ARM - Key Persons
"Working at ARM, there is no comfort zone. We all sit right on the edge of our abilities all the time, and that inspires me."
"When I was a young fella I was taken to the observation deck at the Rialto and I remember contemplating how a building that size could be possibly put together. It was incredible to me to think of somebody actually drawing that and then it being turned into reality. I still find it humbling that we're able to create buildings that leave such a legacy throughout their lifespan and that so many people will come into contact with.
I did a double degree in architecture and construction management and I'm particularly interested in how buildings are put together. My first ARM project was RAC Arena, which was already well into construction by the time I got there. So I became familiar with the process of building-the details and the different contracts that are used and how to maintain the design through the construction process. How to make sure it's built exactly as we wanted.
For me, architecture is the perfect mix of creativity and problem solving. And I like the idea that architecture is the biggest form of sculpture that you can possibly get.
"I've always felt that the interior and the architecture of a building needed to be thought of at the same time and designed as a whole."
"I studied interior design straight out of school. I worked for a while and decided I needed to broaden my skillset so I went back to study architecture. I've always felt that the interior and the architecture of a building needed to be thought of at the same time and designed as a whole.
My responsibilities are broad. Sometimes I'm doing the interior component of a project, sometimes I'm being an architect, sometimes both. I enjoy working with small and large teams delivering projects from start to finish.
Even though I work a great deal on interiors, I'm an architect first and foremost so I understand architectural process and how architecture happens. In a lot of firms, the interiors and architecture teams' offices are on separate floors but here we're really integrated. Many times, I've worked on a whole building as part of a team that continued throughout the project, so the people working on it at the start were still there at the end.
What I've learned is that meaningful architecture isn't about following trends or doing what's fashionable, it's about the story. At ARM, there's always a strong design concept that is the key driver of all decisions, both creative and pragmatic. My light-bulb moment was realising that that approach makes the whole process more cohesive and more enjoyable and leads to a better outcome. We don't regurgitate work we've done before because each project is specific to the people and the place we're designing for."
When I go to a new space that I've worked on, even when I've imagined it and drawn it and seen a render of it, even seen it in 3D, even with goggles on looking at a virtual-reality image, it's still always better in its context. I'm always blown away by seeing it with people in it and with scale and perspective and sunlight and all the sensory things. That's what I think is amazing."
"The best moments are when I present materials to clients. I like people to pick them up and feel them and understand their tactility and I see that as a moment of celebration."
"Way back in Grade 5, I was into The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich. It's a very old, now redundant, study book of art for kids. It includes architecture, but I didn't realise this was a profession because there wasn't an architecture firm in the country town where I grew up.
I had my own studio as a fine artist for eight years and I lectured in painting and print making. But after a while I realised I wasn't going to change the world as an artist so I decided to study architecture because I could contribute to the cultural fabric and earn a living, still in the art world. I bring to architecture a background of fine art and cultural studies. At ARM, I have the opportunity to explore those ideas and help others tease them out.
I'm very proud of the cultural connections in ARM's work. Architecture provokes. People can walk past and choose not to see anything but if they actually stop to look and question there is a visual language there.
Because I'm an interior architect, I'm probably more interested in built form than most interior designers. My primary focus has been on materials. As an artist, I was working with oil paint and bees wax and the tactility of materials and I've simply transferred my interest in that to buildings.
I've developed a very strong knowledge of how different materials perform, and I always go to Australian products first. I've also built a lot of relationships with a network of interior detectives-suppliers who are searching for products on our behalf. I've learned that better quality materials do not always come with a higher price tag. When we're designing buildings to last a very long time, this type of knowledge makes a huge difference.
The best moments are when I present materials to clients. I like people to pick them up and feel them and understand their tactility and I see that as a moment of celebration. Each project has a story that unifies the spaces and the material selections. Not everyone's work has this, but ARM's does. Without the story, all you have is an aesthetic.
Experience has taught me that if I look at the abstracts of an idea, I'll know whether it's good or not. I can look at a selection of materials and know whether they'll work together and, over the years, I've put together some very atypical selections. And they work."
"Clients can make you see what you're doing in a new light, which is really helpful."
"I started at ARM as a student and then a graduate back when it was a smaller firm of 15 or 20 people. It was a nine-year apprenticeship and I got to work on good projects like the National Museum of Australia, Melbourne Central and the MTC Southbank Theatre. Then I left for seven years and went to work in a smaller office where I had more responsibility. One reason I came back to ARM was that there are more senior people here. ARM has such a breadth of experience and knowledge from the top to learn and draw from.
I'm a good all-rounder. I flit between the roles of running projects and managing clients and designing. My personality is calm and reserved, which helps me see my way through all sorts of issues and keep a cool head.
With design, you're always learning, looking, seeing what's out there, what's been done before, what's new. And you also learn on the job from good people who've been around a long time. I've always worked in firms where design is the primary focus. At ARM, the realities of fees and things won't stop us from doing whatever it takes to get the right design.
"Design is a mental knot: if you try to pull on one thread, it will pull on all the others."
"When I was studying architecture at the University of Western Australia, Ian McDougall and Howard Raggatt came to Perth for a semester to run studios for us. I could tell that the work their students were doing was very different from what else was happening at the time: challenging, exciting, humorous, fun even. I realised that I wanted to be doing that sort of architecture.
I teach at UWA now, and I've taught at RMIT University in the past. I always try to bring the same elements into my teaching that Ian and Howard brought.
I've been at ARM since 2002. My main role is to establish the design direction for projects, fusing the bigger-picture ideas or design concepts with the planning. I'm road testing concepts to see how I can turn them into workable architectural propositions. Concepts need to be robust and durable. A good design, or the right design, will hold up against the rigours of testing and, therefore, the practicalities of being built.
"It takes a lot of different personalities to design and deliver a building."
"Growing up, I was always drawing plans, designing my dream home and endlessly looking at buildings. So architecture was something I was destined to do.
I've never worked on small projects. I love big projects because I enjoy working with a team-the team in the office, the client group, the consultants, the project managers, the builders, the big collaboration process. It takes a lot of different personalities to design and deliver a building.
I've worked on a number of large-scale projects and seeing the impact a project has, whether it's on the skyline of Melbourne or a school community, shows that architects are not just drawing lines on a page, we're contributing to the fabric of society.
Job Titles:
- Founding Director
- Founding Directors
"We're interested in solving problems, and not just at an esoteric design level…the esoteric is destroyed if the roof is leaking."
"In our day, uni was basically against design. We learned management and technical stuff but never anything about what contemporary architecture was or could be. So we were self-taught, although we had a good academic background-I did arts and philosophy subjects too-so we had art and culture to draw from.
ARM's work is not couched in individual expression. Instead of the glorious scribbles of the genius designer, each project has a big idea and many people contribute to that idea and there are as many perceptions of it as there are souls. The nice thing about an idea is that it's bigger than an individual thought-it's part of a body of knowledge or a subculture.
We're also interested in problems, and not just at an esoteric design level. It goes without saying that we solve problems to make sure a building is watertight and the circulation works and the acoustics and the lighting are good. I hate the idea of ordinary failings detracting from the big human idea that we're trying to convey-the esoteric is destroyed if the roof is leaking. That's not intellectually thorough either. How people walk around a space, in and out of it, how your footsteps sound-all those things go to the sensibility of the human condition. And we're very interested in that.
"I like to lead our clients to embark on the journey-to take the risk. I show them that it's doable and worth doing."
"I like working on public projects-buildings and places that have a social agenda. If you have a mission to create things of value, you feel much better spending your life doing something for the wider community.
My career has spanned a wide variety of architectural activities: designing, writing, publishing, speaking, teaching, advocacy and the like. And I'm very proud of the buildings we have produced-high quality, functional and edgy, with something to say, all at once. At the same time, through teaching and writing, ARM has been a huge contributor to why Melbourne has such a strong design culture.
When ARM started out, we were always interested in projects like social housing and community health. It was great to be able to turn the dreariest clinical program into something the community absolutely loved and embraced. It introduced a whole cultural dimension into a community.
Institutional and government facilities like libraries and museums and performance venues play a very important cultural role in a community. They exist within the narrative of a city. Cities think about themselves in a particular way and their self-consciousness is made by people who invent visions of what that city is. I think buildings do the same thing. Culturally, a design has resonance when it strikes a chord with the existing urban narrative, a sentimental vein within the community's feelings about things.
Architecture at is very best is art, there's no need to question that. It is not a service industry, but nor is it sculpture-it's unique as an art form. So it can't be self-absorbed or egocentric. It has to engage. It is born out of the skill of the designer but, unlike other art, it's modified by the fact that it's a thing to be used, it has a financial life and it's put together by people who aren't the artists.
I like working with our team to push the design edges. I also like to lead our clients to embark on the journey-to take the risk. I show them that it's doable and worth doing. The best part of my job is when I get to sit down with our project team and really work out the design. Seeing a project start to take shape is terrific. When I go onto site during construction I still think, ‘Oh wow, this is actually working'."
"I want to be continually learning about building so I can feed that knowledge back into what I design"
"I've been raised and educated as an architect totally by ARM.
In 2006, when I was at uni in Perth, I was put into Andrew Lilleyman's design class where Andrew taught us stuff like the fluid dynamics animation software that he was using at ARM.
I started working in ARM's tiny Perth studio straight after that class. I got to see the whole process of creating RAC Arena, and later Elizabeth Quay, and I did whatever needed doing in the moment. It was a unique situation because I had the opportunities to learn and the freedom that you get in a tiny workplace, but we were just a phonecall away from ARM's big Melbourne studio. When the Perth office closed, I moved to Melbourne.
These days I'm mainly designing rather than delivering projects, but I want to be continually learning about building so I can feed that knowledge back into what I design.
I like sitting down with the directors-usually Andrew or Howard Raggatt-and figuring out how to make their initial ideas take shape. Mostly it involves trying lots of different design options, and in the back of my mind thinking, ‘Is this strategy going to hold up when we have to redo it a thousand times?' Because you always have to redo it a thousand times. Inevitably the client's brief changes or something gets bigger or an engineer says, ‘Hang on, that doesn't work for me'. So either the design strategy is flexible, or you need a whole new one.
At ARM, the early stages of design involve using a lot of software for experimenting and manipulating concepts. It's really important not to be constrained to one type of software, or to let the software define what you design. I teach at RMIT University occasionally, and sometimes a student will show me a concept that looks all squishy, for instance, and I'll say, ‘That's cool, but why does it look squishy and not pointy?' and they'll say, ‘Because the software does squishy'.
The answer should be, ‘It looks like that because I want it to look like that'."
Jeremy is highly skilled both in designing and delivering projects. He has worked on an extensive range of cultural, educational, urban design, residential and commercial projects and has been an instrumental team member in many significant ARM projects nationally including the Geelong Arts Centre, the Shrine of Remembrance Redevelopment and Perth Arena Stadium (RAC Arena).
Jeremy moved to Melbourne from Perth in 2001, where he worked in landscape architecture. This experience has broadened and enriched his thinking as a designer and given him a thorough understanding of the importance of an integrated design approach throughout all phases of the project.
Jeremy is currently the design lead of the Port Augusta Technical College. This project will deliver a new educational model for regional South Australia, one which will allow students from secondary schools located across the Upper Spencer Gulf, Eyre Peninsula, Far North and APY Lands to attend the College for periods of time to undertake industry training.
"For a project to be really great, every aspect of every process has to line up, and it's my job to make that happen."
"At high school, I had very little idea about what architects did. It might sound like a strange thing for a teenager to be thinking about, but I wrote school papers about topics like the future of Melbourne, or a critique of the City Square. I've always been intrigued by how cities work and how built form influences our society and culture.
I first joined ARM in 1995 as an undergrad student. At university, we were taught architecture as a building science; it was just not the done thing to discuss ideas. The approach was terribly sensible-I just couldn't understand it and I found working in an architecture practice far messier and much more interesting.
Successful architecture is the product of an iterative process of research, design, client and stakeholder engagement and, ultimately, the right contracting model. I'm managing each of those steps, looking after the client's interests and their aspirations, and making sure they get what they need. For a project to be really great, every aspect of the process has to line up, and it's my job to make that happen.
Job Titles:
- Director
- NSW Nominated Architect
"Answering a brief doesn't get you to architecture and nor does designing something astonishing in isolation. Making them dance together-that's where architecture is."
"There has never been any question in my mind that architecture is about ideas-that the properties of buildings are a vehicle for staging and communicating human culture.
The best bit for me is that moment when the design is emerging in front of us and we can just start to see its potential. That's very exciting but it also fills you with dread because you can see what's coming next: the task of turning it into something tangible and testing it against the world. That said, architectural design is not just problem solving. Answering a brief doesn't get you to architecture and nor does designing something astonishing in isolation. Making them dance together-that's where the architecture is.
I'm interested in architectural publishing; I see words as a way into architecture. When I was an undergraduate, I started a magazine called Subaud. It was an underground rag but people picked it up all over Australia. It was something strange and new and it helped me develop my own thinking about architecture. More recently, I co-edited and contributed to our book, Mongrel Rapture: the Architecture of Ashton Raggatt McDougall. I still write for architecture and design publications and I usually have some article I'm tinkering with. I do quite a bit of work in our education and public programming including curating and designing exhibitions, running research programs and design studios with RMIT.
"I like the idea of surprise and discovery rather than invention, of looking at history and what others have done."
"In a nutshell, I see myself as a student of the city. I like the possibilities of re-imagining an appropriate urban environment. I'm very interested in how cities work or don't work, and in their peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. I like visiting cities-they show you that there are many different ways to live.
I've been at ARM nearly as long as the founding directors. Over the years, I've developed an interest in masterplanning and how buildings fit onto a site-how it all stacks up. Some basic principles of urban design seem to apply to projects of any scale. The spaces between buildings, as much as the buildings themselves, can be the most significant or fascinating bits. Concepts of a hierarchy of uses within a site, or of the importance of people places, are more interesting to me than buildings in isolation.
I enjoy the challenge of recalibrating existing buildings for the contemporary era-buildings that were designed under certain social assumptions that are now outdated. ‘Adaptive re-use' is an old-fashioned term for this. We need to keep things contemporary while acknowledging history. If you just trash things, you've got no sense of where we are and where we've been-no history and culture.
Before I became an architect, I did a degree in fine arts and history. I draw a lot rather than using the computer, and people seem to find my drawings useful. Their purpose is to communicate aspects of a design, either to colleagues or to clients and stakeholders.
I like the idea of surprise and discovery rather than invention, of looking at history and what others have done. Architects' primary reference point is what's happened before, re-interpreted for contemporary society. I'm suspicious of invention from nothing. Only God can do that."
"Our documentation has to be good. Because when you propose a design that's really out there, you have to work hard to make sure it stacks up architecturally and structurally."
"I was born into a French family restaurant. I started working there on weekends when I was 12, and I moved through the ranks until I'd learned every facet of running the business by the time I finished school. My dad trained me on the job as a chef, but I knew I'd end up in architecture.
A kitchen is an intense working environment and it taught me to work under pressure and deliver an outcome. And how to lead a team. Those things have been invaluable in architecture.
Dad taught me recipes that he'd learned from his grandmother in the tiny village where he grew up in central France. He's always had a profound respect for the recipe and the craft and the history that was passed down through those recipes to him-the pedigree of the recipe.
"When a client is prepared to come on a journey that potentially challenges the way most people think about architecture, that's the most satisfying part of my job."
"Problem solving is a huge part of architecture, and of my role at ARM. A lot if it comes down to understanding the people who are using the building and what their ambitions are and how they can be realised together with the greater good. I'm good at identifying problems, which is the most important step in being able to solve them. Once you've worked out what the problem really is, the solution is much easier to find or choose. This strength helps me make decisions, work constructively with clients, and lead project teams.
I've been at ARM since 2003. I've learned that ARM has very good systems, which might not be what outsiders expect. I think they assume we're seat-of-the-pants type people-often those striving for the cutting edge of design will ignore other elements of the full service, but ARM has really solid systems and we produce excellent documentation packages.
We're very interested in the pragmatic aspects of design, too, and if you've only seen magazine photos of our buildings you might not expect that. But because we make the types of design propositions that we do, we have to test them and document them thoroughly to make sure they're going to work. We need to ensure that the proposition will genuinely enhance the way the users of the building want to work, behave, or operate."