Detail, connection and experience
John Wardle Architects not only uses and celebrates the skills of each of its individual team members, it collaborates with others – artists, farmers, performers, tradespeople – to create an inspirational and resilient community of practice, as Cameron Bruhn explains.
I first met John Wardle in the early 2000s when I visited his office soon after beginning my career in architectural publishing with Artichoke magazine.
John Wardle Architects (JWA) had recently moved into a smart new studio space in Bogle and Banfield Associates’ 1960s Total House, a CBD enclave for Melbourne’s architectural community. Here, John had commissioned artist Peter Kennedy to create And So … Illumination 1 (2003), a striking neon artwork framed by the silhouette of the building’s floating office block. This text-based work operated at the scale of the object and the billboard, collapsing the distinction between room and city. Over the past 20 years, the studio spaces of JWA have led double lives as exhibition and event venues.
My most recent visit to the office was to the Rokeby Street Studio, a converted brick warehouse in Collingwood that has been occupied by the practice since 2012, for an On Top of the World event in 2018. Created in partnership with artist and curator Stewart Russell from Spacecraft Studio (which shares a building with JWA), the On Top of the World program engages JWA with artists, thinkers and performers through regular talks that launch a commission to create a flag to raise atop the building. Speakers have included academic Tom Kvan, artists Natasha Johns-Messenger, Gareth Sansom and Brook Andrew, and curator and author Simon Maidment. At this particular flag raising, the intimate audience of staff members and invited guests – many perched on cute stools fashioned from upturned paint cans and neat orange or grey felt inserts – were treated to a glittering film screening and live show by high-camp performance art duo The Huxleys. This trajectory describes one arc in the life and work of the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2020 Gold Medallist and is a useful introduction to a reflection on the generous and resilient practice culture of JWA.
John hung out his shingle in the midst of the economic downturn of the mid-1980s after a stint working with Cocks and Carmichael, where his colleagues included lifelong friends Peter Maddison and Rob Stent. In the decade that followed, his firm established a formidable national reputation as a boutique residential architecture practice, building finely detailed and spatially rich houses in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and its coastal and rural purlieu. Balnarring Beach House (1997) stands out in this pre-2000 period for its innovation and ingenuity. The modest building gained immediate attention when it received the Australian Institute of Architects’ Harold Desbrowe-Annear Award for Residential Architecture and earnt the practice the first of two Victorian Architecture Medals, an accolade more often presented to a public building. Nestled in the coastal landscape of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, Balnarring Beach House is a hovering timber-clad wedge, with a plan and section that eschews Miesian regularity. The form is carved out to reveal an interior that is finely tuned to the experience of a relaxed weekend at the seaside.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, JWA was confidently (and somewhat auspiciously) evolving to become a bicameral enterprise that deftly combined work on houses with larger scale institutional, commercial and urban commissions. One springboard for this development was the opportunity created by RMIT in the late 1990s under the leadership of Leon van Schaik through commissions for innovative education buildings. These included the International Centre of Graphic Technology (2000, in association with Demaine Partnership) on the university’s Brunswick campus.
One of the first of the practice’s larger institutional projects, and the first
JWA building I experienced first-hand, was the Nigel Peck Centre for Learning and Leadership (2007), commissioned by Melbourne Grammar School following an international design competition (and, in 2008, the recipient of the practice’s second Victorian Architecture Medal).
It is a remarkable building that exemplifies John’s mastery of detail and narrative. On the school’s leafy South Yarra campus, the practice created a building that seamlessly synthesizes context and program, and skilfully balances mass and transparency. The plan, section and elevations are painstakingly worked to form a city-wall-like edge to Domain Road, to set up taut connections from the deep interior learning spaces to the verdant Botanic Gardens precinct, and to embed the building in and around the historic bluestone campus behind a garden rampart.
The conferral of the Gold Medal acknowledges the demonstrable
contribution that John’s built works have made to architecture in Australia. In concert, this accolade recognizes the development of the practice. This practice culture has flourished as the business has scaled up to almost 100 staff with seven principals and 14 shareholders across offices in Melbourne and Sydney, and this achievement is worthy of celebration. Reflections on the lives and work of previous Gold Medallists are useful in thinking about this. One significant thing that unpacks across the Gold Medal tributes and A. S. Hook addresses that have been published in Architecture Australia is the relationship between the individual and the collective, and between the achievements of the medallist(s) and the practice they lead (or have led). This is true for John, the modest but undoubtedly successful leader: we find equal success in the individual projects and in the longevity of the collective practice, placing him somewhere between (or alongside) Richard Leplastrier (1999) and John Morphett (2000). In Leplastrier’s A. S. Hook address, he suggested, “Architecture is symphonic in the way it works. It’s like a great symphony orchestra – you have all these levels which have to be brought together … in a great spirit that brings the best out of everybody.” Morphett’s Modernist approach, via Walter Gropius and the Bauhaus, is slightly different. He contended, “Whilst in some ways
I like [Leplastrier’s] metaphor, it implies the need for a conductor who interprets the meaning of the work and controls the output. I prefer the image of the string quartet or the jazz group with each player contributing and receiving inspiration to produce a collective work that is greater than the sum of its parts.” John Wardle’s approach to the practice of architecture adds another layer to this conversation. He is aware of the potency of leadership and the empowerment of the individual but has an additional focus. John is interested in creating a shared platform for both the conductor and the performers, while also introducing the skills of others – artists, farmers, potters, musicians and many others – to augment the ensemble. This approach is exemplified by the practice’s team masterclasses held at “Waterview,” John’s farm on Bruny Island, off the coast of Tasmania. Here, the team works together with local tradespeople to design and build small installations; these have included a bridge, a stile, a fire pit, a viewing platform, a pottery kiln and a community table.
I posit that the culture of JWA mirrors the way John looks at the world. During my tenure as editorial director of Architecture Media and custodian of Architecture Australia, John and I talked often, and we continue to do so. I like the somewhat quirky way he looks at the world. He is a great storyteller and our interactions are always energetic and rewarding, but are rarely about buildings per se. He is fascinated by moments of association and privileges this over connoisseurship. I have teased him mercilessly about the expansive collection of utterly un-collectable Bendigo pottery carafes proudly displayed on a shelf in the kitchen at Captain Kelly’s cottage (John’s house at “Waterview”). En masse, the status of these muddy brown vessels is elevated, and in this act of association, we gain an insight into the way John arranges his own world and the practice he leads. In conversation, he describes the aesthetic similarity of a pair of leather shoes he purchased in Japan 30 years ago and the more recent purchase of an early eighteenth-century porcupine vase, both pierced with circles; the discovery that the renowned Australian potter Milton Moon (a shared interest) and Jørn Utzon were friends, having met on holidays in the 1960s; and a dinner with a group of friends at “Waterview” that featured a violin performance by Richard Tognetti and Satu Vänskä on rare instruments.
The culture of the practice and, arguably, the conceptual underpinning of the buildings, follows this trilogy: detail, connection and experience. John’s optimistic view of the world is shaped by an avid curiosity and a dedication to the convergence of the material and the narrative. This endlessly engaging outlook has shaped John’s personal and professional trajectory, and his diverse and constantly developing community of practice.
— Cameron Bruhn is the dean and head of school at the School of Architecture, The University of Queensland. He is a writer, editor, curator and advocate for architecture, landscape architecture and interior design. He has been a peer juror, sessional teacher, exhibition curator and guest speaker in Australia and internationally.