How would you describe your style?

I’d describe my building style as responsive to the site and the client. Ultimately I refer to classical ideas of living and like to reinterpret them with a contemporary twist.

What are the essential elements in your homes?

An excellent floor plan is always a solid start. It provides a lovely flow and connection between the spaces. The next thing I quite often think about is volume and vertical space. Architecture is a funny thing; creating a sense of discovery and wonder in your buildings is a privilege, and I like to start that vertically.

Are these your main go-to elements when designing a home ?

I also like to think through how the primary elements sun, heat, water, cooling, rocks and earth will interact with one another. At the moment, I love water; it brings life and movement to a building but can also be like a devastating disease. So I enjoy finding the synergy each building must have with the elements.

What do you include in homes that you weren't ten years ago?

It's interesting how much changes and how much stays the same. I’ve recently noticed in the conversations with clients there is a desire to create a space or an area for meditation, a quiet personal place to retreat and recharge. 

What is the first thing you do when designing a new home?

I checked the site dimensions, topography and direction of north.

What is the second thing you do when designing a new home?

I imagine where the most miniature building would best go on the site. Then I like to consider where a billabong could naturally evolve if there isn't one already. This gets me in touch with the contours of the land.

What is your favourite period or era of architecture?

I don't think I could choose just one. I appreciate all typologies and am just a lover of beautiful spaces and places no matter who or when they were created?

Do you have a favourite architect?

Again it is hard to choose just one. I love Gaudi and what he was able to do and conceive before computers is justincredible. Contrast that with the work of Mies a few decades later. I'd love to be in a room with those two talking about how people live. Then there is Frank Lloyd Wright who also began designing hundreds of houses, Gehry, Liebskind, Murcett, Wardle, so many outstanding architects.

Can you remember your favourite building?

100% Palau Guell in Barcelona. 

Having completed my studies in my early twenties i was full of ideas and confidence. I remember being in Barcelona and walking through the Palais in complete awe. Here I realised that pursuing architecture to this level would be the pursuit I got a lifetime. With all its beautiful drawings, billions of photos, 3-D models that you can experience virtually nothing can compare to physically feeling the space of Palau Guell. For me, there was architecture before this moment and then architecture after this moment. 

What is your least favourite building?

There's a phrase about putting lipstick on a pig. This is my main objection to so many modern buildings today. We build the cheapest, most basic box dressed up in a futile effort to disguise the fact that it is that the sum of its parts with no consideration to where it is or what it is doing.

Is there anything you would never do in one of your designs?

Put carpet in a bathroom.

What's one of the questions you always ask your clients?

Do you wear your shoes through the house and take them off at the door?

What's your favourite room to design in a house?

The entry. It is the way you start your journey; sometimes it's a big grand gesture, sometimes it's a surprise, and sometimes it's understated to contrast against an experience that is about to come.

What's your favourite thing you like to do at your home?

I like to sit outside under a bit of shelter and look out at the world going by.