Design Principles Pod
Architecture. A hot topic, a buzz word, a realm for the rich and famous, or the thing that your step uncle does? We will be unpacking the good, the bad and the downright reality of the architectural and construction industry. With insights from industry professionals and personal anecdotes from our three hosts Ben, Gerard and Sam, you will be given a look behind the closed pages of those fancy looking moleskins. Tune in and redline out.
Design Principles Pod
Growth Through Design: An Architectural Evolution
The path to finding your architectural voice isn't a straight line—it's a series of experiments, failures, resets, and breakthroughs. Sam Brown, founding director of Arête Architects, takes us on a candid journey through his evolution as a designer and the growth of his practice.
Starting with foundational experiences at Victoria University, Mason Wales, and Foster Melville Architects, Sam reveals how these early influences shaped his approach before launching his own practice in 2021. Rather than immediately establishing a signature style, Arête began with experimentation, allowing real-world projects to guide their development. The breakthrough came when budget constraints forced them to rethink conventional approaches, leading to a deep exploration of modular design using structurally insulated panels (SIPs).
What makes Sam's perspective particularly valuable is his willingness to recognize when a design direction has run its course. After successfully developing a family of modular projects—from the Restricted Section to The Dart—Arête deliberately sought new challenges rather than continuing to refine a proven formula. This strategic reset prevents creative stagnation and pigeonholing, allowing the practice to maintain versatility while building a diverse portfolio.
Beyond their bespoke work, Arête developed SIPtris, a series of high-performance modular homes available as products—asking what if warm, dry, energy-efficient homes weren't a premium option but the default for everyone? Throughout their various explorations, one principle remains constant: the integration of performance and aesthetics from day one.
Sam's approach offers a powerful metaphor: your design mind is like a muscle that requires varied exercise. By embracing experimentation, learning from failures, and knowing when to reset, architects can build practices that remain fresh, relevant, and deeply connected to both client needs and environmental responsibilities. What design muscle are you exercising today?
Video link with slides here - https://youtu.be/auPJcFL_FcM
https://www.aretearchitects.co.nz/
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Speaker 1:A few weeks ago I gave a TULU talk on the growth of myself as a designer and of our architectural practice, arret Architects. This is a bit of more of a visual medium. It does have slides that do accompany the conversation, which will be available in the pod notes, or you can head over to our YouTube channel and see the whole thing synced up. Or, alternatively, for your cpd points, head over to teulu talks and the recording is available there. I dive into my growth from university all the way through various architectural practices to where we are now and touch on finding a line of design, inquiry, running that out and how to reset as a designer and find something new, fresh and exciting.
Speaker 2:Our presenter today is Sam Brown from Arit Architects. Sam's past experiences and desire for social and environmental betterment have given him the focus to push architecture beyond the boundaries of the everyday. His engaging personality and ability to learn and adapt quickly make him a dynamic architect who has spent his career refining his craft. Over the years, Sam has developed his passion for the vernacular into a strong driver in his design approach. Whether it be challenging the concept of a place or engaging with specialists, specific groups and the environment, knowledge of the immediate is paramount in his design consideration. Over to you, Sam.
Speaker 1:Thank you All right, tēnā koutou katoa Kia tātou a te one Kia ora. E nā koutou. Tēnā koutou Tēnā tātou katoa Kia ora. Like Diane said, my name is Sam Brown, director, founder and Architect at Architects, based out of Wellington and central Otago here in New Zealand. We're a studio rooted in real world outcomes, passionate about architecture that is both beautiful and conscientious ancients.
Speaker 1:Coming to you today from Wellington, a dreary old day, and when asked about what I'd like to discuss for this Tūla talk, I thought that it would be a good idea to talk about our growth through the design as a practice, and myself more personally as well. Today's talk is going to be a discussion about architecture, um, but it will likely kind of journey around design in general, um, and kind of broadly, broadly cover a few topics um around design process, um lines of design inquiry and also when to reset your line of design inquiry or when to reset your image. So, without further ado, we'll sort of dive in. To give you guys a bit of a background, I think any story like this or any presentation like this, you need a little bit of background. So my architectural journey started here in Victoria, well, in Wellington, victoria University School of Architecture, where I graduated in 2014, I think, and that was really the foundation of myself as a designer and I imagine for a lot of us that have gone through that tertiary channel, it's the main foundation of where we sort of begin to find our design voice and the first chance that we really get to sort of start to flex our design muscles and do so with ultimate freedom, and you know it's rare in your career to ever have that opportunity again. So for those of you that are still studying and are listening, I'd make the most of your time while you can.
Speaker 1:But in saying that, there is a point in our career where you know, the dream becomes a bit of a reality, and for me that was during my study, actually, and when I spent a bit of time working with Mason Wales, an architecture firm New Zealand's oldest architecture firm actually out in Dunedin, and this was my first real experience in practice. And it can be a bit of a shock, because you go from these big pie in the sky ideas to a bit of reality. This project here, the Sinclair House the reason that I'm showing you this is this was my first ever chance to play in the real world and working on this project, although none of this was actually my design outcome, but I was given the opportunity to kind of play with composition for the first time. I was tasked with making the facade tell a story, and it was this sort of early teaching that started to really resonate, start to build a little bit of a design voice for myself. From here I sought a little bit of experience further abroad and spent a short period working for Hopkins Architects in Dubai a pretty large international scale firm that do massive projects everywhere, from airports and sports stadiums through to entire city blocks and it was here that I started to understand the international scene of architecture a little bit more and how big architecture can be, not just physically but also the social and environmental impacts that it could have. And it was the learnings here, despite that being a very short period of my architectural career, that I sort of started to bring home with me into the work that I do later on in my career.
Speaker 1:I then spent, oh, I think, about six or seven years working at Foster Melville Architects in Wellington, and this was the this was the probably the most formative period of my architectural journey. It's where I got to start to work in the real world as an architect as well. I gained my registration through working there and my growth as a designer really occurred. And I was fortunate enough to work under two great mentors and Michael Melville and Angela Foster there, and they really focused on fostering that next generation of architects and wanting to leave the profession in good hands, and it was that sort of fostering nature that gave us design freedom. Now, to say all of this, there's a lot of sort of background experience that you gain through this period, but up until this point you're still kind of working under somebody else or you know you're working with someone else's vision or someone else's design view, and it's not until you start to do your own thing that you really get to express who you are personally as a designer.
Speaker 1:So in 2021, at the back of COVID, I made the very difficult decision to to start my own practice. And I say a difficult decision because at the time I wasn't even sure if I wanted to do architecture anymore. I'd sort of become a little bit jaded with the work that I'd been doing and not to say that the work that Foster Melville were doing wasn't good, but I just kind of felt like I wanted to explore something else. I'd spent a lot of time overseas prior to COVID and really wanted to undertake work that had a little bit more of a holistic approach and was, you know, responded really strongly and positively to the environment and wanting to look at ways to marry performance and aesthetics together, and this was the chance to really blaze my own architectural path, and that was the major catalyst in starting the practice.
Speaker 1:Now, when you do start a practice, it's interesting because your influence is purely from everything that comes before you. And for those of you that are listening that are either thinking about doing this or have just recently done this, or even if you have people that are working for you that are thinking about doing this, it's something to keep in mind because we don't want an architectural realm full of copycats. But it's kind of like that initially, um, because you don't you haven't really had that opportunity for a lot of us anyway to really express yourself personally, um, through the work that you do. So you and also you kind of start your own thing, although with a different view and a different vision, heavily influenced from everything that has come before. And in saying that, that goes beyond just the architecture that you're doing, but it goes beyond your architectural image as well, your brand or your image or who you are as a practice, which, in my opinion, I think is just as important as the work that you produce, because that is the reason people come to you. It's that personal nature, it's what you can offer the profession, and that evolution through design is not just a building one, it's not just a physical one, it's also an image one as well.
Speaker 1:And you can see here where we started four years ago with the RET architects and what we've evolved into now. And it's been a really interesting process for myself, and I'm speaking about my own experiences here, but it's worth also noting that RET's not just me, it's also Johnny Fletcher, my co-director, and the other stuff that we have as well my co-director and and the other stuff that we have as well. And you know, over the four years we've started to really find our voice and find our vision and you want to try and change your outward um image to to match that and to marry that um. And that's why, where we've landed and the following slides and the rest of the talk, I'm going to kind of take you guys through how we got there or how we got to where we are today and also where we may evolve into in the future. But I think it's a good place to start with who we are as a practice and, you know, wanting to align our identity with the work that we have evolved into producing. So over the years we've sort of gone from having an image of what we wanted to be into being a practice that has produced a lot of work and wanting to align that practice view with the work that we've done.
Speaker 1:So at Aret, you know, we passionately create spaces that balance aesthetics with environmental responsibility, even with clear guiding principles. We've found growth often comes not from a linear process but from deliberate moments of reflection and resetting, and that's something that I'm going to try and touch on today. I'm going to share with you guys how our practice has embraced iteration as one of the key principles in our design drive and how we've also started to look at strategic resets and this rebranding is one of those examples and how that significantly shapes our architectural identity. So I want to start you guys at the beginning, because that's where all creative endeavors start. So four years ago and this is where I found myself four years ago, four and a half years ago, the blank canvas, a lump of clay, you could say, or maybe a few cooking ingredients in a kitchen.
Speaker 1:And you sort of sit there and you think, what do I do now? And in an architect's case this is often a piece of butter paper, maybe masking tape to a table, pencil in hand, client brief in the other, and you're wondering what to do. And this is where you really start to lean on those past influences, because initially you don't have a lot else to go on. So this is what we did. We sort of thought about all the learnings that we'd taken on in our career and we started to apply that to the work that we do. And you can see here, in the early days it was all about experimentation, but it was experimentation with a clear driver behind it. And through these images, these are sort of three of the early projects that we undertook in the studio. And you can see through these images you know the clear influence from architecture firms like Bjarke Ingels Group and their you know their concept sketching, where they really focus on the function, unifying with form and creating an architectural outcome.
Speaker 1:And when you're given that freedom to design for the first time, you sort of go okay, what can I take from the past, what can I take from my influence and learning and how can I apply it to my own work? And you sort of do this process of regurgitation in a way, but with your own vision. And the beautiful thing about those early stages is you get to start to experiment with all the ideas that you have either had rejected or haven't been able to voice or haven't been accepted by clients in the past. And the great thing is you then get to try and influence or try and push that into the work that you do. And it was through this experiment, experimentation process, that we began to start to form a bit of an idea of how we would work.
Speaker 1:And in the early days we didn't necessarily or we didn't have an architectural style, and the reason for that being is we were still testing things out. We were seeing what worked for us, what didn't. And these are three examples that you can see up here on the screen of the early work that we did and how varied it is. You know you wouldn't necessarily look at these three projects and think that they all came from the same architectural studio, and I think that that is okay. I think that is also quite important because in those early stages you're trying to find out who you are and so you're really trying to play with ideas, express yourself creatively. Um, there could be failures. There could be wins. Um, I'd say that we've been relatively fortunate and that haven't been too many failures, um, although in saying that they are always there, that's a little bit more hidden behind those things. And, like I said, this is the first chance to really start to express yourself.
Speaker 1:And in the early days, our practice didn't necessarily evolve from a singular vision, but it started to evolve through repeated testing, through projects, through reality in a way, and it's been really. You know, it's quite an interesting process to test through reality because it's high stakes, but at the same time, you know, you're responding to different climates, budgets, briefs, sites, all those sort of things. So it's a great testing ground. It was through this experimentation that we started to understand or started to form a little bit of an idea of what works for us as a practice and the architectural direction that we were ultimately interested in pursuing Through these initial projects. You know, we started to find that what really interested us, or what was really important to us, was that marrying of performance and aesthetic. But in those early stages we're still not quite sure in how to implement that into reality in our work. So we continued to test, and these are some more examples here of the Hill House here in Wellington and Karaka Tower in Eastbourne, of where that marriage of performance and aesthetics started to come to play, but with very different outcomes. And it wasn't until we sort of took a step back and reflected on this work post-completion really that we understood that's what we were doing at the time.
Speaker 1:So I implore you as a designer, while you're working through these early stages of your career, or even if you're later in a career and you're going through a bit of an architectural reset or trying to find a different architectural direction, to think critically about the work that you're doing at the time. It's a beautiful opportunity to be able to reflect on work and take the lessons from that. But equally, I think it's just as important to be able to reflect in the moment and let that help shape your architectural vision. Now I've talked, all have a pretty clear picture in your mind of what their architecture looks like, and early in the career, early in your career, you won't necessarily have that architectural identity. You won't have that image that people associate with the work that you do.
Speaker 1:And you know, you're often asked what is your architectural style, particularly early on when you're, when you're engaging with clients, and the honest answer is we didn't have one, we don't know. We don't know what ours is, but we have a process. You know, and you sort of sell the idea on the process like this is how we approach architecture, this is what we're looking to achieve, um, and the aesthetic come, comes later. You know, the, the architecture that we do is born from context, constraints and conversations, rather than um, an architectural image, um, and that's why we try to avoid prescribing forms too early in the design and instead lean into that iterative process as a creative tool to create varied outcomes. In saying that, though, I'm about to take you through a few of our projects where we did start to create a bit of an architectural identity, where we did start to sort of really focus in, with a little bit more laser focus on a line of design inquiry that helped shape us as an architecture firm and helped create, you know, an identity for us that we were then able to use as a foundation for our architecture and our architectural growth moving forward. So it was about a year into our practice that we were given the first opportunity to start to put this into play, and I'll take you through that process now.
Speaker 1:So at the end of our first year of practice, we were fortunate enough to be engaged by a young family to design them a new home in a Wellington suburb. They had a small budget but big aspirations of wanting to live in a warm, dry, healthy home and we started our usual design process that we'd done up until that point and realised quite quickly that we needed to rethink the way that we were approaching architecture. The sort of fly-by, you know, experimental every idea is a good idea, seat of your pants thing worked early on. But when we were given sort of such a constrained brief, we realised that we sort of had to dial in a little bit more and move away from our entrenched methods and begin to look at the design of a home with a little bit more of a critical lens. And this led us to the ideas of modulation, materiality, resilience, orientation you know the list went on and we started to find effective solutions to solving these challenges.
Speaker 1:And through all of this a new line of design inquiry was born and for us this started with the use of, like I said earlier, a modulation. That was probably the key thing that started to drive this new direction in architecture for us and what we could do with modules, how flexible and how creative we could basically be with a grid of 1,200 by 2,400. And one of the leading materials that sort of went on this journey with us was structurally insulated panels or SIPs. So you could almost say that this initial line of design inquiry was how can we create, you know, beautiful holistic architecture and make it as efficient as possible? So the first project that we were able to experiment with that was the restricted section. This was a project that was spearheaded by Johnny Fletcher in our studio and it really is a beautiful example of what you can do with a 1200 grid.
Speaker 1:Essentially and you can see that expressed throughout the architecture as well and it was something that we really wanted to play with was not hiding. Not hiding the constructive nature of the module, the constructive nature of the material, and really kind of expressing that, but expressing it beautifully. So it didn't feel, you know, too constructed or it didn't feel too what's the word I'm looking for raw or industrial. It was still a warm, inviting home and that warm, inviting nature was something that was really critical for us to be able to bring across. Despite trying to focus on this new line of inquiry, the house has been, by all intents and purposes, a raging success and it was a really beautiful jumping-off point because of how well it was received and how much we enjoyed that process of constraining ourselves but also offering design freedom and really kind of landing or nailing the client's brief, of making this thing that was affordable but also, you know, ticking all those performance boxes. We were like, okay, great, this is a solution or this is a way forward in architecture that we really want to continue to explore and experiment with really.
Speaker 1:So from this project we continue to grow, we continue to explore and refine that line of design inquiry, and the next project in the lineage of this was the Te U Studio. It's actually my own home down in Lake Hawiwa. This was essentially just a continuation of what we had done at the restricted section but because of it being my own home, I was able to be a little bit more experimental. So we started to kind of throw ideas around what would happen if you combine stick framing with modulation. Would you find cost benefits in that? How do you? Um better run services through a site? How do you better plan smaller spaces? You know the the footprint of the restricted section is about 110 square metres, whereas here we're condensed down to only 36 square metres of livable space. And you know it was a real test in planning and how to kind of develop small spaces. And the reason for that scale that became what became a real focus for us in this line of design inquiry was efficiency, efficiency and plan efficiency and material and efficiency with budget. You know, if a client comes to you and says I have six hundred thousand dollars, you know I want, but I want 180 square meter house. I'm like, well, what program do you want in that home? And when you start to boil it down, you realize pretty quickly that you know they want 180 square meters because that's how big they think the house needs to be or how big the neighbor's house might be. But when you really start to focus on good, clear planning, which we've done through this process you realize that you can condense that program beautifully into a much smaller footprint and it operates just as well. Um, and that's what the TU studio is. It's a it's a real test of condensing uh program into into a small area.
Speaker 1:There's also a chance for us to play with, like I said, different ways of approaching the use of the SIP. Um, you know, we we really like to focus on leaving that exposed, but the exposing of the SIP kind of leaves you with a little few issues in terms of running services and things like that. So you know, it was a chance to test the waters with service dados, as you can see underneath that window there, and kind of more modulation of other building elements as well. So with the restrictor section, you know, the modulation was more focused on the structure, whereas we started to move into the tu studio and modulation came into things like the joinery as well, as you can see, with the modular kitchen, steel kitchen there as well. Um, as a final final image of something as well of sorry, of the tu studio as well. And the thing, uh, that we're able to start to play with here again was was form, immateriality, stretching the use of the of the sit um and, like I said earlier, that combination of of it with other construction methodologies. So you know, within this overhang there's steel and things like that, and wanting to ensure that we can kind of create architectural intrigue and merit and not be constrained by the module, and that was something that we brought forward into the third project in this final design inquiry is our growth as a practice, and you can probably see it through the design of these, how we start to evolve and mature um in our design.
Speaker 1:And the next project in that line was the village. Now the village is sort of the, the combination I'd say of of. You know it's a mash-up of the tv studio, um and the restricted section. We're fortunate enough to be given a brief where the client was looking for for two homes on a single site with a big focus on intergenerational living, so we're able to play with that idea of scale, interaction from an architectural planning perspective, but then also still bring in all that learning earlier in terms of performance and modulation and things like that um, and I think as well, like I just said, you can see a real maturation in our design language and our and our design skill. You know that the time frame across these projects is is about 18 months to two years, um, but in saying that, none of the projects had been completed before the others started, so it was a growth and it was a learning process through design, more so than through a completed project or through a completed thing. And that's important and I'll touch on that in a second, why that growth through the design process I feel is a little bit more important than growth through that final image. So again, the village was another chance to kind of express that.
Speaker 1:You can see that, the expression of the constructive nature of the modulation you know that was brought all the way back from the restricted section, but again it's a little bit more of a mature use of the palette in this project and, you know, a little bit more play on light and volume and things like that, and also a chance to start to play with different forms. You know we'd lent on the mono pitch for quite a while because it was an easy way of constructing with SIP panels but we wanted to be a little bit more creative and try different things. So we're looking at interlinking gables here. You know the way that these two forms interact and interlink started to kind of like test our ability to develop interesting architecture rather than kind of generic architecture with the SIPs, and then that has all sort of culminated in what I kind of see is the end of the line, of this line of design inquiry anyway, or not necessarily a full stop, but it's certainly a bit of a line in in the sand.
Speaker 1:And this is a project that we have on the drawing board at the moment. It's actually just going through tender and hopefully starting on site site very soon down in queensbury, uh, in central otago, this project we call the dart and and the dart is, um, yeah, like I said, I sit, I kind of see is the the end of the stylistic journey. It's taking all of the learnings from before, um, evolving them. You know, the roof form it's kind of hard to see in this, in this image, but it's far more dynamic than anything we've done before with with panels, um, but we're able to kind of take all the learnings from previous projects and apply it to something aesthetically very similar. They're clearly in the same lineage, but but a little bit more intriguing and dynamic.
Speaker 1:And how do we and you might ask us, uh, how do we know that we've reached the end? Um, we don't, um, but after a while, you know, you kind of grow a little bit, not necessarily tired of the work that you're doing, but you know, a line of design inquiry kind of peters out a little bit in my mind and we, as a practice, always looking for something new and exciting that not only challenges us as designers but also ensures that the architecture that we're generating never becomes too samey. You know, if we kind of continued to produce buildings that looked all the same, then we'd become very known for just one style of building, and I think there's there's a bit of a risk to that for architectural practice, um, showing showing a lack of adaptability. I think you kind of end up pigeonholing yourself in the corner of a market and pigeonholing yourself as a bit of a designer if people keep coming back to you for the same thing, and you know that can become a little bit tiresome at the end of the day. All of that to say, though, adjacent to this iterative process, we've also been you also been designing and refining high performance, modular, off the shelf designs.
Speaker 1:Now, after developing four deeply personal homes, we saw a pattern through everything that we were doing in each project how to lessen that we thought was worth sharing, and citrus is our answer to that pattern. It's a product, but it's also a provocation. You know we wanted to ask what if warm, dry, energy efficient homes weren't a premium option but rather a default for everybody? So, using that same line of design inquiry and the learnings that we took from doing the bespoke homes, we produced a series of architectural outcomes seven homes that can be easily regurgitated and are essentially a product available to the market. We realised that scalability and simplicity was key to the work that group home builders do, but architectural merit was lacking and also performance was lacking in the work that they provide. So what we want to do is try and unlock the housing market, you know, and provide an architectural outcome that sort of ticked all of those boxes. And alongside the work that we've sort of done here with Citrus, you know, you've seen things like the work that RTA Studio has been doing in the same space, and I think that architectures and architects have a lot to offer through all of this.
Speaker 1:After a while, though, like I said, you sort of start to become a little bit, not tired, but you know, doing the same work over and over and again, or similar work over and over again, kind of stops scratching that itch of what else. So you know, it can be time to reset, and after a while, you know, especially if a unique brief prevents itself, you, you know, you feel the need to try something new, or maybe not necessarily new, but one of those many ideas that you've played around back in the beginning of your career or in the beginning of your design journey comes back to you and you realize that there's an itch there that you haven't quite scratched. And some of you might think well, with this approach, are you just throwing away everything that you've carefully cultivated in the past? Um, but I think that you know, on the contrary to that, you're you're building a richer, deeper um and more diverse portfolio that ultimately showcases your ability, um and flexibility as an architect. Um, and you know we, we at Arid, have always said that we design with both aesthetics and the environment in mind.
Speaker 1:We don't want to try and crowbar one into the other. You know, it's not about making green buildings look good or good-looking buildings sustainable. It's about integrating from day one. And you know, what we took from the previous line of design inquiry, with SIPs and modulation, is that design driver. It's about integration, it's about the holistic nature of architecture and that's what we're looking to carry through all of our work, regardless of style or aesthetic or brief now, moving into the future. That's the unifying factor of us as an architectural practice. You know that we're looking to evolve and adapt rather than find one formula and stick with it. Although you know, if somebody came back to us and said, can we have a SIP home in the lineage of the work that you've done before, we certainly probably wouldn't say no, we just may look to develop it a little bit differently.
Speaker 1:So, on that reset, I just want to talk to you about a couple of projects that we've got on the drawing board and where we've sort of tried to really test or test that reset concept. And this is a conscious effort. You know, spur Ridge Rise this project here in Queenstown, you know, marks an evolution on how we address site budget constraints and the environment. You know it's a testament to embracing difficulty, really turning perceived obstacles into architectural opportunity. And you know this is a project that we're hoping to, you know, blend seamlessly into its surroundings and really enhance the natural features of the site and the surrounding area, while creating functional and dramatic living spaces within.
Speaker 1:Now, although this is certainly an aesthetic evolution of design style, one thing that is true to all the architecture that we've done in the past. We're doing now and I hope that we will do in the future, is that that focus on marrying performance and aesthetics is always there. Now it's interesting because the two projects that I'm going to talk to here they're sort of the start of the next line of design inquiry. Now one, both or neither of these could continue, could start a new, new aesthetic lineage, but it's exciting to kind of be working on something new that has that potential to grow and evolve into a different architectural style that we as a practice can deliver. And this is the other project that we're working on, currently a bit of an evolution. This is the Oculus House, where we're starting to kind of like delve into architectural clarity and precision and develop an architecture that's like deeply rooted in the local history of the place, um, and you know, looking at illustrating the way that we can kind of interplay between history, place, contemporary living, um. And this is a design where we've done a lot of research, um, and made a lot of decisions based on authenticity, material honesty and contextual responsiveness as well. And these sort of like new questions and new lines of design inquiry are quite exciting because they're helping us grow the work that we do, the work that we produce and the direction forward. But all of this to say that everything is still underlined by that focus on creating holistic architecture.
Speaker 1:One thing that I just want to kind of touch on is when you have made that reset or when you have made that move, you know what if a client comes to you, or what if you start to ask yourself maybe I'll go back? Or a client comes to you saying I want a replica of something that you've done before. Have you moved on? And sometimes I can find this a little bit of a tricky question and I don't think we've necessarily been working in practice long enough to be tested in this. But my approach would be to hear them out and then, you know, possibly steer them in a bit of a new direction. It could create a new line of design inquiry for you as well.
Speaker 1:Take the best bits that they see in the projects that you've done before, talk to them about it. How can you integrate them into this new line of design inquiry? And think about what haven't you scratched yet or what do you want to sort of address or explore as an architect or as a designer? And voila, you know, you might have just generated a new direction and we had this with Spur Ridge, and I didn't show the imagery there, necessarily, but we developed two concepts for the clients there, vastly different concepts. And you know, through that process and the presentation of that process, the clients came back to us and sort of said, oh, we really like this. From there, you know these, this. From there, you know these aspects from this concept and these aspects from that concept. Can you mash them up? And we, you know, and in doing so we created a completely new thing, you know. So sort of three completely different looking buildings, same brief, um, but you know, an interesting, interesting thing is like they, all of those ideas and everything there could stem a new line of design inquiry that we may look to explore, you know, in future projects.
Speaker 1:Um, I just want to kind of touch on something that gerard dombroski, you know, one of my co-hosts on the design principle spot, um, said, uh, as a bit of a closing statement or closing remark. But you know, I think it's worth through all of this and everything that I've kind of talked about in this brief discussion today is your design mind. It's like a muscle, you have to work it out and you know, I take this analogy a little bit further, in that, you know, if you just continue to work that same muscle out, do the same thing over and, over and over again, you're going to end up looking like this guy here on the on the right um, and I don't know about you guys, but would you rather have one giant arm or would you rather be, you know, the perfect beast, um, that is, that is arnie over there. You know, I think it's important that we, you know, continue to work our design muscles out, but change the muscles in that design mind constantly to create, you know, a better, more well-rounded architectural offering for clients and for yourselves as well, because ultimately, you know, we are designing for people, but we also are designing for ourselves. So, you know, although we are a relatively new and young firm, I feel like we've started our journey with the right mindset, a flexible one, you know, that's allowing us to grow, develop and adapt and deliver beautiful architecture and different and interesting architecture across the board.
Speaker 1:You know, we all entered the design profession to design, uh. So let's keep doing that and keep being hungry for something, something new, something odd, something exciting, or even something that doesn't work sometimes, because if you, you know, if you don't test it and you don't know, then you don't grow. Um, so I just want to thank you all for for joining this conversation and, you know, let's continue striving for evolving architecture that thoughtfully responds and responsibly performs and deeply resonates. No mihi me te ora. Thank you. In a world where design speaks louder than words, what story does your space tell? At Autex Acoustics, they believe great design is more than aesthetics. Every product they create strikes a perfect balance between form, function and sustainability. Made to enhance how space sounds, looks and feels. From using recycled materials to pioneering carbon negative wool, their commitment is to help you shape environments that inspire people and respect the planet. Explore the future of acoustics design at autexacousticsconz awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us today, sam um, thank you very much that you uh touched on some uh topics that are very deep and meaningful to me, such as, uh, a healthy home, a warm, dry home. It should be the expectation, not a, not a luxury, in a house so great. Uh, we have some questions for you. Cool, so you speak about how a practice evolves through real-world iterations.
Speaker 1:Can you share an example of a project that fundamentally changed the way your practice approaches design? Yeah, and I think I touched on that when I was running through the project examples that I had there the restricted section would be the project that was probably the catalyst for change for us. I think it was the first time where we actually really looked critically at the work that we were doing and the work that we were producing and, like I said, it was that starting point for that very strong line of design inquiry that was sort of explored over the last three to four years. So I'd say, yeah, that was the real project that started it all in a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So this end point you mentioned reaching an end point in a design inquiry. Can you touch on what that moment felt like for you as a designer and how do you know when it's time to start fresh?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's an interesting one. I don't want to speak negatively on it because obviously, you know, we're really happy with the architecture that we've produced and the end point you know, the DART for me would be the end point in a way for that line of design inquiry, although I can also see us doing similar work in that same space. But I think, although I love that project and I love what we produced, upon completion of the design of it I sort of had a little bit of fatigue, I guess, for want of a better term of tackling things the way that we had there. And I think I really love the dirt dart project and really love what we produce, and to me it just kind of seems like a natural um finishing point in that in that line of design inquiry. And equally, you know, you're constantly being influenced by new projects and new things and new ideas, and for me it just felt like time to try something new, really Okay.
Speaker 2:So process over product is a central theme of your talk. How do you communicate the value of process to clients, who are maybe more focused on outcomes?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a difficult one.
Speaker 1:We sort of the way that we discuss it with clients is when we're kind of setting up the initial engagement or the initial, you know, offer a service and things we clearly express to them that we front load a lot of our fee ultimately because that's what you know they're wanting to see initially fee ultimately because that's what you know they're wanting to see initially um in the concept design stage and we we say to them the reason for that being is it offers us the opportunity to play and explore um.
Speaker 1:I think if you limit yourself in those very early stages of the project which often you know, which I think we did a little bit in the past um from a fee point of view you don't offer yourself the time um to to play in those early stages um, then you know you're kind of doing the project a little bit of a disservice and we try and express that to clients as best as possible. You know we want to explore every avenue for you um and try and kind of give you a lot of solutions to your brief, rather than just trying to like land on it day one and then that being it. So most of the time they're pretty responsive to that, I'd say, because, you know, ultimately they realise that they're going to get the best out of the project with that approach.
Speaker 2:Excellent. So your bio references a strong commitment to social and environmental betterment. So how do these values show up in your day-to-day design decisions?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'd say. I mean, like I said, through the process, well, you know, through the work that we do, we I use the term holistic architecture um, and the reason that I use that term is I think the architecture that we strive to produce or design and develop kind of ticks every box. It's, you know, it's both aesthetically beautiful but it's also, you know, it performs well, it has low environmental impact. We consider embodied carbon, you know all of those sort of things and we want to produce buildings that are obviously for the client. But ultimately, you know you, you hope that your building's still here 100 years later and most of the time, well, you know, unless it's crazy advances in medicine, your clients might not be here anymore, you know. So we want those projects to continue to have a positive influence.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, socially throughout their life, um, and I kind of I guess that all has sort of culminated. You know, we, socially throughout their life, and I kind of guess that all has sort of culminated. You know we get that opportunity to do that. You know, one-on-one with clients for bespoke projects. But that was a big reason for us developing Citrus was being able to offer housing or housing solutions, that sort of scratch that itch or you know that had that positive social outcome. But that's available to everyone.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was very special to me. I did enjoy that part of the presentation. Actually, I enjoyed the whole part of the presentation, all of it. So you've developed a passion for the vernacular. How do you balance respecting local context with the desire to innovate or challenge conventional forms?
Speaker 1:I think you can do that easily. To be honest, you know we take a lot of influence from the immediate environment that our projects exist within. But you've got so much flexibility in how you interpret that and it could be everything from you know, like a real, a real design, you know, or a real design driver, say you're trying to mimic the forms of the mountains around you or something, or it could be something a little bit more spiritual or nuanced. You know the history of place or you know something like that. So I think you can respond vernacularly if that's a word to the site but still have, you know, complete design freedom to produce a solution and ultimately sometimes that leads the design. But I'd also say you know, I've got to be honest, we as architects are pretty good at post-rationalisation and sometimes design epiphanies happen and you come up with a solution. But you can often and I try to often bring it back to something contextually that sort of anchors that project and it makes it special to that particular site.
Speaker 2:So young practices In your experience. What are the key challenges for these young practices in finding their design identity?
Speaker 1:I think and this is speaking from experience I think one of the biggest challenges is not feeling like a fraud, but early on, particularly when you're starting out as an architect and as a young practice, if there's a collective or a group of you, it's having confidence in who you are and having confidence in the work that you do. And it took us um, I don't know. I felt that it's taken us several years to kind of have that confidence and have that comfort and the work that we produce and and like I mentioned through my talk, we went through numerous design iterations and and followed lines of design inquiry to find that comfort. So I'd say that's probably the biggest challenge is, yeah, being comfortable in your own skin in a way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got to be paid. You've got to pay the bills, but you've also got to find your design voice within that, don't you? Yeah, yeah. So you mentioned engaging with specialists and specific groups as part of your process. How does this collaborative approach shape the final design, and what has it taught you along the way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's something that's pretty dear to our hearts. We find that architecture in isolation is very, really successful. So we try and we think of the whole project as basically it's a team effort. We're one member of that team, so we try and build the team, or build that project team, very early on in the process. So everybody from the client, contractor, other consultants and ourselves are all striving towards that one goal and that's been a real success in the way that we approach our architecture and I think it ultimately leads to a great result and less conflict and issues later down the track. So I think that is, if you can afford yourselves that and if you have a team that you trust around you, then you're ultimately going to get a better outcome.
Speaker 2:Great. So we've got a couple more questions. What role does failure play in the growth of a design practice, and can you share any moments where something didn't go to plan and how it shaped your future approach?
Speaker 1:Was that failure? Where does failure play? Yeah, so, funnily enough, it's happened very recently to us. So the Oculus House that I showed you, we spent a lot of time really diving into the client's brief and researching the site and place and, I think, developed a really beautiful architectural outcome. But, for whatever reason, the clients had a very different vision in their mind which they didn't quite express or bring across to us through their briefing document or the time that we spent with them, and so, upon presenting it to them, it kind of fell pretty flat, uh, disappointingly, um, which you know can be a little bit of a hit to the ego. But, um, what, I think it's you know.
Speaker 1:Upon reflection now, I've been like, okay, well, nothing's lost there, and I think that's you know. Upon reflection now, I've been like, okay, well, nothing's lost there, and I think that's the lesson to take from a failure is nothing's lost. You've still produced that beautiful design, whatever that may be, and, okay, it might not work on this site or in this, you know, or in this situation for these clients, but it's still sitting there in the background. It's something that you can draw upon again in the future and for other projects. So I'd say, you know, from failures and from real failures. You know, don't get too disheartened I mean you will initially, but look at the silver linings and look at the positives and look at the learnings that you can take from that into future work.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, and last question, looking ahead how do you see the next phase of your practice evolving? Are there new directions or challenges you're particularly excited about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think for us, I think for something that I'm really excited about is finding that next line of design inquiry I really like although I talked about resetting and, you know, coming to the end of something and then starting again the actual process of developingting, and, you know, coming to the end of something and then starting again the actual process of developing architecture.
Speaker 1:You know, creating a bit of an architectural family tree and the work that you've done really excites me and so I'm quite excited to see where some of these projects that we've got on the drawing board at the moment, how they are going to influence more projects coming into the practice and how we sort of start to create a bit more of a diverse design voice with those. And I kind of like the idea of you know, in the future looking back and having these many kind of like architectural trees and seeing, oh, these all projects relate, these all projects relate, these projects relate, and I like that idea. So, yeah, I guess I'm excited for the next line of design inquiry and where that will lead us.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Thanks, Sam. Do you have any final words for our audience out there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess the last thing you know. To sign off, I'd just say be experimental, you know, and don't be afraid to keep testing yourself as an architect. It can be hard out there. We all know that the industry is pretty tough at the moment, but try and find the joy and the fun in the work that you do and ultimately your work will succeed because of it. So yeah, Nice.
Speaker 2:Great Thanks again, Sam, and have a great rest of your day.
Speaker 1:Thanks very much and thanks everybody for tuning in Used to through the podcast as well. You probably heard my voice some of you before on the design principles part. I'm kind of used to the backwards and forwards conversational format so hopefully monologuing wasn't too droning for you all. Thank you, thank you again.
Speaker 2:Great presentation, thanks. Sam format, so hopefully monologuing wasn't too, too droning for you all.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you again. Great presentation, thanks, sam.
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