MY WHY
I am an architect with a lifelong passion for understanding design and our collective history, for it is our capacity to create that sets us apart from all other living things.
Amongst our most enduring and profound creations are the spaces that we enclose in which to dwell and raise our families. Dwellings created across time in bewildering array with profound elegance and beauty.
Since childhood I have travelled extensively observing how people have chosen to live in many cultures, both today and far back in history.
The possibilities of how you can create a beautiful, satisfying and comfortable living environment for yourself and your family are far wider and richer than the urban environment you are used to might lead you to believe.
Across cultures and through time there are consistent and enduring ingredients and qualities that people have chosen to accommodate and to build their dwellings around. When these are present your dwelling is a place of ever changing delight.
For thirty years I was a registered builder with our carpenters and apprentices building the work designed. I have a deep understanding of the construction process.
Although I have designed many building types my greatest satisfaction is in designing dwellings. Other building types contain part of your life, but your dwelling is the only one that has to serve fully.
Your dwelling is the one environment that contains all dimensions of your life. Once successfully realised a beautiful dwelling is a place of magic and renewal.
My purpose is to create beautiful, complete, relaxing living environments that are a delight to live in and to return to each day. Places where you can recharge. Places that are filled with natural light and feel close to nature.
HOME
As a child I lived in many places. In cities, in the country, in a village on a beach in Singapore. But home for me is the forests of the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne Australia. Ranges that continue northward unbroken for thousands of kilometres.
I grew in the enchanted beauty of their hills and valleys. Freezing winter mists, sleet and sometimes snow. The apocalyptic fury of relentless summer firestorms consuming all. Driven by searing winds at impossible speed great tongues of flame reducing a world to ash. Valleys of black that miraculously bloom again into vivid abundance. It is here that I came to understand the nature of life.
And through them runs an old steam train on narrow rails over hand hewn timber bridges. Walking its tracks for hours, exploring the forests it passes yet never quite reaching its end. Clambering into its old cabin of flame and steam was another world. This marvellous machine with no electrical power was my discovery that there was a world before our lives of mass communication and limitless supply. This little train from time past ignited an appetite that drew me to ancient cities and to walk their ruins. To explore the remains of a time when we were younger and closer to our beginning. This transformed my life.
The little train is still cherished. It now carries tourist from all over the world through these beautiful hills of my childhood.
I grew in the enchanted beauty of their hills and valleys. Freezing winter mists, sleet and sometimes snow. The apocalyptic fury of relentless summer firestorms consuming all. Driven by searing winds at impossible speed great tongues of flame reducing a world to ash. Valleys of black that miraculously bloom again into vivid abundance. It is here that I came to understand the nature of life.
And through them runs an old steam train on narrow rails over hand hewn timber bridges. Walking its tracks for hours, exploring the forests it passes yet never quite reaching its end. Clambering into its old cabin of flame and steam was another world. This marvellous machine with no electrical power was my discovery that there was a world before our lives of mass communication and limitless supply. This little train from time past ignited an appetite that drew me to ancient cities and to walk their ruins. To explore the remains of a time when we were younger and closer to our beginning. This transformed my life.
The little train is still cherished. It now carries tourist from all over the world through these beautiful hills of my childhood.
DISCOVERING OUR PAST
Santa Croce Firenze Italy 1973
Built in 1294 for the Franciscans by Arnolfo di Cambio Santa Croce contains the remains of Michelangelo, Rossini, Machiavelli and Galileo Galilei. Amongst the artworks forming the interior are frescos by Giotto and Donatello's guilded Annunciation relief.
I spent an enthralling day pacing, sketching and drawing, attempting to understand this structure erected nearly seven hundred years ago. A structure built without a powerpoint. Built only with the power of muscle and with craft and skill that had been developed over thousands of years.
Late in the afternoon I took a single photograph attempting to capture its essence and to record my feeling for this majestic structure still embedded in its generating culture within our modern world of mass consumption. A structure that at one and the same time is enormous yet intimately scaled to the dimensions of your body, leaving you at ease in its presence.
This ancient mastery of the relationship between the order and proportions of a building and its parts and the scale of your body was lost in the early twentieth century with the revolution of modernism, as witnessed by the new buildings you see appearing before you each day.
I spent an enthralling day pacing, sketching and drawing, attempting to understand this structure erected nearly seven hundred years ago. A structure built without a powerpoint. Built only with the power of muscle and with craft and skill that had been developed over thousands of years.
Late in the afternoon I took a single photograph attempting to capture its essence and to record my feeling for this majestic structure still embedded in its generating culture within our modern world of mass consumption. A structure that at one and the same time is enormous yet intimately scaled to the dimensions of your body, leaving you at ease in its presence.
This ancient mastery of the relationship between the order and proportions of a building and its parts and the scale of your body was lost in the early twentieth century with the revolution of modernism, as witnessed by the new buildings you see appearing before you each day.
TEACHING
Whilst a lecturer in design in the Department of Architecture at the University of Melbourne I ran a summer school program for students that was outside the academic curriculum The program comprised a series of exercises designed in such a way that the tools students had learned for success within the faculty could not be brought to bear.
Architecture exists in three dimensions not two so presentation could only be in the form of accurate three dimensional models. The conventions that trap designers within two dimensional thinking, plans, sections, elevations, could not be used. There was no design brief in the form that students are trained to expect. Yet they were to produce a highly resolved and accurate design. This is one of the fourteen day exercises.
“The Smile of Truth”
There are things that even the wise fail to do,
While the fool hits the point.
Unexpectedly discovering the way to life in the midst of death,
He burst out in hearty laughter. - Sengai
Reflect on this poem and construct a space that illuminates the nature of creation. The elegance of this space is to permit creation to occupy its inhabitant’s undivided attention”
The problem then included a series of consideration to reflect upon, including the notion of creation as a constant reflection of a personal quest for knowledge.
Architecture exists in three dimensions not two so presentation could only be in the form of accurate three dimensional models. The conventions that trap designers within two dimensional thinking, plans, sections, elevations, could not be used. There was no design brief in the form that students are trained to expect. Yet they were to produce a highly resolved and accurate design. This is one of the fourteen day exercises.
“The Smile of Truth”
There are things that even the wise fail to do,
While the fool hits the point.
Unexpectedly discovering the way to life in the midst of death,
He burst out in hearty laughter. - Sengai
Reflect on this poem and construct a space that illuminates the nature of creation. The elegance of this space is to permit creation to occupy its inhabitant’s undivided attention”
The problem then included a series of consideration to reflect upon, including the notion of creation as a constant reflection of a personal quest for knowledge.
Each of the spaces created had to be a fully functional, habitable building that would keep the rain out and its inhabitants in comfort.
These design exercises were intended to crack the box. To show what happens in design when you begin with a wider view than simply solving regulations.
The results were spectacular and an exhibition was arranged for the whole faculty.