green roof to her organic white cruise ship? Will NH Architecture be encouraged to incorporate brick vaults beneath their jagged canopy? Hodgett also cemented our tentative disregard for his understanding of architecture with his flippant remark, “a lot of architect’s [sic] designs are wonderful things but they still have to be built and feasible.”

What do we think?

Criticism of the competition organisation aside, our lengthy involvement with the first stage of the competition has left us indelibly intrigued by its ambitions and fascinated by its potential outcomes. It would be remiss of us therefore not to take this timely opportunity to review, contrast and rank the shortlisted entries. We have marked each project out of 5 in the four criteria that underpin both the original design brief and online voting process:

1. Overall design merit
2. Transport function
3. Cultural heritage and iconic status
4. Urban design and precinct integration

Having had difficulty viewing the animation sequences for each project on the Vote Flinders Street website, we were able to successfully access them directly via YouTube (listed alphabetically):

Ashton Raggatt McDougall
Eduardo Velasquez + Manuel Pineda + Santiago Medina
Herzog & de Meuron + HASSELL
John Wardle Architects + Grimshaw
NH Architecture
Zaha Hadid + BVN Donovan Hill

So, our judgement in ascending order:

6. Zaha Hadid + BVN Donovan Hill

Of all the projects, this is the least sensitive to its context. It could be anywhere in the world, indeed it has more in common with Hadid’s projects in Rome, New York and Leipzig than it does the streets and laneways of Melbourne. It is part of a fragmented diaspora owing great allegiance to Hadid’s singular artistic vision but none to its people or place. Its dramatic sculptural form will always be an alien presence along the river, distinct from rather than part of the city.

Yet again, Hadid reveals the fallacy of her reputation as one of the great urbanists of our time. Where is the connection between city and river? The urban porosity? The civic space? The human scale? This project may very well address the transport requirements of Flinders Street Station, but its footprint is dominated by private space: a multi-storey hotel / office building that takes up the western half of the site and leaves room for only one public plaza, both vast in scale and meagre in amenity.

The project’s relationship to the Banana Alley vaults reveals how hostile it is to the heritage of the site, its mammoth proportions pressing heavily on the delicate brick arches as it crushes them into the ground.

We are deeply unimpressed by this project. Its imagery is dangerously seductive, lavish in its glamour and undoubtedly a ready-made icon to make politicians and private developers drool. However, Melbourne is no Bilbao: we have no need of icons. The qualities we need – urbanity, humanity, richness – are all but absent in yet another illusory offering from Zaha Hadid.

Overall design merit: 2
Transport function: 3
Cultural heritage and iconic status: 2
Urban design and precinct integration: 1
TOTAL: 8 / 20

5. Ashton Raggatt McDougall

This project has a lot going for it: the best understanding amongst the six entries of the historical contexts of Flinders Street Station, the Yarra River and surrounding precinct; an engaged programme arrangement including a high school and beautiful rooftop garden; a series of delightful spaces across the site; and all of it designed by architects with a proven history of successful integration of new urban functions within heritage fabrics.

Special mention must also go to the digital animation sequence produced by 21.19 and Marcus Skinner: it offers tantalising glimpses of ARM’s narrative without surrendering all its secrets. Its production values are as high as we have seen in any animation festival, and equally alluring.

Unfortunately, and we are surprised at ourselves in saying this, to our tastes ARM’s vision is just too ugly to support. Using the original but never built vaulted elevation to Swanston Street as their departure, they have developed an organic series of forms that squelch and contort their way across the site. While any given moment might hold great promise, taken as a whole they are uncomfortable and alien.

Unlike Hadid, ARM have chosen to occupy only parts of the site, leaving much of the rail tracks open to the air. This offers the likely benefit of more modest construction costs, but still manages to provide a dense tower footprint at the west end of the site for private development. At the same time they have enlivened the edges of the site, locking in activity along the river, existing administration building and Swanston Street frontage.

This project is grounded in a strong understanding of place, but it sits awkwardly along the river and up against the administration building. Perhaps clad in a different skin, we would love it. Or perhaps we simply feel that ARM have had their fair share of major commissions in Melbourne. It’s time we see how someone else’s ideas might impact on the city.

Overall design merit: 1
Transport function: 3
Cultural heritage and iconic status: 4
Urban design and precinct integration: 3
TOTAL: 11 / 20

4. Eduardo Velasquez + Manuel Pineda + Santiago Medina

The clear underdog of this competition, significant kudos must go to Velasquez, Pineda and Medina, three Columbian students studying at the University of Melbourne, for progressing through to Stage 2. Win or lose, over coming years they will certainly be architects to watch.

Their project offers a magnificent green space to the city, its rooftop parkland the generous glue that binds the large site and its disparate functions together. We like the way it ramps up from Swanston Street, tapping into the steady pedestrian thoroughfare there and marking its place alongside Federation Square. We also like how it ducks and weaves across the site, successfully integrating transport and commercial functions with continuous civic space. The sliding roof plane connects neatly with adjacent thoroughfares, though could have made more of its proximity to the river.

While our competition entry suggested a rooftop park also, we wonder now whether it is sufficiently meaty for this site. Two full city blocks make it much more than a mere train station: does such a significant slice of Melbourne demand more intensive or imaginative programme? The choice of a rail museum inside the heritage administration building is similarly prosaic: obvious and curiously conservative.

At three storeys in height, the glass atrium is suitably lofty, making interesting use of expressed steel structure and advanced plastic membranes developed by the CSIRO. Its heritage aspirations are more shaky however: appearing to smother the administration building instead of protecting it.

We like an underdog as much as anyone, but ultimately we don’t think this project is as sophisticated as its competitors. The undercover spaces below the parkland fail to inspire: far too modest for this site and lacking either the bravado of Herzog & de Meuron’s monumentality or confidence of John Wardle’s formal sculpting.

Overall design merit: 3
Transport function: 4
Cultural heritage and iconic status: 2
Urban design and precinct integration: 3
TOTAL: 12 / 20

In the interests of brevity, we will publish our assessment of the top three projects tomorrow morning. Stay tuned.

What is it?

The long awaited release of the shortlisted entries for the Flinders Street Station Design Competition. Public voting on the entries opened early last week, with our assessment on sixth, fifth and fourth places published yesterday. We have marked each project out of 5 in the four criteria that underpin both the original design brief and online voting process:

1. Overall design merit
2. Transport function
3. Cultural heritage and iconic status
4. Urban design and precinct integration

Continuing in ascending order:

3. NH Architecture

The works of NH Architecture are fast reaching saturation point in Melbourne, and with good reason. They are able to juggle the complex and competing demands of large projects with apparent ease, and hold onto early design visions through the arduous waters of contemporary contract procurement. This proposal is no different: despite its fluctuating massing, programme and site occupation, NH Architecture have created unity across the site via the employment of the simple angled line. The jagged hole in the eastern canopy over the train platforms, the zig-zag of the western tower and the diamond patterned floor surfaces belong to the same formal family, and carve a campus out of the site.

Programmatically, this project impresses. The Urban Green is a sensibly proportioned parkland around which the transport functions, art space and Melbourne Room are arranged. The campus urban strategy is at its most visible here, generating a strong sense of community and functional overlap. It would have been good to see this extend to the denser and curiously isolated western end of the site. This end appears to be a hotel and health spa of some description, but is unusually absent in the documentation. The Urban Green is enticing and well appointed, but like Velasquez and team it misses out on the opportunity to truly engage with the river: terraced steps running parallel to it are optimised for circulation over congregation.

NH Architecture’s animation sequence is the cheekiest of the six, making subtle but poignant reference to “George’s Restaurant” within the Melbourne Room building volume (as in George Calombaris, one of the competition jurors) and their own Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre as a historic precedence. The animation does reveal however how carefully the gutsy waffle concrete canopy has been sculpted; its height, edges and jagged hole perfectly shaped to frame views of the administration building dome, clock tower and Hamer Hall across the river.

In context, we can easily visualise this project coming to fruition. It fits well within the lineage of practices like ARM, LAB and Denton Corker Marshall, whose significant projects within Melbourne are prolific. For large building sites like the the Melbourne Theatre Company, Federation Square and Melbourne Museum, we have come to expect assemblies of smaller buildings instead of monolithic form, a characteristic exemplified by NH Architect’s entry. Ultimately however, we have ranked it third due to its limited engagement with the site’s edges and its strangely familiar form making. Perhaps like our reaction to ARM’s entry, we’re ready to see how someone else will make their mark on the city.

Overall design merit: 3
Transport function: 4
Cultural heritage and iconic status: 3
Urban design and precinct integration: 4
TOTAL: 14 / 20

2. Herzog & de Meuron + HASSELL

Herzog & de Meuron have successfully juggled the monumentality of Hadid and low-scale density of Velasquez and team, roofing the entire site in a sublime roof of interlocking vaults. Taking clear inspiration from both the original Swanston Street facade and existing brick vaults along Banana Alley (both popular departure points it seems), this project manages to be both international and contextual.

We like the way the vaults squeeze and jostle along the asymmetrical contours of the site and, in particular, the way their form is revealed and accentuated by the subtraction of the central plaza. This plaza achieves three important outcomes for the project: it acts as buffer between the hustle of the train station and market to the east, and hush of the gallery to the west; it provides a sympathetically scaled civic space framed by the lush curves of the surrounding vaults; and, with its terraces down to the south, provides the only open space amongst the shortlisted entries that engages with the Yarra as destination and theatre. While the competition guidelines gave liberty to develop land beyond the confines of the station, the low likelihood of such programme actually being built meant it could not be intrinsic to the design proposal. Herzog & de Meuron have deftly sidestepped this issue by proposing a floating platform stage, one we can easily see being utilised during warmer months by the surrounding arts precinct for evening performances.

This project is very good, but the reason we’re ranking it second stems from its remarkable whiteness. A small detail one might argue, however we’ve visited projects with similar austerity around the world – Santiago Calatrava’s arts and science precinct in Valencia, and Alvaro Siza’s ministry in Porto – and even in the middle of the Mediterranean they were international, out of their place. A gallery, no matter its oceanic or contemporary aspirations, carries the same austerity and feels unnecessary within the site’s arts dominated precinct.

We admire the singularity of this project’s vision, one whose DNA is strongly European but nevertheless manages to pay its respects to local history and culture. We think its vaults, dappled roof patterning and central plaza are stunning. But could the gallery programme perhaps be swapped out for something more lively? Would it be better clad in bluestone? Really, we ask, how will an all-white gallery fare amidst the bluestone and red brick grit of Flinders Street Station?

Overall design merit: 3
Transport function: 3
Cultural heritage and iconic status: 4
Urban design and precinct integration: 5
TOTAL: 15 / 20

1. John Wardle Architects + Grimshaw

And the winner is.

Of the six shortlisted projects, it is interesting to observe that the John Wardle Architects + Grimshaw entry is the only alliance between two practices recognised for their design expertise. It could be argued that HASSELL have been improving their design work in recent years, however it is difficult to see their touch on Herzog & de Meuron’s vaults, and BNV Donovan Hill are essentially invisible caretakers of Zaha Hadid’s cruise ship.

This design-based collaboration is an approach JWA have pursued previously, notably on their success with NADAAA on the University of Melbourne’s new Architecture Building. Despite the collaborative intentions, John Wardle is clearly the form maker of both projects; his angled surfaces, sliding volumes and rich material juxtapositions all evident in abundance. But perhaps Grimshaw had more impact on the Flinders Street Station design competition in other design areas: urban design or siting strategy for instance. According to one Grimshaw insider, the two practices collaborated extensively on their entry, with ample agreement on design. It’s possible that Grimshaw’s strongest presence is in fact the absence of a roof, an area of exploration for which they are generally renown.

This absence is significant and for us represents one of the proposal’s strongest characteristics: instead of a roof, it has a roof deck on top of which a series of buildings, walkway connections and parkland are arranged. Even more than the NH Architecture entry, it achieves a strong campus environment, with amongst the best treatments of the heritage administration building. Duplicating the Flinders Street walkway within the site confines, the transport functions are expanded into generous civic space, leaking around a new Design Museum, platform access and park.

These programmes are complemented at the west end of the site by a creative incubator, residential and commercial precincts, council office building, market and hotel: a rich, varied and genuinely interesting mixed-use strategy. The site’s edges are activated nicely, missing the front-on river relationship of Herzog & de Meuron’s amphitheatre, but gaining nooks, crannies and flexible usage possibilities. The project is carefully crafted, but gives the strong impression of adaptability and uses that cannot yet be envisaged. We particularly like the Design Museum, “part grandstand and part civic landmark,” which offers a clever relationship to Federation Square, augmenting its theatricality and celebrating one of the world’s busiest transport hubs.

Formally, the project has drawn much from the existing heritage conditions of the site, achieving a level of detail missing from the other entries. The Flinders Street Station steps, long a popular meeting place, have been expanded into the city’s largest outdoor seat; the Banana Alley vaults are extended and reinvented, continuing along the river’s edge with subtly nestled programme; the floral patterning in the pressed metal ceilings of the administration building is abstracted into lighting elements that appear and reappear across the site.

JWA + Grimshaw have understood the site and the city with unparalleled thoroughness, extrapolating existing usage patterns and establishing new ones in a powerfully compelling proposal that boasts great urban engagement, is programmatically inventive and formally stunning. For us, it is the pick of the bunch.

Overall design merit: 5
Transport function: 4
Cultural heritage and iconic status: 5
Urban design and precinct integration: 4
TOTAL: 18 / 20

What have we learnt?

The jury vote has already been cast, locked in before the public vote was launched to protect the jurors from public opinion. Our main concern is that the jury might have instead been unduly influenced by political agendas. Hadid’s glamorous name and signature design could very well prove irresistible to the policy makers, spin doctors and money men. Ironically, her entry might likewise win not because her curvaceous form is liked but because they make her proposal the least affordable: an inevitable and easy escape clause for a State government commonly understood to have neither intention nor means to build the winning proposal.

Our general distrust for the architectural attention span of Melbourne’s general public makes us fear that Hadid might also take out the public vote. The immediate and seductive impact of her project’s form trumps the other five denser, more subtle entries. Whatever the decisions, we will be paying close attention to both results and will be fascinated by the media attention that is surely to follow a split decision.

It will be important to remember the context of the two announcements however: the jury and public decisions will be the culmination of a vast collective design effort, as much reliant on those 111 projects that weren’t shortlisted as the six that were. This was a significant labour of love undertaken by many individuals passionate about architecture, urbanism and Melbourne. If we are to gain insight from the comments of one JWA staffer, who queasily admitted that the $50,000 Stage 2 purse offered scant reimbursement for time spent and the $500,000 first prize money would permit them to barely break even, countless hours were dedicated to this competition by architects across the world, expended willingly but for most achieving little.

There is a deep and extremely problematic issue at work here: as a profession, why are we all selling ourselves so short? Is there any other single professional body – lawyers, engineers, doctors – that gives away so much for so little? It is a topic discussed widely within architecture circles, most recently by the president of the Victorian Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects at this year’s State awards, but one as yet without resolution.

Let’s hope the people of Melbourne understand and appreciate the gift they have been given by this competition. Already, the release of the entries has sparked ample media coverage and significant Twitter buzz (grouped under #voteflindersst). With luck, this interest will translate into a broader awareness of the importance of our city’s architecture and the vision of its architects.

Winning proposal by Herzog & de Meuron + HASSELL

What is it?

After two years, 117 Stage 1 submissions from around the world, 1 unauthorised exhibition, exhaustive work from 6 architectural teams on Stage 2 submissions, jury deliberation, extensive media coverage and two weeks of public voting, the results for the Flinders Street Station design competition are finally in.

By unanimous jury vote, the competition winner and recipient of $500,000 prize money is the Swiss / Australian team, Herzog & de Meuron + HASSELL. The jury praised their proposal “for its respect for the heritage of the Administration Building while creating new and memorable additions to the station.” We hope the competition organisers will release further jury commentary soon.

Winning the people’s choice award and all four judging criteria is the team of Columbian students from the University of Melbourne: Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Santiago Medina. The public was taken by the proposal’s generous green roof and, we suspect, its designers’ underdog status.

Curiously, the jury did not award individual second and third prizes, instead rewarding all five of the non-winning shortlisted entries as equal runners up.

Winner of the people’s choice award by Eduardo Velasquez, Manuel Pineda and Santiago Medina

What do we think?

We have already dedicated significant pixel space to discussion of both the Herzog & de Meuron’s + HASSELL proposal and Velasquez, Pineda and Medina‘s. As indicated, we voted the former in second place, so are more than pleased it has won the jury’s vote. We voted the latter in fourth place behind very strong competition, commending its generous parkland but criticising its unconvincing heritage treatment and under-ambitious programme. We are certain that over coming years they will be architects to watch: again, we are pleased it has won the popular vote.

Most perplexing, even suspicious, is the jury’s decision to award equal second place to the five runners up. We feel it demonstrates either an acute lack of self-confidence or inappropriate political intervention. To our minds, the Zaha Hadid + BVN Donovan Hill proposal is clearly inferior to all other five. That it can be awarded to the same extent as the compelling NH Architecture and John Wardle Architects + Grimshaw proposals is offensive.

Dennis Napthine, Premier of Victoria, has stated that the winning proposal is likely to cost between $1b and $1.5b to build. It is certainly a hefty capital investment and one commonly understood will never be made. This is a great pity and, we suppose, a reflection of this State’s 40 year public transport investment drought. Looking at the broader implications of this competition, it is a small leap for us to dream of a world where the East-West road tunnel is de-prioritised in favour of the Melbourne Metro, Doncaster rail line, Melbourne to Brisbane high speed rail project and, of course, the Flinders Street Station upgrade.

Comments following the announcement of the winner in The Age are disturbing but perhaps not surprising. Following in the grand tradition of the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Opera House and Federation Square, there is little love for the winning design. Misunderstandings abound: historical, programmatic, formal and environmental; they’re all there. There is also significant condemnation of the money spent on the competition itself.

Since this argument has been on our minds over recent months, let’s take a quick mathematical look at it:

Prize money = $1,000,000
Competition organisation = ~ $2,000,000
Total competition cost = ~ $3,000,000

Number of Stage 1 entrants = 117
Average time spent on each Stage 1 entry = 400 hours
Number of Stage 2 shortlisted entrants = 6
Average time spent on each Stage 2 entry = 3,000 hours
Total time spent by all entrants = 64,800 hours
Average value of architects’ time = $180 / hour
Total value of architects’ time = $11,664,000

Our only response to those who believe the State Government has squandered the competition money in vain is this: they have never before spent so little to receive so much. If they and their federal counterparts could receive $4 value for every $1 they spend in every other area of their operations, we would truly be the luckiest country in the world.

Farrah Tomazin, The Age, p. 13, 18th November 2012

architect \ˈär-kə-ˌtekt\
1) a person who designs buildings and advises in their construction
2) a person who designs and guides a plan or undertaking

In Australia, there are many who claim ownership of the name, architect, but who among them truly deserve it?

First of the aspirants are the professionals: those who adhere to the registration requirements of the Architects Act. To become registered, and gain the legal right to use the name, one must first graduate from an approved architecture school, then gain experience under another architect, and finally pass a series of registration exams. This is the group most commonly understood to uphold the first dictionary definition of the name.

However, even within this group of some 11,000 registered architects, there is limited homogeneity. There are many who are little more than technicians: CAD architects whose experience of building goes no further than the edges of their computer screens. There are those whose expertise lies in sketch design but have never had to devise a waterproofing detail; or those who live day in and day out on site, but have no interest in design. This group is unified by their education and the titles on their business cards, but little else.

Second are the architect wannabes: building designers, design and construct practitioners, and draftspeople all clamouring at the door of the professionals’ shaky stronghold. They are individuals commissioned in similar ways to the architect, in the design (if in only a limited way) of buildings, but they have not survived the many years of study and apprenticeship required of formal registration.

Third and further afield are the curiously un-litigated misuses of the name: the interior architect is somewhat allied to the ambit of the architect, but is nothing more than a sly semantic evolution from the interior designer. Entirely unrelated are the systems architect, enterprise architect, data architect, solutions architect and software architect, new professions that owe allegiance to the second dictionary definition, but have no role whatsoever in the design and construction of buildings.

Finally, there are the journalistic uses of the name: the architect might be responsible for an Act of parliament, a new computer design or a war. The applications vary, however they share the same sinister tone, the architect being synonymous with inventor or mastermind.

Arthur C. Clarke and Gregory Benford, Beyond the Fall of Night, p. 307

What defines an architect?

The key to understanding the architect is to understand her unique world view, one whose seeds are planted at university and continue to grow as she travels and works. Hers is a paradigm that believes in the power of good design to affect positive change. It is the rare merging of ideas and craft, the mental and physical realms coexisting and enhancing one another. It is both science and art, the functional and philosophical shaping of lives and activities. It enables the architect to see the bigger picture of every decision, places the importance of the built and natural environments above other concerns.

The architect is not only invested in her current project, she is invested in all projects, in whole cities and countries. Hers is an occupation that requires visionary acts to write the built future not yet written. She is passionate about that future, fights to protect it when others are incapable of glimpsing it. She is a true tightrope walker: thinker and maker; scientist and artist; historian and prophet.

It is not sufficient to define an architect therefore as a person registered with the appropriate authority. We have known plenty who are architects from 9am to 5pm only. During evenings, weekends and holidays, they switch off. For them, architecture is merely a job, a means to an ends like any other. The registration process in Australia establishes a minimum requirement but not a maximum: it is a measure of one’s ability to survive the obstacle course of contemporary regulation but not of one’s capacity for design.

Likewise, it is not sufficient to define an architect as a person who designs buildings and advises in their construction. A building designer can be said to do this, but there is a significant gulf between her and the architect. By dint of personality or experience she might gain the architect’s world view, in which case we may very well refer to her as an architect in all but name, but she does not develop it a priori. She lacks the values transmitted osmotically during a tertiary education: the personal and unequivocal investment in the built environment.

Lastly, it is not sufficient to define an architect as the designer of a plan or undertaking. The IT industry cannot simply attach the name to its collective chest like a shiny name tag at a high school reunion. The systems architect might have many responsibilities resonant of the architect’s, but she has no expertise in the making of buildings, no interest in the built environment. Perhaps the distinction between real and digital environments is growing ever more blurry, but the latter has yet to evolve an appreciation of craft: effort spent by skilled trades in the making of things with their hands. The architect knows this effort and is rewarded by it.

MX, p.10, 25th July 2007

What do we think?

We think the architect is many things:

The architect is a problem solver. Presented with a loosely assembled host of questions (of site, client, budget, climate, urbanism, regulation), she uncovers unlikely and singular answers. She juggles structure, materials and finishes, and the construction industry that employs them. She is logical, a lover of hierarchy, sequence and proportion. She is committed to the slow experimentation of architecture, constantly revising and improving ideas and details.

The architect is a creative thinker. She is able to see far outside the box and anticipate uses and programmatic arrangements otherwise unthinkable. She presents outcomes that not only meet expectations but exceed them. She ensures her projects are flexible, adaptable and resilient, built not only for her clients but for future generations as yet unborn.

The architect is a craftswoman. She cultivates both the brilliance of her broad design strategies and the technique of her detailing, following Robin Boyd‘s command to imbue her work with her clients’ spirit and ideals. She understands the work of the carpenter, mason and joiner. She manipulates tonnes of concrete with the same ease and confidence an artists manipulates tubes of paint.

The architect is a scholar. She respects the history of her profession, the many centuries of thought that precede her. She understands the city, produces architecture that is not aloof but part of it. She cherishes the built fabric that pre-exists her projects, the stories it tells and values it represents, preserving it without mimicking or pandering to it. She conserves both its embodied energy and its meaning.

The architect is a leader. She drives projects through the minefield of regulatory authority, user group discord, allied professions, budget cuts and environmental sustainability. She inspires both her peers and younger generations, resisting all setbacks in the endless pursuit of greatness. She belongs to her community and listens to their needs, but she is also apart from them, entrusted to fashion buildings that delight and uplift them.

The architect is a teacher. She recognises her role in the ongoing pedagogy of architectural education, shaping young minds in the way hers once was. She applies the insights of her practice to her students and draws inspiration from their enthusiasm. She imparts lessons on design specifically and life generally, knowledge mingled freely with wisdom.

The architect is a businessperson. She manages staff, deadlines and resources. She knows her way around profit and loss statements, time management software and accounting packages. She understands both cashflow and the long play, accepts commissions that provide the former while simultaneously paving the way for the latter.

The architect is a politician. She faces down vested interests, massages egos and navigates the shifting terrain of project procurement. She is an orator, comfortable in front of an audience of angry neighbours or skeptical engineers. She floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee.

The architect is a polyglot. She speaks the languages of client, cost estimator, planner, neighbour, engineer, builder and plumber. She shapes and reshapes the dialogue of her project to appeal to their diverse agendas, so they may not only understand it but share in its ownership. She weaves together ideas, aspirations, patterns and relationships: she is a story-teller.

David Jackson, The Age, p. 13, 16th December 2004

What can we learn?

Late last year, someone somewhere in the world asked Google whether it is boring to work as an architect, and for unknown reasons this anonymous person arrived at our blog. We don’t know what it was she was seeking, nor whether she found it here. But our answer should she ever return is: no, never. The architect is many things, but never boring. She is forever on her toes, steps with ease from design studio, to construction site, from engineering workshop to council chambers.

Perhaps the architect should recognise the compliment inherent in the journalistic uses of her name. In ascribing the grand plan to the architect, the journalist invokes the mystique that still clings to her, inferring both deep intellect and prescience. The architect is a jack of all trades, the last of the Renaissance women. She has the appropriate education and accreditation and is involved in the making of buildings. But she is also, to paraphrase Gregg Pasquarelli, a custodian of the built environment. She is charged with care for our buildings and cities, forever crafting her contemporary architecture to better enable her vision of the future.

A typical Carlton North green median strip

We consider ourselves very lucky to live in Carlton North. Walkscore ranks its walkability in the top 20 of Melbourne’s 346 suburbs, awarding it 88 out of 100 total points. The Walkscore summary states that “most errands can be accomplished on foot” while residents “can walk to an average of 7 restaurants, bars and coffess shops within 5 minutes.”

Empirically, we experience excellent access to public transport, bicycle networks, parks, recreation, entertainment, shops and schools. Almost every day to day activity we undertake, including work, shopping, dining, socialising and exercising is accessible within a 5km radius. We truly live a post-car lifestyle: mobility has been replaced with proximity, and the 1.5 hour return trip of the average Melbourne commuter has been replaced by higher productivity and more time with family.

Carlton North parks map

Parks in Carlton North are represented at a variety of scales:

• Out our front door is a green median strip, providing immediate access to lawn area. We and our neighbours use it regularly for activities that would otherwise take place in private back gardens. We use it for picnics, playtime, garage sales, yoga and sunbathing.
• Within a 5 minute walk is Curtain Square, a small, intimate park well designed for families. It incorporates play equipment, basketball courts, shade trees, a gazebo, park benches and lawn areas.
• Within a 10 minute walk is Princes Park, one of Melbourne’s more significant parks. It has a 3.2km circumference perfect for running, large ovals for sports activities, a bowls club and Visy Park, home of the Carlton Football Club. Ovals and lawn areas are used during the day by nearby Princes Hill Secondary College and during the evening by private sports leagues.
• Also within a 10 minute walk is the Capital City Trail, a busy walking, running and cycling trail which feeds into the Merri Creek Reserve. For many kilometres in both directions, the trail and creek connect Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs, parks, sporting ovals, golf clubs and Collingwood Children’s Farm.

Carlton North streets map

Local streets also possess most of the qualities identified by the Grattan Institute in their 2012 report, Social Cities, necessary for social connectedness and personal wellbeing. Author Jane-Frances Kelly encourages readers to think of streets like rooms in a house, with some streets (highways) like corridors: “places for moving through rather than staying”; and others (local streets) like living rooms: “places for sitting and socialising”. The City of Yarra has done well to design the local streets of Carlton North like a connected series of communal living rooms:

• Strategic road closures and speed limiting devices restrict car access to non-local traffic, while permitting free access to pedestrians and cyclists. Frequent dead-ends, intersections and roundabouts reduce vehicles to non-threatening speeds.
• A dense housing fabric provides varied and engaging streetscapes, augmented by well-maintained green spaces and street trees.
• Shallow street setbacks enhance opportunities for interaction with neighbours.
• Dense commercial fabrics like the Rathdowne Street Village offer a diversity of commercial, civic, health and hospitality uses at a variety of scales, encouraging social activity and communal living. Small businesses are run by local owners whom residents can get to know, “fostering recognition and connection.”
• Family-centric programmes like schools and childcare centres are embedded into the residential fabric, increasing intra-suburb pedestrian activity and establishing strong connections between children and their local environment.

It is estimated that around 50% of car-based cities like Melbourne are given over to car-related infrastructure, of which streets form a major part. It is a good thing that our local streets are designed to inhibit vehicular activity and promote pedestrian activity, as all that land area not only facilitates mobility, but also significantly contributes to residents’ safety, health and sense of community. The Social Cities report makes reference to Donald Appleyard’s pioneering work on streets, where he showed that residents in “a street with light traffic flow had three times more friends living in the street than residents on a street with heavy traffic flow”.

It should come as no surprise to us then that we are on good terms with a number of our immediate neighbours. Nor should it be a surprise that many of the owners of the shops and cafes along Rathdowne Street know us by face, name and order. We attend playgroups at the local library, Italian classes in a nearby church, have our clothes drycleaned at the local milkbar and buy our bread from the local bakeries – all activities we undertake on foot.

Whether by coincidence or mutual recognition of the qualities outlined above, there are also six households of family and close friends living within a 10 minute walk of our house, four of which are actually on the same street. The residents of one of these households are in fact the inspiration for this article, but not because they embody the attitudes of a healthy, social city. Rather, they embody the opposite: when they visit our house, or go out for dinner on Rathdowne Street, both journeys of less than 1km, they do not walk, they do not cycle, they drive.

Why, in the name of all things good and true, do they drive?

It might be suggested that for busy professionals, working long days and enduring further hours of commuting each week, time has been transformed into a scarce commodity. When a lawyer charges out her time during the week in 6 minute intervals, or a banker works a 70 hour week, it could even be considered natural that the precious little time left must be treasured, streamlined and maximised. Why should they waste the 10 minutes it takes to walk to our house, when they can instead drive and take only 3 minutes?

Simon Knott from The Architects on Triple R recently discussed a study related to the State Government’s new planning reforms, part of whose agenda it is to encourage the 20 minute city. Providing opposition to Matthew Guy’s rhetoric surrounding the reforms, who believes that disseminated workplaces will establish a localised workforce and shorter commutes, the study discovered the remarkable truth that for journeys of less than 1km, 50% of Melburnians will still opt to drive. In other words, there is such an engrained reliance on the car, it supplants even walkable journeys. Our friends, despite living in one of Melbourne’s most walkable cities, provide us with firsthand proof of this distressing statistic.

What can we do?

We would very much like to confiscate the keys to our friends’ car each weekend, though we suspect this will not make much difference to the broader attitudes of most Melburnians.

Dreaming as large as we possibly can, we would love to see a major paradigm shift in the infrastructure investment practices of our State and Federal Governments. As mentioned only last week, it is long past time for investment in roads to be replaced with investment in public transport. Every call for a new or wider road makes us shake our heads in dismay. The Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics has estimated that congestion costs Australian $9.4b annually: when will the decision makers learn that building more roads does not reduce congestion, it increases the number of cars on the road?

At the grass roots level too, there are ever more opportunities for positive engagement in our streets that will enhance their pedestrian-friendliness and living room qualities:

• Since 2005, San Francisco design firm Rebar has been running PARK(ing) Day, “an annual open-source global event where citizens, artists and activists collaborate to temporarily transform metered parking spaces into temporary public places.” Sydney is running their second PARK(ing) Day event this year, though Melbourne has yet to take up the mantle.
• Renew Newcastle is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2012 ”to find short and medium term uses for buildings in Newcastle’s CBD that are currently vacant, disused, or awaiting redevelopment.” So successful has this organisation been that it has now been expanded into a national initiative.
• The Social Cities report outlines a raft of further ideas for social connection in cities, including the installation of more interactive equipment in under-utilised parks; the commissioning of public and community art; the promotion of active and mixed-use streetscapes; community gardens; sharing household resources; and the proliferation of hyper-local websites.

For our part, we will continue to enjoy our walkable suburb and try, weekend after weekend, to encourage our friends to leave their car at home.

Safari Roof House

What was it?

A national lecture tour held last week for the Australian Institute of Architects by Malaysian architect, Kevin Low, and hosted in Melbourne by the ever-entertaining Stuart Harrison. Small Projects is also the name of Low’s studio, which has an almost exclusive focus on buildings of residential scale or smaller.

Founded in 2002, Small Projects has a growing body of work possessing exquisite yet honest detail: retractable windows whose only mark on their surrounds are fine tracks recessed into the floors and ceilings that support them; steel structure and door handles whose lacquered surfaces reveal untouched fabrication stamps; simple copper plumbing celebrated on rough canvasses of concrete and brick.

This attention to the art of making continues into Low’s intriguing practice of wabi sabi, where minor errors in construction are left exposed to recall the narrative of their creation. He spoke in depth about narrative, about what he sees as the opposition between form and content. Where architecture has form as its creative origin, form devoid of narrative is the result. Where architecture has content as its origin, form driven by narrative is the result. He illustrated: commercially available shower sets are shiny and symmetrical, aesthetically pristine, but one is drenched in cold water when reaching to turn on the taps; in contrast, Low offsets his taps from the shower head, letting the cold water splash freely at a safe distance. Form is made beautiful by the narrative of bathing.

Low’s works are raw, subtle and humble: honesty and simplicity are valued more highly than refinement; materials are left to express themselves without interference; formal compositions favour contextualisation over heroics.

Gnarly House

What do we think?

Despite the quality of Low’s work, it is perhaps unusual that he possesses international fame. He has, after all, neither sought it nor worked beyond the borders of his native Malaysia and neighbouring Singapore. He is the exact opposite of the starchitect, with a deep interest in craft, climate and local culture. Firmly anchored to their place, his works have far more in common with those of our own Glenn Murcutt (whom he referenced on more than one occasion), America’s Tom Kundig or Switzerland’s Peter Zumthor.

Low reflects on his attitude towards work that “he climbs mountains not so the world can see him, but so he can see the world.” Despite having studied in the United States, Italy, Yemen, Spain and Bangladesh, he has no interest in populating the far corners of the globe with his buildings. Indeed, the body of knowledge he requires to execute his unique designs has taken a lifetime to accumulate: undertaking a project in any other country would require he start from scratch all over again.

Much like Murcutt, Low’s mode of practice relies on detailed understanding of construction techniques, available materials and precise dimensions of building sections. Also like Murcutt, and perhaps therefore, unsurprisingly, Low works alone. What started as a desire to not grow too quickly has become an ongoing force of habit. With neither staff nor family, Low has the luxury of hand picking his projects: he has turned down 10 commissions so far this year.

This statement was met by exclamations of disbelief from the Melbourne audience, which was populated by an unusually large number of established architects. For a design culture in Australia that at times values growth and productivity over all else, the idea that work can be refused, that growth can be resisted, was deeply alien. But for Low, whose humble bearing reinforced his monk-like attitude to work and family, it makes perfect sense.

Threshold House

What can we learn?

Low’s projects are, first and foremost, interested in first principles.

They enjoy a powerful connection with their tropical, southeast Asian climate. Gardens look through dining rooms into other gardens; courtyards are populated by dense forest plantings; swimming pools are left untiled to grow subtle layers of algae; vines grow on every available surface.

They are inextricably tied to the personalities of their unique inhabitants, narrative nestled within both the theatre and everyday routine of living. Boot prints are deliberately left in the polished concrete floor surface of a builder’s headquarters; a glass roof to a shed requires its users rake away accumulated leaves to control the entry of natural light; translucent roofs to living rooms permit trees to grow amongst the couches and coffee tables.

Materials are treated with honesty and respect, the effort that goes into their crafting rewarded by leaving them exposed. Low does not strive for the exactitude we have seen in the work of the Japanese greats, instead relishing the limitations of Malaysia’s construction industry. Making is to be celebrated; rough texture is all the better for the light and shadow it catches; there is no shame in errors.

We would do well to take a leaf from Low’s book, to go back to basics wherever possible. Architecture is not about the assembly of mass-produced, highly machined products shipped in from all corners of the planet: why not examine what we have here and create something sublime from the opportunities we find?

Low commented during the discussion session after his lecture that the modern world wrongly assumes the client is the top priority of any project, that because he pays the bills, his interests are paramount. In Low’s opinion, the top priority of a project is the project. It takes a unique client to be at peace with this paradigm, but it is one we find inspiring: the buildings we design will outlast the client as surely as they will outlast us. Between us, surely we owe it to the built environment to leave a lasting legacy of creativity, ingenuity and quality.

Louvrebox House