Interview

“We’re really obsessed with Australian interiors, design and fashion,” says Sarah Gibson, co-founder of Australian furniture and design store Design By Them. The Canberra-based industrial furniture designer pauses, reflecting. “There’s something oddly patriotic about it, I guess.” Almost 20 years ago, she and friend Nicholas...

Architect Bronwyn Litera of Litera Design on being in the driver's seat of her own firm. Before Melbourne-born, Sydney-based architect Bronwyn Litera founded her eponymous architect firm Litera Design, she was busy working on and drafting for super yachts, travelling Australia in a Kombi van and working with leading architect...

Riley Wilson speaks to Australia and New Zealand’s leading architecture photographers on how to capture spaces, places and emotions. Picture it: the architectural drawings have transformed into walls and windows, the lock-up is complete, and the keys have been handed over. The design has become reality, marking – for most...

Super sleek and beautiful. Nick Tobias and the team at his architecture firm, Tobias Partners, are long-time collaborators with Vitrocsa Australia. Based in Paddington, New South Wales, the practice has been using the Vitrocsa system in projects for more than 10 years. Tobias describes the Vitrocsa system as “super sleek and beautiful,...

The beauty and awe-inspiring nature of the New Zealand landscape gives architects Lance and Nicola Herbst plenty to think about. The Auckland-based architects and co-founders of Herbst Architects have just completed Omata Beach House, a four-bedroom family beach house in a remote strip of coast four-and-a-half hours northeast of...

Architects Steve Koolloos and Mark Cashman, directors of MCK Architecture, first came across Vitrocsa shortly after it was released in Australia. Sydney-based Studio Internationale had used the Vitrocsa system and shortly after Koolloos and Cashman were hooked. “It was the simplicity and those enormous panes of glass, being...

That's the reason why I'm in architecture ... We get the ability to touch clients' lives. Between the angles and concrete curves of the Cliffhanger House in Redwood, near Toowoomba in Queensland, the light falls just so. Sunlight beams across the Great Dividing Range first, before bringing the dramatic home – built with...

Ian Bennett Design Studio isn’t your typical design practice. Rather than observing the traditional industry hierarchy that puts designers at the top of the architecture food chain, designer and founder Ian Bennett takes a more collaborative approach to projects, with tradespeople granted equal billing. “Builders and people in the...

The system Vitrocsa has invented is amazingly invisible. Bruce, as a successful, long-time practitioner, what has shaped your Sydney-based practice? BRUCE: A lot of influence I would trace back to when I had a practice in South Africa and my focus was resort hotel design. I did a hotel project called Singita Boulders Lodge. It hit the...

MORQ has a very unique design style. Where did your inspiration for Enclosed House II come from? A couple looking towards retirement came to us in search of a house that could provide a place of refuge to live and work peacefully and privately. A house for two, but also a place for many, to host friends and family gatherings. It was...

I love that architecture is endless. There’s too much to learn, so you never feel like you get to the end. What does architecture mean to you? In my life, it's the focus of everything – it's kind of a lifestyle, not just a job. It’s something that’s on my mind all the time. You can’t escape buildings and the questions...

Growing up, did you always want to become an architect? Art and design were my passions early on, so that's what I pursued mainly in my teenage years. Even way back in primary school, I remember taking opportunities to make things out of papier-mâché and presenting them in front of the class. I remember one of my aunts saying to...

One of several dotted on the substantial property – including Haxstead, a heritage-listed period home – this project sums up the great Mies van der Rohe’s approach of “less is more”. A simple palette glass, concrete and steel enables this low-slung coastal home, with gardens designed by Myles Baldwin, to sit quietly in the landscape....

Vitrocsa has established a name in the market for sophisticated fine-edged window and door frames, blurring the division between inside and out, a hallmark of many leading Australian architects. However, ten years ago, when Vitrocsa was first introduced to Australia, most had to simply put up with chunky-framed doors and windows.“When...

What does architecture mean to you? A misconception is that architecture is purely about building stuff. For me, it’s really about optimising the way people experience a place and engage with the world around them. It's about understanding the relationship between the built and the unbuilt so that one can create a more memorable,...

I'm not at all interested in any of the superfluous add-on ‘stuff’ ... I'm really just interested in what is essential, in a material sense. Vitrocsa Australia has delivered a high-end, minimalist window and door system to the local market since 2008 Launched by draftsman Michael Canturi alongside builders and brothers Chris...

“Our clients loved the site and they wanted something that went beyond just framing the views,” says architect and professor Gerard Reinmuth, principal and director at Terroir. The brief included working with a significant scribbly gum tree, necessitating the use of angular concrete walls. Constructed in concrete, with walls and...