Alex is the Managing Director of the Practice and graduated from the University of Sydney with distinction in 1990 receiving the Sir John Sulman Prize for Architectural Design. Alex has contributed to the design of many significant public and educational projects over 25 years. In addition to management tasks, Alex is Project Director on a wide range of Commercial, Educational and Public projects and contributes to design and management review of all projects in the practice.
For me, Architecture is an enduring art which brings with it a responsibility for honesty and integrity. It should be based on fundamental ideas of space, representation and construction.
This is a philosophy that draws from the discipline itself and responds to the real demands of the practicing architect. It is not necessarily pragmatic, for there is often a need to include the poetic and spiritual within our work. At its heart it has a belief in the transformative power of architecture and its ability to change our surroundings in a positive and responsible manner.
The idea of the public project underpins much of my work and I see this as an important role for an architect – places for learning, discourse and meeting, buildings that bring people together and transform their perception of the world.
Any successful project must have ideas that respond to need, vision and function. It is the architect’s role to understand and synthesise these often competing demands into a new expression. Ultimately it is the ability to transform these demands from abstract concepts into a physical entity that lies at the heart of the architect’s responsibility.
