Behind Closed Doors - The Life of an Architect (Full Documentary)

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] now i don't know why but the work of an architect is often hidden behind closed doors [Music] but as students how do we know what we're getting ourselves into [Music] [Music] [Music] why is it such a mystery as to what an architect actually does let me tell you it's not all sunshine and rainbows we've got a big deadline probably more different projects to work on today it's a real hard one i think for for others to give advice and say yeah you should be an architect you should get into

it because i really enjoy it i suppose that's the purpose of this is to give some insight into into what it's like what do i least enjoy about architecture i once had a you know a long list there's been times in my career where i've questioned whether it's the right direction for me going through uni there was a couple of points where i actually looked at transferring degree in my second year of uni i wanted to quit [Music] [Applause] [Music] architecture could be a dream job it's not you get the days where you're just absolutely

wrecked [Music] [Applause] the time i get spending designing is maybe an hour a day if i'm working a lot less time spent drawing and designing than what i thought would be the case [Music] architecture as anyone that's decided to do it will know it's pretty all-consuming it pre-occupies your mind all the time seven days a week [Music] no one's going to tell you that again doing an architecture is going to earn you millions that's not true but it might give you some degree of happiness might [Music] my name's dakota chris watkins adrian kenyon danny cutz

david holmberg eliza gabrielle dillia carajanus costume macleod mariano didwoni ned connolly elise von bake raphael christinette mohammed sami sultani paul cooksey i'm the architect and i guess the founder of northern air studio i'm an architect here at bauculta i'm an architect at barclays an architect here at beckholder one of the three founding directors here graduate of architecture and interior designer draftsman and i've also taken on the management role just started here as an interior designer just past my registration graduate interior architect graduate of architecture an interior designer i'm a director at bow culture one of

the directors here with chris and mariano my first proper job was back in about 1994. graduated in 1993 i graduated last year 2010 2010 i still have one month of uni i've been out of uni about five years now i graduated in 2014 97 96 finished uni at the end of last year 2016 2006. for about 20 years i've been in the profession for about 33 years [Music] when i finished school i didn't choose architecture mainly because it was five years whereas engineering at the time was four years and so i went into engineering which

is a big mistake i lasted one year in engineering probably turned up to three lessons three lectures one of those was maths the first math lesson or first math lecture i knew that there is no way that i was going to be able to handle this course if this is the mathematics that i had to do so you know that kind of knocked out engineering if it's not out it gets turfed again i was still a little bit nervous about five years at uni studying architecture so i then dropped into building technology i did that

for a couple of years during that course we did a few lessons with architects students i felt that i've really got to bite the bullet because this looks great i'd really enjoy this so then i hopped over to architecture by the time i got to i think third year architecture they brought in a new professor professor peter burgess and the whole school changed and that's really when i started to understand what architecture is and really start to enjoy it and develop not only an understanding but a passion for it real interest in design and and

architecture to make it be chopped up just for the sweet i did do engineering for a year probably because everyone told me there was better money in engineering there was an architecture and they're probably right but nevertheless after a year of that it was a 50 50 decision as to which one to do but it's that idea of exploration of ideas there's the technical aspects to it as well that were pretty interesting and i was always you know interested in how our house was working and all those sorts of things making stuff so it was

kind of there i think anyway i just needed to find it if you like and by testing out a couple of other things i was always interested in the creative parts of my informative years at high school etc so it was anything to do with creativity and but i wanted a profession that actually involved a little bit of science with it so architecture was a blend of good science and good art good creative pursuit you need 14 people that's awesome i did a few things before architecture i started a science degree i did some engineering

drafting for a bit i worked in cafes and that kind of thing as well like everyone else did the appeal of architecture was at the time when i was looking what i wanted to do was about the mix of creativity and i guess you know the more rational kind of science side of things which is my i guess my background in school and so uh being able to mix those two was was quite appealing you know since then i've really sort of found it to be quite a vast profession you can really explore various areas

it's not a one-phase thing there's a lot of scope to explore what you're interested in across scales or topologies or whatever you want to do [Music] well apples don't fall far from trees my grandpa jack cheeseman was an architect um and then my dad's an architect one of my brothers actually married an architect in the end as well which you'll find there's a lot of that going on in the industry sometimes you enter into profession just because you think it's going to be something and through the course of time there's an evolution of learning and

then you learn that it suits other sides of your personality as you mature that you didn't even consider when you're a kid yeah because you're pretty young aren't you when you leave school and go straight to uni [Music] i have always wanted to be an interior designer i was one of those people in year 12 when they would ask oh what's your backup plan i said i don't have one don't need one because i know what i want to do it was kind of just meant to be a bridging course between deciding what i wanted

to do outside of university and then i just fell in love with the degree and kept going with it and don't have a single regret about it now when i finished high school i got into into engineering at university decided to take a gap year before i committed to that and went and traveled around europe did the whole gambit there and came back and after seeing all those wonderful buildings and the canals and europe and uh just thought that i probably couldn't just spend the rest of my life looking at cogs and turning moments in

mechanical engineering i flipped a coin quite literally flipped a coin on the phone to the preference people and changed my preference to architecture [Music] [Music] [Music] they call it work life balance it is a balance a balancing act and you really need that that activity outside of work i think in order to be productive and meaningful in your work there's people that i know that just spend all their time in the office doing architecture which is fine in fact one of my partners does that mariano that's his that's his thing but uh he obviously really

enjoys it that's what he digs doing so that's cool but i'm i'm not that i'm not like that i need to recharge my batteries outside of work it helps me think and it helps me think clearly i guess in in a way i don't view architecture as work it is my interest is my pursuit and if i'm not doing work in the studio etc i'm reading up on architecture etc i've recently found a new passion in that with um and i say me and my husband we've moved to a new house 1920s home i guess

our new passion is now you know working on that coming up with all sorts of wacky and wonderful ideas about where we could take the house it's left not much time for anything else at the moment but it's all fun and it's exciting that finally i can work on my own thing you know and i think there's just we spent so many years designing for others and sort of forget about what it's like to design for yourself you're almost your worst client really because trying to land on something that you're happy with is impossible and

being surrounded by so many nice things all the time like i mean furniture like this room most of it's family i've got a classic car and i'll spend a bit of time on that it's got a pretty powerful motor in it and i get out with my daughter and we just cruise around and tinker with that and i've been doing doing that since about nine years old well originally i was going to be a mechanic so i spent my time working on cars and building things like that that's generally what i do bit of sport

as well try to keep active where i can i like to make things really kind of good working furniture making that kind of thing i can't claim to do it very well but um yeah i quite enjoy doing all that kind of that kind of gear my better half my wife she's a sculpture installation artist so we're welcome to collaborate on stuff as well so she runs the show i'm kind of lacking but i quite enjoy that process of being involved in the um less architectural more ephemeral type projects as well which is which is

really good fun aside from that ride bikes yeah i ride bikes a lot love cycling so i try to cycle as much as i can sport cycling tennis so do a bit of racing that sort of thing that helps clear the head a cyclist surfer musician loved to do a bit of photography when i was in europe did a lot of snow sports and that that type of thing i do triathlons rather than going for coffee with friends to hang out my favorite thing would be to run with my friends or i if i'm not

running i'm swimming and if i'm not swimming i'm riding so so every day i do something physical these days um getting to senior years i do passing sports like morning golf or something like that just to get some exercise in my family do a lot of outside activities walks and hikes and um those kind of things outdoors is such a there's such a broad range of different types of activities that people love here it's a really good overlap of activities but i think at the end of the day it does help to bind us all

together to become an architect it takes years of rigorous study and practice but does it really prepare you for what's to come [Music] a lot of people think that the education of an architect is about preparing them for the first year of practice right so it's a it's like you go to school you go to uni and then you start work it's a very lineal procession of learning and it is kind of that but once you graduate from architecture you come out with this whole big pile of knowledge that you won't get to use on

your first day your first month or even your first year or even your first decade of practice the education of an architect is more about giving you this ball of knowledge that will sit with you for your entire career that you'll dip into and put and constantly pull things out at the appropriate time you know so if you hear of graduates saying oh i wasn't prepared for this you know i didn't know about that or i didn't know about that that's fine it doesn't it doesn't matter that's what your first few years of working are

for to teach you those things and and some of those things would be impossible to teach at university [Music] the learning of design and your pursuit and your interest passion for the profession happens at in university you don't learn everything at uni but you you get a really good grounding in stuff that you don't learn so much on the job i think in the design in the thinking and then all the technical stuff and the other things that you don't learn at uni you you really pick up from people that you work with i think

that's the key is tapping into the right people to learn what you can from there i don't think any course is ever going to properly prepare you for the real world obviously there's an element of reality that would have been probably a bit more helpful if we'd if we'd learned about that one thing i would say about the interior architecture course is i i feel like there could have been a lot more emphasis on the importance of work experience and i ended up working in my final year at an architecture practice and i think that

was just so beneficial you learn so many skills when it comes to documentation for one you know and how to apply that knowledge into the real world i mean architecture is such a massive practice that it would be impossible to compress that into three four five year university course and hope to prepare someone for practice in a way that they could be able to you know start up their own practice and do architecture for example but they can prepare someone for thinking and how you think about problems and your problem solving processes now those are

the kind of things that you will take from your education and draw upon and use and refine for your whole career [Music] in my schooling i had that for my teachers and in particular professor peter burgess who maybe i'd benefited more from my relationship with him than most students because back then i was a very quite a heavy smoker and he was a very heavy smoker and outside of lectures he would always come up and bum cigarettes you know so he'd say chris if you've got a you've got a cigarette and of course you'd give

him a cigarette and then you'd have two minutes of one-on-one conversation and inevitably you'd end up talking about architecture and then you'd have another one and you know it was it was a lot cheaper than paying fees just it's just occasional cigarettes so you know i i think i learned as much if not more with those chance meetings with uh with with peter then i did informal lectures you know so yeah you learn so much actually working all the technical stuff like calling out people asking for samples working for clients learning how to communicate better

we do learn that at uni you do a presentation and you improve your communication skills that's still different to working with clients because clients will jump in like no i don't like that you're like okay i'm gonna change for us it was sort of self-found work experience it wasn't actually a component i think for a lot of people that had either found it difficult to locate somewhere someone that would take them on for longer than a week because otherwise it has to be paid work um found that really difficult and getting your foot in the

door is also another thing so for me adrian was actually one of my tutors in third year and i'd said to our group if you're ever interested in work experience come and have a chat and that's really really important you know seek out your tutors particularly people who are working in practice and get a bit of a feel for what different practices are like how you you know what you want to work in as well you're not going to know unless you try it didn't prepare us for what we do outside that's the biggest thing

that i've found that and that you can only really learn once you start working anyway i really don't think i learned until i landed in a practice yeah [Music] architecture really should embrace that opportunity to get people into studios and understand what happens there because even if you're hanging around in a in an office based environment you realize that there's a lot more to the profession then you're given access to a university i have not worked on a project at uni that's had a budget in my second year i put in a kitchen bench made

of solid rose quartz so not till a bit later did i start thinking yes things are really expensive and that's something i've only started thinking about from doing placements and working here the beauty of interior architecture the course that i did was that it was so hands-on and it was so out there and experimental and although we maybe started talking about client budgets and things like that that really the world was your oyster and you had so much chance to push the boundaries and just do what you wanted which i think in a sense was

a really good tool to have because it meant that you know getting into the profession you aren't jaded by things like budgets programs fees all of that sort of thing fundamental preparation really was the first four years of working your level of knowledge just goes from like flatline to the steepest learning curve in the world yeah and often i think that people in our profession after those first four years start to question whether or not they want to do what they're doing as well because it's pretty tough and a lot of that time is in

the office documenting i mean you don't get a lot of exposure to clients as a young graduate unless you're an introverted you know you might be quite happy doing that for an extrovert or a social person um it's painful to watch people coming and going from the office and you're stuck at a desk documenting maybe it'll be a bit different now because i think their way of working is more collaborative but it depends on the practice you're working in and certainly here at balco it the collaboration is key to how we work yeah when you

start a practice you'll get taught a lot of what you need to know about just their way of working you learn that on the job it's a pretty steep learning curve when you get out of uni but it set me up alright but it's still a bit of a shock when you get when you get into it yeah different world everybody is well aware that as a graduate you're not expected to know everything and it's just a way for you to kind of learn and then be shaped as well within the culture and the working

environment that you are in teaching us that design is a process as opposed to it being an artistic endeavor yeah i always came out of it thinking it was more of a a personal thing and an artistic endeavor whereas design is actually a process and is a way of thinking and i don't think that was articulated as clearly as it should have been and i'm not sure whether that's still the case it taught me probably self-confidence in my design abilities and if i wasn't convinced or passionate about an idea it wasn't going to go anywhere

but the times where i was is probably where i got better outcomes and better projects as a result one thing i think that got me was the speed at which things happen in practice that's probably the biggest thing i started working for a small residential firm when i when i graduated i was working for them while i was at uni not to say we were moving slowly there by any means but it was a different pace when i um when i shifted to a bigger firm it just it blew my mind how fast things were

happening all the time the grounding that i had at uni was really good for that because you know the base skills that i had enabled me to adapt to that and to pick up the pace so you know we're coming out of our union i was like oh it's going to be great it's not going to be all-nighters anymore it's going to be like nine till five it's going to be awesome so there's still aspects of you know having having late nights getting projects out but it's definitely not as consistent as it was there's always

going to be kind of swings around about us to you know project deadlines and i can say there's more structure in your day you know you know you get to work at a certain time and you typically you finish at a certain time so you've got weekends which is just the best so i've not having weekends before so um like most people working all through your uni degree to kind of you know pay for all the stuff you're making and doing at uni and i do like the photo you've actually talked about esd and brought

it back to the national system so i like that you'd actually consider nature um if you think back to year 12 the stress and pressure that sometimes that parents teachers put on you and like going this is the year that defines you and then you leave year 12 and a year or two later nobody really cares too much about what grade you did on how well you did in physics or chemistry or maths and if you try and remember what boyle's law was unless you're actually doing a science degree so these things suddenly become a

lot less likely maybe that wasn't as important and i think university is a bit like that too once you have an ex an understanding of what the outside world is like you come back to the degree and you're not quite so stressed that your presentation drawings are not absolutely 100 perfect and you're not necessarily so worried that your theory isn't completely watertight you're much more recognizing for this for what it is and it's about an idea generation process and about putting together solid but not necessarily watertight concepts no one's expecting you to be luca bezier

or amis van der rohe when you're 21 years old those people do exist but they are rare very rare beasts so it's much more about just trying to embrace the moment and enjoy it for what it is because it is enjoyable there is a lot to enjoy about an architecture degree it's a lot of freedom that you're given and a lot of vibrancy in that degree and the thoughts that come out of it is really exciting it's a wonderful thing to do but tempering it with a sense of that this is not the end of

your learning journey this is not this presentation yes you spend until 3am in the morning but this presentation is not necessarily going to define you as a person [Music] really like you you just crew through the term until there was a submission due and then crammed for the submission get that in and then go and then hopefully there would be holiday so it was just sort of a period of stop stop well i guess studio was more about designing something pretty where actually working in a firm is well yeah you've got to design something that's

good but then working out how that design is actually going to work there's a lot more of that than what you learned in uni collaboration in our context here and what i've experienced in the past is much greater so at uni you're doing your thing so you make your own decisions and it doesn't affect anyone else but you and your marks and your own portfolio whereas in the profession it's not about just you and your decisions it's about the team it's about the client without that collaboration and compromise you won't get anywhere real life comes

down to money at the end so you may make some decisions that you're completely sold on but you know someone's got to pay for that on the other side so you've got a responsibility to other people in the profession if you could sum up your experiences of architecture school in one word or sentence how would you go about doing that invigorating helpful but not necessarily the end of the story so yeah there we go that was fun at the time it was it was fun and it was loose and you could do it what you

could do like it was challenging yeah but in a good way camaraderie and collegiality sociability you know it's the camaraderie that we have in our particular office adventurous it's fun but stressful culture a lot of experimentation totally mind opening hearing topics on religion and all the way through to post-modern theory and all that sort of stuff like okay there's a really big scope of stuff that's out there um so you're opening the mind the freedom that you had there without the constraints that you have in reality i've done some tutoring as well i always suggest

to people do what interests you follow what you want to do now what you can once you're in practice you you are sort of you've got a real client you've got a project that they want to do so yeah the freedom you have at uni is really great i think it allowed you to really press the boundaries and you know have a lot of latitude in what you're you're doing i guess for me you know when you come out of university then you know the constraints get put on to the project and it's less so

about unbridled thought and more about cultivated thought it's different not something that you generally do in other degrees a lot more relaxed i guess than a lot of other degrees you've got a lot more freedom of choice of what you want to actually do long tiresome but you come out of it with a really really close knit group of friends because you all went through it together and that's pretty cool and pretty unique i think there's some very quirky interesting projects that we do like great big sheets of paper and you have to collage things

and there's card and a lot of super glue and stuff like that the deadlines there's always a deadline and there's peaks of um pressure there's always something to push you and then when there's not it's just like you can sit back and breathe for a minute before the next thing comes along we've got a big deadline due today so uh we've got a deadline today this is june as soon as i can get it out usually trying to get out the sketch design package so deadline today i need to make sure for an exciting day

yeah it's sort of like this okay relationship that's a good love hate relationship got a love-hate relationship with um all the admin side of things it's a bit of a love-hate relationship where i think for me the passion outweighs the really crummy parts and and the crummy parts are very small for me it's the sort of thing that gets out of control but once you've done it it's satisfying enlightening is it's got to be one of those things life-changing definitely life-changing unexpected and engaging and interesting you know all of those all of those things i

know that i'm privileged to have gone to university and and had had that education but i would go as far as to say almost essential it's been essential for my life a big part of who i am is because i had that experience with those people at that time who'd have known what would have happened but i don't think i would be nearly as content i don't think i would be nearly as happy or any of those things without that experience it's a life-changing experience life-changing and if you get the chance to do it then

do it don't even think about not doing it you know or putting it off that's the other thing don't put it off just do it you really meet someone that regrets having a tertiary education you meet plenty of people that regret not having one so you know the kind of decisions already made for you i'm in a bit of a pickle because yesterday i worked from home so there's heaps of people that need to catch up to discuss probably three different projects and then danny and i got a opportunity to put in a suspicion for

a new project up in wilpina pound so we're pretty keen on working on that today we've actually [Music] [Laughter] and yeah not being here yesterday yeah [ __ ] we've got a deadline at the end today so a bit of a push but we're on track at the moment which is always a good thing they could take little wins um and yeah design changes but they've been really good so i think sometimes in the kind of crisis where it forces you to really look at the way that you're designing things and what the intent is

yeah so a few more changes but good changes so ideally we're kind of printing drawings about three o'clock to try and roll out that's the aim and then whenever we say three blocks it's always like 45 um so cm yeah five o'clock and my past life was a bristol so drink and make a lot of coffee trying to wrap up some stuff hopefully muzzle get off cold and we'll be about to have a little review of a few things and we can stop cutting foam blocks it's nice to have a change from computer work but

yeah there's a limit to how much you want to do [Music] [Music] and maybe it's [Music] it looks us but i'm actually i'm shopping for the displace weight that we're doing so we're doing all the styling items which includes everything from bed linen to bathroom accessories hence these horrible products that i've got on the website i'm going to just go off of that because that looks much nicer so just pulling together a schedule for the client so that they can go and purchase all these items for the uh displacement that's opening in a couple of

weeks time yeah i love this it's licensed to shop uh whilst at work it's a fun process actually it's a sort of um stuff that i love looking on a day-to-day basis for myself so it's just um yeah getting paid to do it exactly that's right yeah no i'm just spending a few hours this morning on this one but um back to documentation this afternoon so doing some detailing we've just got some updated uh information and we just need to update our drawings so that at the end of the month we can issue a consolidated

set so all our drawings are up to date as the construction is going so this is due as soon as i can get it out i have a presentation in a minute well it's more of a conversation presentation so some for the level crossing removal authority in victoria who are looking to use one of our past projects as a case study so having a bit of a conversation around that with them so it's on indigenous design and engagement with traditional owners marianna has put together some drawings here for a little extension we're working on in

melbourne and uh it's pretty heavily detailed so i've got a mark of some drawings so making sure that she's um she's getting you know getting the intent right and we're um and then we're sort of making sure that also we're meeting our energy efficiency requirements on the project because it's a basically a very large glass box so we've just ran through the glazing calculator and then we've we discovered that perhaps we have a little bit too much glazing so now we have to reduce some of that to make sure that we can comply with our

requirements for energy efficiency which is something what we want to do is just uh we have to um there's a few boxes that we have to take and make sure that we're also meeting the clients requirements so yeah so that's what we're up to today yeah and marking up drawings making sure that getting all the information on there that's appropriate in order to get a good set of documents for tender make sure the builder's got enough information to put together prices it's gonna be it'll be nice very modernist kind of boxing extension to the back

um what the client really wants so lots of exposed steel and things like that yes there's to be a passive house and just trying to make it less sustainable as it can since we were given this design by the client to work on so yeah so we've got to make it work [Music] i'm working on an electrical plan at the moment and we're doing a project for kidsafe we're doing a new fit out for their new offices they're moving down there in december i think so it's a little very quick process and they could get

things out quickly concept design and all that stuff so right now i'm just doing the layout for the electrical i've done like floor plans and demolish demolition plans some autocad awesome yeah and then i've also done the dominant through there offset 500. so we're going to keep it consistent yes you might be an architecture yes you might be into because you work on the same project you sometimes end up doing some architectural stuff and sometimes you end up doing some interior stuff regardless of where you are so it was good to see that because in

my head i was always like yes i'm interior i'm only doing interiors and even working here like i've picked up more architectural things to know that like um so it's been good hang on a second let's just go back [Music] and i mean all the way back [Music] how does an architect start their day you'd like to think that your day's got a lot of variety and um and you do things differently each day just listening to that question i i sort of thought about what i do when i wake up and you know in

some boring monotonous way i go through the same steps and the same rituals each day in terms of thought pattern as soon as i wake up in the morning i'm thinking about the day and the projects that we've got on and what needs to be done so for me every day has to start with um being outside so whether that's on a trail and at the beach or swimming in the pool or swim something physical so that i'm mentally prepared to be more or less inside all day i always like to look at my diary

and know what meetings i've got on for the day write a list of tasks that i hope to accomplish i'm quite task orientated so just planning the day um ahead and then get stuck into it if i've got things i need to think a lot about i'll organise those tasks for the morning and if i've got more sociable collaborative tasks then i'll organise them for the afternoon because that suits me better because i'm notoriously tired by the end of the day because my days start often at five o'clock because i've got a swimmer in the

family our office resides in the adelaide city we don't necessarily have a lot of free parking around so essentially that kind of leads me to cycling to work every day which is a really good thing it puts you in into a frame of mind where you can start to think about the day ahead and what you want to achieve that day or what the issues are going to be and if you have any serious issues you've got a bit of time to just think through them before you actually get into the into the office there

are moments in the morning where you'll rehearse what's going to happen during the day in your head uh to some degree that's often you know in my case it might be when i'm having a shower when i'm riding into work if i can't ride into work i feel like i've missed out on something because of the just the headspace it gives you while you're trying not to get cleaned up on the way in but nevertheless you you know it gives you some great head space to just get your thoughts together about what you're going to

be or what you think you're going to be doing what actually happens when you walk in the door might be completely different that threshold between going from your home life in your personal life to a work life that ritual of writing and commuting to work every day was a huge aspect and you're able to mentally shift between the two try and sleep as much as i can and then come in and i think the first thing off the rank for a lot of us is to go and make a coffee um it's a good opportunity

to have a chat catch up with people sometimes opening up models and stuff that you know are going to take half an hour to open you'll get that running and do that in the background but yeah it's kind of like a bit of a social thing in the morning and something that we've done a bit is we run sort of little morning teas of breaking bread and so it's nice to just like kind of share food and have a chat casually rather than everything being about work as soon as you get in the front door

is really nice tea time in the kitchen so yeah coffee [Music] you always have a couple of rolling yeah that's pretty important apart from making a coffee once i get here i mean i make a coffee before i come but other than that it's just get stuck into it sort of settle yourself in for the day coffee has a big place a big part of that i think that's pretty common always have a chat with paul when i first come in and i pat indy the dog always that's important that's important i'll write a few

notes down of what paul's asked me to do so i don't forget anything and then i pop up and i go next door and get a coffee and then i come back and i get straight into it pretty much in the morning yeah no i don't drink coffee um everyone watching is gonna be like what a freak um yeah so that's another thing like everyone go get coffee and i'll just play no thanks most days i'll just get online and check a couple of architecture blogs that i normally have a look at just because i

find that it's fairly inspiring just to have a look at what's getting done and sort of frame your thinking for the day and even if it's not completely relevant to whatever i'm working on at that particular time it's a constant backlog of fresh ideas and what's happening around the world so yeah like pretty much every day first 15 minutes would be that [Music] now i'm a rush i'm a rusher in the mornings i'm always running late i don't have time for rituals i think my ritual is make sure i've eaten breakfast before i've left the

house i'm not a huge kind of routine person there'll be times where i need to be very structured about what i'm doing just to get through the what i need to get done other times you might be across four or five different projects so you're trying to just juggle things you're just kind of getting by you know someone say you probably need to be more structured in those times too but um i mean personally i don't really have any sort of morning rituals or anything i'm gonna roll out of bed throw some clothes on and

try and get to work on time kind of approach [Music] grab a coffee you know take the dog out feed the dog you know wake the kids up and then i've got about half an hour to an hour every morning and i try to get through my emails start looking at emails and seeing what i have to pay attention to today i'm very fortunate that you know live relatively close by and so i can ride my bike in and that's a great way for clearing my head in the morning sort of sets you up for

you know you're invigorated for the day you're not sort of waking up too tired most of the time but yes it's pretty you do usually have your own little ritual you know just put stuff down get get changed or whatever and um grab a coffee and sit down usually it's first thing is just checking emails and catching up on on things that might have come through i usually get into work a bit late at 9 30 9 9 30. but i've at least cleared the deck so i can have a meaningful discussion with my colleagues

about the day's work ahead any issues that they may have or any meetings that we need to prepare for presentations or so on because we've got kids and all that sort of thing your mind's occupied trying to get that going my mornings are sort of taken up with kids and getting them ready for school and and then dropping them off school and so that's my routine really at the start of that and then when i come to work it's just set up and then start looking at emails and seeing what i have to pay attention

to today as soon as you get into the office it's really difficult to focus sometimes although we are a small office you may have a lot of people asking you questions and you see you can get distracted really easily that distraction takes you away from trying to find that clarity and thinking so i try and do as much as i can before i get into the office and then the office is just work and then after the office you can start that clarity of thought again that's why it's important to get outside you know that's

why it's important to get out as well yeah so yeah [Music] coffee [Music] it's good to kind of go for a run so sometimes go uh go for a run right and early in the morning or if i can um after after work as well to keep on top of your mental health you have to stay a bit physically strong as well i'll go through and make either a to-do list or your mental to-do list try and write it down where we're at with the projects and try and sort of identify things that need to

happen to move those forward make sure that when people come into the door that they have a sense of purpose sometimes that's that's hard to do it's just me but the idea is that they've got something to step forward to and they've got an understanding of where they're going to go through with their work and then once you've got that and you've got everyone set up and if everyone's feeling good then it's kind of like let's move through the day and try and tick off as many of those as i can if i get 70

percent of them done it's a great day [Music] never get a hundred [Music] so what one thing does an architect spend most their time on well i couldn't tell you that [Music] that really varies there's a variety of things it does change depends on what projects we've got going and what stage they're in obviously that depends on what projects i'm working on at the time it's different every day really depends on the project stage it varies a lot but if you go through which i've done recently if i go through my time timesheets it's probably

my average week would be 30 business stuff 30 project work and 30 trying to get more project work so submissions and business development and strategizing of how we're going to get the next job that kind of stuff i'd like to spend more time on project work less time on the other stuff because i i just kind of struggle with that much more productive when i'm in the zone doing project work that's why i did architecture i didn't do architecture to do accounting and if i can have some clear time outside of the office then the

project work is a lot more effective and productive when you come back you know that the directions can be clear the decisions can be clear conversations can be clear i'm very desk based at the moment other than um you know a site visit once a week just trying to jump between projects spend a bit of time chatting with clients consultants navigating your way through project issues that sort of thing and resolving things both on-site whether you're in design phase it's always nice when you've got something that gets you out of the office a little bit

as well because otherwise i mean you try and break up your day by i don't know go for a walk at lunch at least and i'm getting better at this eating lunch away from the desk rather than sitting at the desk some days it can't be helped obviously if you are very much 100 at the desk just trying to sort of break it up with little trips to the coffee machine or you know making sure you take a phone call with a client it's as diverse as you know business development in meeting with clients with

opportunities to doing critique and design review with staff members on projects generally documentation working out buildings that have already been designed and documenting them to get ready to be sent off a lot of what i do is computer-based work intermittent meetings thrown in throughout that as a graduate not sort of running projects i'm not running meetings necessarily but i'm often involved in the background you might be taking minutes you might just be chipping in noting things down in your head to progress forwards and then a lot of what i'm doing is just modeling up whatever

project i happen to be working on [Music] [Music] so everything we do is either in some shape or form around revit so we're using rev as a program to generate most of our ideas being able to craft things as well either you do it through a 3d printer or you actually physically make models being able to have that ability to kind of craft something really nice and neatly and quite efficiently as well [Music] at the moment i'm doing a lot of sort of massing studies and that's also involving physical modeling with phone cutting and 3d

printing but a lot of what i do is based on the computer currently just working through tutorials to learn new programs like dynamo so you had a bit of a mix across the across the day i mean my day will flex from touring to writing to talking to researching ideas for a new project gathering information gathering images that respond to the thoughts i have yep communication 100 is communication architecture is a profession that cannot operate outside by itself you need engineers clients councils and a whole bunch of different people primarily i see my role is

about communicating to these people and making sure that the process is being driven forward one in the right way two in a manner that makes everybody feel like they've got a sense of ownership to it to some extent i mean that's primarily what my role is particularly in domestic architecture where you're dealing with clients who this may be only their first or second time you know they're not too super experienced in dealing with buildings and um and the whole process can be fairly daunting because a lot of emails phone calls and communicating with the staff

to making sure that they're feeling good and they're understanding where they're going and the intent of processes nine percent of my day is communicating at the moment it's dealing with the the builders for bice and dealing with rfis and workflows and shop drawings and things like that when i'm working on buildings that aren't in construction most of my time is spent coordinating with consultants to make sure that everything's working in the building working with everyone in the office to get it out on paper and get it working say for example was in the contract admin

stage which means it's on site you know things are getting built depending on your role you know you'll be down on site and site meetings you'll be wandering around site with the builder or the client in that case you're responding to a lot of emails from the builder but then other times you know you're just hitting documentation hard other times you're doing really fun stuff like concept stuff which is awesome we're doing some ground floor studies today a bit of yellow tray can't go wrong i'm fortunate that i get to do a fair bit of

creative stuff they're the better times sometimes i'll spend three weeks in spreadsheets which it's also interesting um but not where my passion lies the design work involved in putting a building together is something i do a lot of early concept stuff and then actually what i really enjoy is that process of taking an idea and then making it massaging into something that works a lot of revert-based work design work design testing testing different different options different ideas distilling that down and you know talking to the team about what works what doesn't making decisions and moving

forward oh and thousands of emails yeah yeah yeah emails sifting through all that sort of thing yeah there's a lot of just managing processing information things that are coming in and out a lot less time spent drawing and designing than what i thought would be the case and particularly the further you progress in your career the less that stuff comes in and so you've got to grab the time when that is available to go and do that in a way being an architect is about managing people interacting with people convincing people about what you're doing

it's a really people-focused job whether the interaction is through email or through face-to-face or phone a lot of time spent doing that in order to get the ideas that you're cooking up over the line in the first place there's you know the ideas are a one bit of it and then there's how do you implement it convince navigate through that process of having to work with people which is kind of good in a way but sometimes you're sitting there going i mean it's a it's taking a long time to get this going but it's just

part of the process people are spending a lot of money and a lot of capital quite rightly they need to be convinced it's the right outcome for them and that just takes time and patience and being logical about things and working through stuff kitchens since i've been here paul gives me a lot of kitchens which i love because kitchens are my favorite but yeah a lot of conceptual stuff sketching first pen to paper jotting down all of the base measurements and everything like that usually it's already been put in revit by someone else so i'll

drop some 3d views in there and have a look around and see what you're looking at and what all the walls are and where they are and stuff like that and then put them in my little sketches and then build it very basically in rabbit first and if i get an okay somewhere from paul i'll actually build it as a cabinet instead of just extrusion so what are some of the more enjoyable things you get to work on [Music] you know the nice romantic one is is dealing with people that can be fantastic and it

can drive you nuts but i think nothing beats the ability to see something for those years and years and years of effort to see a product to have something that you can touch and experience and look at and see and other people touch and look at and experience and all of that is by far the most rewarding but then again that can be really depressing too because you think about it you know what a missed opportunity that was or if only we'd have done this or if only we'd have done that one of the best

things is having the influence over a space that a lot of people can you know enjoy or hopefully enjoy and i think too just bringing together the idea and the pragmatics and trying to mesh that together to make that work that's you know the day to day where i really kind of enjoy the profession so yeah i enjoy what i'm doing at the moment which is the site component managing the build and getting to the point where you can actually see the physical result of what you've spent so much time working on particularly if it

has been a job that you've been on from the get-go i do love the client aspect of things as well being able to either meet new clients talk with existing clients chatting with people in the industry funnily enough i enjoyed workshops and things that's the genesis of a lot of ideas is getting a group of people in a room with diverse thinking having those stories told and just picking the threads out of them and going okay there's something unique because there's a theme here and a theme here and you're really connecting dots and and bringing

things together and crystallizing them when they didn't see any obvious answers that's actually quite enjoyable because you get those up all right okay aha moment's where you can then get on and and do something that's really quite powerful [Music] the most rewarding thing is to see something be deconstructed on site i like to see the end user happy with the result you experience more often than not other people's worlds you're actually affecting their life whether it be recreational work or any other facet in their life through their built environment so and i i don't mean

that by you know influencing their built environment is that you get to understand what their profession is or what their life is and what their family situations are and what their world looks like for that you need to be very much a person who can step into their shoes even if it's just temporary step into their shoes and experience their life and we might be doing projects that you have to imagine imagine them you know in that boom environment you're creating so you get to experience most people's worlds and then with that you get to

understand people a lot more and a wider cross-section of the population a lot more and makes you a really well-rounded person to understand where where people's mindsets are and they're not in accordance with yours necessarily and they've got different agendas and different political persuasions and different commercial agendas etc i like seeing people enjoy space i'm always that annoying person whenever i go with my friends we go to eat somewhere or to a bar or something i go what a lovely bench top oh my god shut up i don't care i've managed to land a job

with a really really good group of people and everything that you do when you leave uni is pretty new probably one of the coolest experiences i've had so far is the completion of a project so i did quite a lot of work on the salisbury community hub and that's finally completed it's going through dlp at the moment it's really really cool to see something that you started out sketching and making these little foam models for actually built finished and people using it for its intended purpose [Music] i guess you can come up with a floor

plan be like okay this joinery cupboard will go here and the dining tables in that space and that kind of stuff but the materials is like the things that make it look nice i like getting materials in and then putting the two things that i thought would work together next to each other like oh okay maybe not like i'll put something else against it and like oh this looks really good together feeling the materials touching the materials this is for the kids safe project us to tell you about put some samples together for them some

carpets you go look at their logo and their very colorful and so we sort of like try and incorporate those colors into the design that's why we've got like a nice green carpet and a nice blue cup in here for like upstairs where the offices are going to be it's a little bit less out there whereas like downstairs where the kids will be and my clients will be coming in we've got some green carpet down there we've got some laminates for some shelving units and joinery uni units that we're doing we started looking at like

we're gonna use some oak bring some warmth into space start looking at some um pasta that's the word pastel colors it's often said that architects are jack of all trades and master of none probably masters of design in some ways but you've got you've got to have a hat for a lot of different roles it's never kind of dull i think that's the thing you're not ever sitting at a desk and knowing exactly what you're going to be doing it's going to be always changing like no two projects are the same so i think that's

what i find really invigorating and enjoying [Applause] wow yeah making a mess but trying to clean up trying to um create space for making um finishes palettes so pulling these sorts of things together you need to pick out um fabrics and carpets and floorballs and things like that but i don't know whether my sweet spot really is the beginnings of projects where we initiate workshops so we often we run workshops with clients ask lots of questions take lots of notes make them as interactive and collaborative as possible and fun create an environment that people feel

comfortable in sharing their thoughts and ideas insights into what their needs should be we have to curate that information into a format that means something to us but also means something something to them and enables us to take the next step to start to think about what a space might be you will learn an awful lot from going for a site meeting with a with a builder and an engineer and recognizing the complexity of all the interlocking systems within a building that you are supposedly supposed to be the master of all these things and uh

i think once you do it once you go into that process the first time you realize that there's outside of university there's still a lot to learn it's about stories and it's about journeys and it's about patterns of living which is something that's really exciting and interesting to me personally you get this feel to clients they'll say well look you know any house will work like you can make any house work but in reality what you'll find is that throughout your day you'll do dozens of different things some of them are really positive to your

life and your family and your relationships some of those kind of patterns are really negative and it's little things the tv is too loud when you're eating dinner or that the kitchen is too small for two people to cook at once or the bathroom doesn't have enough hawaiian so you constantly have them turn on and off lights they sound like really banal things but if you did spend 30 years of your life constantly turning on enough light or shouting at your kids for not doing it it disrupts harmony and it reduces the things that make

people good i mean that's just on that level i mean you can have the same thing with you know just the sustainability aspect of a house you know the fact that you don't have to feel so bad every time you turn a light switch off or that your heating is just generated by the solenoid that you don't constantly have to clean the dust because you constantly have to open windows if you're living in a passive house those aspects of lifestyle the fact that i can help create people's journeys and patterns of life through creating something

that's a little bit more tailored to them and listening to their story and interpreting that and taking that and putting it into a built form as best i can within descriptions of budget and style and all those things that go with that that's what i really love about what i do that's why i like doing it that stories aspect is about that communication it's about not only pushing information out it's about taking information in i like working with everybody here we're all sort of hand-picked to start together with the guys i really just enjoy my

day here and and working with everybody in the office it's it's an awesome team and we just gel which makes coming to work really good that's the best thing about architecture is that it varies from day to day and project to project as well so some projects you're working on something that's quite large and then if you go into something quite small it's quite freeing to be able to kind of work in different scales as well space and the ability to be able to occupy it and use stuff um that's nine meters so we need

ten meters so to be something yeah the the the 500ml to minus just working through that but chris when you said there's no uh handrails or australians what would happen that again it's like music if you don't finish it and you don't get it done so you can stand back or and listen to it or look at it or experience it and critique it you're never going to develop you don't really learn from your successes but you learn from your mistakes maybe you do maybe you learn you learn what works well but i think you

learn quicker by learning what not to do that kind of contributes to the constant learning of the of the job which is also another real benefit you you never stop learning in fact the more you do it i think the more you learn the more they realize you don't know yeah and you start learning of different things outside of architecture you start learning about psychology and people's personalities and their decision-making processes and and you start learning about politics and how decisions are made in government or how they're made in large corporations you start to understand

why people behave the way they do you just never stop learning and it's just it's just constant and it's really really rewarding because of that remember when i said that it's not all just sunshine and rainbows yeah it turns out there's also rain clouds storms and tornadoes things that are just part of it so what are some of the worst things about being an architect oh where do you start no no no no not at all the same things exactly the same things sometimes you have relationships with people that are fantastic sometimes you have relationships

with people that you just want to numb but that's the way it is you know that's the way it is [Music] i mean they're few and far between but they can be the difference between a really good project and a really bad project experience and similarly with your with your work you can do something that really works well it's really cool you love it and you're really happy with it and then you can have the flip side and that's really quite depressing at times you know when that happens and anyone that says that they've never

had that is lying [Music] [Applause] [Music] time frame is always never never particularly enjoyable but at the same time there's something about them you kind of get that buzz that you get when you're you know working like a crazy person so somehow they're weirdly enjoyable as well i guess when there are constraints with things like what i'm doing now i just put a really cool stair in and then of course you zoom out on platform when the hallway is this big so and not being able to just you know move everything back for it because

that's lots of money so it's probably just the amount of work that we get through and the amount of time that we have it's probably the by and large the biggest thing you're constantly having to be pushing which is yeah any jobs that i guess really in the end of the day the occasional long hours although it hasn't been too bad this year i feel like it's been a lot worse in in the past probably dates back to um i was in melbourne for five years working over there and i think you know the long

hours in that and this the time and stress involved with that i didn't love i mean just the volume of emails and stuff that comes through there's just a lot of stuff to get through every day which you know sometimes it's necessary a lot of the time is not necessary so um it's dealing with those sorts of things it's easy to get consumed in managing the volume of stuff and not taking the time to think about what needs to be done deadlines and the stress that comes with them um you know you try to monitor

it as much as you can but every now and then you will get caught out or you'll just have to put in some extra hours sometimes that can get pretty hard the pushes for deadlines and things like that where you've just had a really big week and and you know your mind's just constantly thinking of the things that you need to be doing so but then you know that passes and that's always a relief everybody as an architect has a utopian idea you know depending on all the different demographics uh socioeconomics and all of these

different aspects that come into to create a whole system of a city it can be quite frustrating if there are opposing arguments the other thing is that if you are producing and quite emotionally involved into a project as well and if things don't go through the way you want it to it can be quite frustrating architecture is undervalued for its skill set that's hard that's a hard bracket to push against in domestic architecture there's a lot of other competitors on the market that say that they do the same as what we do and so it

becomes a challenge to often you have to sell yourself which is not as easy for architects as it is for other professions sometimes high expectations from people which you know things outside of your control you just have to let go of those things sometimes i once had a you know a long list [Music] of why why why do why did i i why do i do architecture you know but i think over time that list um has really whittled down you know there's not very much that i don't enjoy about architecture because i think if

you go into any professional vocational job it's got its bad points and it's got its good points most of the things that i've said today about you know example long hours etc i think it's a mindset really doing those long hours um doesn't it doesn't mean it's a chore and you're actually savouring and enjoying doing what you're doing so as long as you enjoy what you're doing uh i don't think there's anything bad [Music] people can lament about fees and long hours and and devaluing and the profession not having the standing amongst other professions etc

but it's up to the individuals to to change that and if you have a really healthy attitude then those things shouldn't be an impediment to your career you know you should enjoy it and savor it and get the most out of it yeah the challenge is communication how do you communicate your ideas that is probably the biggest challenge because if you're able to communicate well then you're able to get a project to go through and go ahead so yeah typically outside of the studio you have to remain really impartial you can't be biased towards a

particular person you you just have to do your job to the best that you can i have to say i've been really lucky in terms of workplace and people i've worked with have been like superb both in small practice and being in big practice as well and i think that can be a challenge for a lot of people there's an inclination i think in architecture that you get so buried in a project that you just want to keep working on it sometimes and trying to balance that with your family and friends and everyone else as

well i don't have a vast knowledge of everything that's required for me so i spend time trying to work things out that someone that's had more experience would be able to easily doing two or three steps takes me you know five or six finding work that's huge but i've found something so starting from the bottom definitely because you know you're in your own little world for four years and you're doing everything the way you want to do it and you come out the end and you're working for someone else and they want to mould you

to the way that they like to do things in their firm so you've kind of got to pick things up very quickly and like paul say something and i go yeah absolutely and then i go shhh again on google i'm like oh my god what does that mean you don't have a lot of understanding about what running a business is about coming out of your degree [Music] actually one of the biggest frustrations is the the time that a project takes to materialize i think for me i've been i guess a bit unlucky over my ten

years at it that a lot of stuff i've worked on hasn't been built and so you know whilst i enjoy the design process sometimes it'd be nice to see something come out of the ground and back to the woodworking thing too you make something and it's done it's there it materializes in your hands and there's something really enjoyable about that immediate kind of gratification aligning client expectations with budget with time like all of that sort of thing can be challenging at times we've got an amazing client base but sometimes we just don't have the budgets

for what we want to try and achieve so you've got to go about it in a different way which i think in itself is quite interesting as well to see what we what we're capable of coming up with to suit whatever you know the client dream is but being realistic about what they can and can't afford [Music] closed-mindedness of people and focus on just money nothing beyond that probably takes the shine off of the profession within our walls it's quite stimulating and we're always thinking about getting the best design outcome but that's not how the

rest of the world necessarily looks at architecture and that's where the challenge is trying to understand why people don't see it that way it's one thing that i think clients sometimes really underestimate is the amount of time it takes to do things and i think we are getting better at saying well no actually um we need more time i think over the years i've definitely struggled with that in terms of unrealistic deadlines for sure i'm always trying to pack in a lot in every day and with my family i also want to give them a

lot of me as well you're building a legacy that's the biggest challenge you know is building that legacy and what you've done for that client or that community or that city because it's standing there i think there's a tremendous responsibility to make enduring pieces of work you don't always get the chance to do that doing enduring pieces of work is probably the paramount thing that your responsibility is to the public that's the biggest challenge [Music] zaha hadid once said if you want an easy life don't become an architect an architect won't have an easy life

but nothing easy is worth doing and nothing worth doing is going to be easy if these architects had the ability to turn back the clocks and talk to their younger first year architecture student selves here's the advice they would give them i wouldn't be too concerned about stylistically the influences of your lecturers i mean i really started enjoying architecture in third year when i broke away from that i see a lot of students do this architecture was an absolute you know so you in order to study architecture you had to do it like this so

it's like school you know in order to do maths you've got to learn this and you've got to do it like this you've got to do it this way because that's maths or physics or chemistry or any of those it's architecture is not a science design in architecture is very much an art as soon as you can find your thing in like in any art don't don't worry about what anyone else says if it contradicts what you believe in your heart or your gut is right then ignore them you've got to follow your own path

you've got to run to the beat of your own drum not someone else's don't copy someone else's work because at that point in time it happens to be in all the magazines if your tutor is saying it's saying to you think you should do it this way because that's what all the famous architects are doing at this time sure go and have a look at it but if it doesn't resonate with what you want to do then disregard it you know go and source something else go source other forms of inspiration or ideas i only

learnt that a bit later on in my education so you should see some of my first and second year work it's just how did you go from second year doing that to third year doing that it was two different two two completely different people yeah so it was just a way of thinking and having the confidence to be able to follow what i thought was was the way i wanted to to design and think not somebody else's way yeah does that make sense sorry that's a bit of a waffly waffle answer there'd be a few

other things too not like everything to the last minute um that's probably the biggest thing i was notoriously would just noodle around for weeks and weeks on end and then you know pull something out the last minute which is usually okay but just you have to work yourself in the ground to get it done that's probably part of it and i think an another thing i'd say is to look for more diverse opportunities through your studies as well as much as you can to really try and get the best out of that university experience you

can because there's so many opportunities that i didn't i didn't necessarily take up for whatever reason at the time construction trips or exchanges or anything like that i think it's really beneficial to broaden your experience and your scope of what you've done i think is um probably what i'd say but either that i'll go and do something else don't drink as much no yeah exactly don't have as much fun i think i would like to tell myself to be a bit more organized earlier like i'm very much a last-minute person and i've always been like

that and whether that would have been something i wanted to hear back then i don't know time management skills are something that you cannot understand underestimate the importance of them if i'd been more careful about getting things done and not wasting time and getting distracted by anything but university work and the same goes for now you know i'm very much one to just drag my heels until right at the last minute and then and then do an old pull and all nighter you know and i wish i was better at that it's great to see

stuff on a website or in a book or whatever you will only see the good bits of a building in that case i think there's a lot of stuff that we all as architects look at and go oh that's really cool and when you get there it's [ __ ] in terms of its contribution to a city and how it actually enables people to interact with it i think a lot of the work that we all revere as architects is actually pretty ordinary apart from that hero photograph even though i traveled a fair bit between

finishing university and coming back here to adelaide 20 years ago traveling more in that interim period since we came back to adelaide i think it would have been good to have done that a little bit more deliberately i would do some more placements so we had to do 120 hours before we graduate but that's been cancelled because of covid so you don't actually have to have any placement hours i'd already done but i would do more i would from like second year i would do in all the holidays go somewhere and just say can i

just hang around for a few days but i think that's the most important because it is quite different to what you're doing at uni especially early on everything's really different [Music] you know the career of an architect is a marathon it's not a sprint you're not going to get there in a short amount of time it's it takes a lot of effort and time and that expectation of changing the world for instance when i first started the interview [Music] that's not it you've got to have a enormous patience getting those hd's for studio although they

seem so important they aren't everything you go into practice and this obviously you know wanting to maintain or attain a high standard is awesome there's other important things apart from you know those super duper high locks that read more draw more pick up the pencil as quickly as you can in a process and draw something i didn't read enough probably my first year i really and then i got into it in my second year and i realized that that was what drove me forward yeah first year i found the process of design incredibly challenging um

because it wasn't a natural process to me don't be afraid to just go in there and get an idea and put it down on paper yeah it'll suck but it's at least outside of your head if someone asks me about what's the most important thing about what you do i think you need to be passionate about it and unfortunately i don't know if that passion comes immediately and maybe that passion has to be built over a period of time of learning i don't think architecture interior design is different to other professions where the facets of

learning are multiple and we have to go through our paces and then maybe hopefully you do get passionate i can say i'm passionate about my job and i really enjoy what i do and the people i work with and i feel really lucky for that when i first got out i think i would have taken more risks and maybe try to do my own thing or something well well you had heaps of energy less people relying on because i'm a dad of three kids i have a family at home so at the end of the

day i have to have a pretty stable job so i think when you first graduate that's your chance to just do what you're really passionate about and to not care so much about the salary side of it being able to be a bit more receptive and communicative of others in terms of how they're going as well you learn so much more of your peers than than you actually would recognize that's why i said before a good culture is important i don't think i ever would have quit anymore i don't think that's who i am when

thoughts like that pop up in your head may just like yes it sucks and yes it's frustrating but just keep going really like you'll get through it and everything i think everything works out the way it's supposed to in the end you know you enjoy it and there's things in the way of that enjoyment like that's a bit frustrating at that moment honestly keep going through it and you'll work through it and by the end of it you're like oh that wasn't too bad yeah because yeah i got to the end of my second year

i was like oh it sucked but i was like i got through it it's fine now i know how to use the program so i can design great things when i was at uni you used to do heaps of all-nighters works really hard to to understand everything and try to produce and work but necessarily not having the right amount of discipline what one thing i'd say is to have dedicated zones of working and just make sure you stick to it my four years at uni were you know every studio was last winter and it wasn't

just me it was all of us we were you know you'd spend hours you know how it is we spent hours on end at the last week just pulling together all this stuff and why didn't i listen to the tutors in the first week or two and actually try them instead of just getting distracted and finding other things to do being a bit more cognizant of doing things earlier rather than of this last minute rush i would have tried to do a bit more work experience while i was at uni i think i probably would

have tried to get a bit more experience across the board in terms of other practices i think go back to the work experience thing getting out in the profession earlier one of the biggest things that i've enjoyed about my career was going and getting experience outside of adelaide i love being back in adelaide i think it's such a great city to be part of but i just think experience overseas interstate wherever it's so it's so necessary you know and being able to learn from different companies i've had three or four different bosses over my time

just getting different perspectives and really i think that has helped to shape me as a designer i remember getting asked would have been like maybe my first or second interview for a job what what is my design aesthetic and i think at that point i really had no idea i don't think even think i fully understood what that meant you know so trying to answer something like that go back and you know my second year in the profession was impossible just having had that all-rounder experience from the myriad of different people i've worked with has

has helped to shape me as a designer you know life takes you in different roads etc and it's not going to be sequential either be prepared to deviate and do other things and come back to what you're doing it because that's what happens it's never linear it's never cascading always to the top it's always got its highs and lows you learn through the lows as much as the highest i don't lament having low points the low points are just as educational than the high points it's so important to know that you have a voice you

should always be included in those design conversations you have so much to add no matter what level of experience you have we've had some work experience students involved with design critiques and things like that and they've just added a completely different and awesome perspective it's really important to know that no matter what level of experience or skill set you you should always contribute and feel like you are a part of the team you see guys come out and they don't necessarily take ownership of whatever menial tasks you get given because let's face it when you

first hit an office you get menial tasks as soon as you can be relied on to do what you get asked well you'll get given something with more responsibility one of the great pieces of advice i heard was you know if you can get on a building site and do some building architecture is only good when it's built so figure out about building something and then you understand there's a lot more to a building than just you know making it pretty read and be receptive of everything and be like a sponge take everything with a

grain of salt so a lot of advice that you get with your projects i see people get very very stressed about it and very upset but take that advice you know and kind of and run with it but you know at the end of the day it is your design and it's come from you and it's your creativity so if it is change your floor plan don't cry change it watch it don't don't grow much like just a bit change it but you know they are trying to guide you they're not trying to as much

as it feels like they're trying to crush your soul yeah just trying to guide you yeah don't [ __ ] around just use the time at university to gather as and soak up as much information as you can because it's a really precious period it's really the only time that you're going to have through your whole life where you can indulge yourself in the purity of architecture without having to worry about structures and clients and budgets and politics and other people's opinion critics it's just you enjoy it immerse yourself in it because it's not going

to happen again and you're going to get more out of it if you do much much more there's no point in doing it if you're not going to do that don't be afraid to do a sketch just get out of the computer for a bit but learn how to draw learn how to sketch quickly it still is the quickest way to communicate you would have seen here we're trying to bring that back into the way we do things just having models out in that front desk people gather around and they talk and like you look

at it like it's such a more inspiring way of talking about architecture than just to spin around on a screen that's like i do some tutoring and it's my biggest frustration is that you sit down and i just spin around on the computer and i just i don't i want to see your sketches and your ideas because like sometimes it all gets lost when the computer can't model what you're thinking you have to be inspired a lot so whether that means you have your computer on revit and the other screen on pinterest and you're looking

at really cool things or it's on your phone or something because revit is black and white and it's 2d drawings so keep yourself inspired throughout the day is what i do the stress the frustration the late nights and sleep deprivation in the end is it all worth it i think that architecture is a good profession but i think you've got to be the right person it's a really personal thing you have to be the right type of person just because it's an eight or a nine for me it could be completely different for someone else

and it is you know some people get into it they and they they get frustrated about it you know they feel that they're they're not able or the compromises and the politics become too much and they end up doing something else and and good luck to them because at least they've they've worked out almost um almost by default what they want to do and it's not architecture oh it's pretty damn good the best thing about it is that if you know what you're getting yourself into know the time you know the worth and know the

outcome then it's actually quite rewarding nothing good comes out of anything easy so it inherently has to be hard work to be good i think i'm really enjoying where i'm at at the moment there's not many days that i get out of bed and go [ __ ] i've got to go to work today i really just enjoy my day i just love it i think it's very cool i enjoy architecture a lot i love architecture at the end of the process when something's complete and everyone goes all right okay i see what was going

on here there's not too many jobs that i think give you that level of satisfaction as well just watching people go oh cool this was hard yakka but it was worth actually doing it's a very fulfilling occupation particularly once a project's finished seeing the positive impact it can have on not only the people using the building but like broader communities it's such a tangible thing to see i enjoy meeting interesting people along the way what you get out of them and the learnings you get out of them it's just unsurpassed really it keeps you very

stimulated and because of that stimulation it's always exciting you know day by day and what you're doing you know you have your peaks and trucks you have bad days on good days but on the whole it's pretty exciting profession to be in i love properly working now with real people then they come in and we sit down and you see them and they say oh i love what you've done here and this will be great for so and so and having those relationships with real people and builders that come in people bring their little samples

of stone and you get to lay it all out it's just awesome working with the people that we're working with and working on the jobs that we've got the opportunity to work on and yeah there's not a lot of negatives there which which is good i'm really really happy here so i'd say 10 at the moment or i'll say 9 because i'd like to see i'd like some growth personally and i can see the opportunity for growth here that would probably move it up to 10 but i'm really happy [Music] i don't know if any

other job would be able to do what i did writer maybe you know you have to be an independent creative that i was able to travel with do work here in different places see different things and appreciate different things and get paid relatively okay for it i don't think anything in the world is going to be perfect i don't think you could put it out of 10. there's always room for improvement always in room for changing there's always those little frustrating things about the job as well that you know so it's definitely not perfect but

i don't think you want it to be perfect because then it wouldn't be challenging and then you wouldn't you wouldn't get that enjoyment out of it well there you have it ladies and gentlemen that's the life of an architect behind closed doors so should you become an architect well that's for you to decide [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i thought [Music] bread i'm just going around in circles um i've also got baby brain at the moment you can edit that one out [Applause] [Music] i'm gonna get more [Applause]

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] david hombergs i'm one of the directors here with chris mariano and myself yeah let's start that again yeah i'd say an eight or nine for me one day some days that's okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you