Australia’s Rising Architects Make Their Mark

Sydney’s architectural scene can be summed up as cutting edge, creative and diverse.

As part of our special five-part global architectural series we preview three dynamic practices, whose founders are making waves globally due to their respective styles and dedication to their craft.

_{Photo: Chenchow Little / Peter Bennetts}

Stephanie Little, Chenchow Little

Known for high-quality design and attention to detail, Chenchow Little has been providing architectural services since 1994, when fellow University of New South Wales students Tony Chenchow and Stephanie Little graduated.

Ms. Little said the practice doesn’t have a specific “house style,” instead taking a consistent approach that is then applied to each client’s particular site and brief.

“We work across many scales and locations and each of these requires a unique solution,” she said.

“We like to tease out the character of both the place and the client, and express this in the building. For us, a house on the beach for a gardening enthusiast, or a dwelling in the inner city for an art collector will result in very different outcomes. We take the process of creating our buildings quite seriously, but the end result is quite light and playful.”

Central to the practice is a passion and enthusiasm for design excellence. This also means embracing diversity and identifying what is unique to a place or brief.

“Diversity extends to the people we employ and the projects we take on,” she said.

“We also place a great emphasis on the technical aspects of a project. A great building comes out of a thorough understanding of construction and how a building is put together,” she added.

Chenchow Little’s breakthrough year was 2008, when their coastal project on Sydney’s northern beaches, Freshwater House, won the coveted Institute of Architects National Robin Boyd award.

_{Photo: Chenchow Little}

“At the time a lot of architects were doing white minimalist houses, but we were concerned that on this particular site you would need to wear sunglasses inside given the glare off the water,” Ms. Little said.

“So, we added a black ceiling, which absorbed the glare and fine battened shutters around the house to provide the interiors with a beautiful diffuse light,” she said.

Recent winners of a City of Sydney Design Excellence competition, Chenchow Little is working on a large affordable housing project, utilizing the lessons they’ve learnt from designing high-end houses.

“The design focuses on traffic noise attenuation, a short construction time frame, and the site’s industrial past to create a unique outcome, which we hope will improve the quality of life of the inhabitants,” she said.

“We have incorporated a beautiful new public park in the middle of the site to encourage social interaction between residents and give the building a dignified frontage to the street. The client was seeking a design which didn’t look like affordable housing, so they are really happy with the result. No matter the building type we love to work on projects that positively impact people’s lives.”

Simon Anderson

_{Photo: Anderson Architecture / Nick Bowers}

A year spent living in Stockholm inspired Simon Anderson’s commitment to sustainability and how low-impact principals can be incorporated into modern residential homes.

“We think of ourselves as providing ‘contemporary sustainable design,’ or in other words homes that look and feel like cutting edge design, but have sustainable principals at their core, designed in seamlessly,” Mr. Anderson said.

Having established his firm, Anderson Architecture, in 2002, Mr. Anderson said the sustainable principles relate to carbon footprint and material selection, extending to the landscape the building is inserted into.

“Thermally stable design is a core value, when temperatures outside are too high or too low, the home moderates these, meaning the homes are really comfortable to live in and don’t need vast amounts of energy to regulate the temperature,” he said.

“Our design approach is born through a balance between science and art, to use the scientific feedback we gain using in-depth computer thermal modeling, that’s then balanced by the artistic desire for beauty,” he said.

Closely aligned with passivhaus, also known as passive house principles, Mr. Anderson and his team promote these to clients and allow them to decide how far they want to take the features.

“From a design perspective, tactile natural materials are important to us, there is an emphasis on the use of locally grown hardwood timber for instance, to give the rooms a warmth,” he said.

“Indoor air quality is also important to us, whether it be low VOC [volatile organic compounds] materials and finishes through to ventilation systems, [which] provide fresh air and keep warm or cool air in the home while venting stale air from kitchen and bathrooms using an HRV [heat recovery ventilation] unit.”

It could be a double-height space, a void or a strategically placed, window-framed view that adds that sense of calm or spark of joy, Mr. Anderson said. “But these design ideas are hard to describe how they come about, except for saying many years of experience informs small decisions during the design process.”

Waverley House, a new residential property in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, has become a legacy design for the studio, after the clients placed full trust in the architectural team, which allowed them the freedom to push the boundaries of what contemporary sustainable design could look like.

“This was the first house with a ‘brain’ that could think for itself,” Mr. Anderson said.

“When temperature sensors inside the house thought a room was overheating, the brain could open windows if the weather sensor outside said that was a good idea. The home was also a great example of passive solar design,” Mr. Anderson explained. “The large living space is designed to gain winter sun over the top of the double-story home to the north and allow well-insulated thermal mass inside the house to heat up, and radiate heat during the night.”

_{Photo: Tom Ferguson}

Toby Breakspear, Breakspear Architects

Breakspear Architects director Toby Breakspear runs a busy, ideas-driven practice, working across architecture, interiors, landscape, urban design and masterplanning.

Breakspear’s projects explore the “reciprocal relationships that emerge when architectural fundamentals are attuned to the surroundings in a rich ecology of life.”

Focused on closing the gap between architecture and nature in both residential and commercial contexts, Mr. Breakspear is most interested in emphasizing Australia’s iconic “bush” heritage within the confines of an increasingly urbanized and scale-driven society.

“In Australia we often romanticise the image of a rugged, outdoors society in tune with our spectacular landscapes,” he said.

“Exquisite lone pavilions in picturesque locations are our most celebrated form of architecture. These iconic projects propagate the myth of ‘the bush’ as the soul of Australian architecture,” he said. “The reality is that 90% of our population live in cities and historically not a great deal of thought has been given to applying this notion of ‘bush’ to our highly urbanized society.”

Compelled by architecture that is sustainable, the first two projects by Breakspear Architects, Courted House and OneA, both in Sydney’s inner west, are examples of this design approach.

Although different in scale, one is a single house and the other a large apartment complex, both projects use a courtyard version of “landscape” to offer a sense of calm within the gritty urban surroundings.

Courted House condenses and urbanizes the classic Australian wrap-around veranda by inverting the model, with a courtyard providing a sense of ‘bush’ positioned at its center.

The concept is explored again on a larger scale within the award-winning OneA apartment building where 175 dwellings are arranged around a lush communal garden allowing architecture and landscape to entwine.

“Around the central garden are outdoor lobbies, open breezeway corridors, voids to the sky, reflecting ponds and raw surface finishes that bring residents together in the constant presence of nature,” Mr. Breakspear said of the project, which picked up a City of Sydney Design Excellence Award in 2015.

“The apartment planning allows for outdoor dwelling along the building’s leafy edges. By overlapping architecture, interiors and gardens, a sense of neighbourliness is encouraged that is transforming the daily patterns of high-density living,” he said.

Mr. Breakspear has also designed the new Echo Point Visitor Information Centre, in Sydney’s Blue Mountains. Not yet constructed, the slimline structure follows the curvature of the landscape and acts as both a reference point for the region and a gateway between the visitor and ecological experience.

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt is selling his Northern California estate, which was listed Monday for $24.5 million.

Located in Atherton, an extremely affluent town northwest of Palo Alto and about 30 miles south of San Francisco, the 3.36-acre property is made up of three parcels that Schmidt acquired over the years, according to public records and Compass, who has the listing.

Schmidt, 69, and his wife, businesswoman Wendy Schmidt, purchased the main home in 1990 for $2 million, according to public records accessed via PropertyShark. They remodelled the 1969 home in 2007, and at that time, bought a neighbouring parcel of land, allowing an expansion of the main house and the addition of a guest house, according to Compass, who holds the listing. A third parcel was later acquired, on which the Schmidts added an English garden house and landscaped grounds overlooking the Eastern Hills.

“Finding three contiguous parcels in Atherton is rare. Even rarer are those with views of the Eastern hills,” said listing agent Katharine Carroll of the reSolve Group at Compass. “The location of this residence is ultra private, at the back of a cul-de-sac with the main house built into a hillside that provides privacy and very good security.”

Across the estate, there are five bedrooms, five full bathrooms and six half bathrooms.

The 5,265-square-foot main house also offers a number of private outdoor spaces on its upper level, including a large terrace off the primary suite, another large terrace off a secondary bedroom, plus a third smaller terrace and two balconies.

Behind the main house is a patio with a pool and spa. For even more outdoor space, there’s an entertaining pavilion, an open lawn and an outdoor fireplace area near the guest quarters.

The grounds themselves are also a standout feature, with an array of mature plants and specimen trees. The upper portion of the property’s landscaping is designed around an Amdega-designed conservatory, which was imported from the U.K. Around the greenhouse, there is a garden of raised beds and fruit trees, Carroll said.

“From the moment you step onto the grounds, it feels as if you’ve been transported to a private botanical sanctuary,” she said.

Schmidt served as Google’s CEO from 2001 to 2011, and then became the company’s executive chairman until 2015. He could not be reached for comment.

This article first appeared on Mansion Global

Australia’s Rising Architects Make Their Mark

Stephanie Little, Simon Anderson and Toby Breakspear set the bar for creativity.

Stephanie Little, Chenchow Little

Simon Anderson

Toby Breakspear, Breakspear Architects