A final reflection – and a thank you

As a historian and practitioner, I believe that the most cogent way of visualizing the future is by looking at its reflection in the past. By surveying pertinent chapters of social and architectural history in this column over the last 12 months – and with something akin to an abridged serialization of J. M. Freeman’s classic record of our Institute’s inception and early development – I have consistently drawn attention to the potency of design in transforming lives.

This is my sixth and final foreword. I have been writing for a full year, despite the shortest presidential term on record – a mere 10 months, due to a COVID-delayed handover, which made me acutely aware that I would need to work doubly hard to achieve my term’s milestones.

Although COVID vastly disrupted our annual calendar, revered traditions persisted. I am writing the day after John Wardle’s magnificent 2020 Gold Medal Tour talk, delivered personally in Brisbane on 25 March, a week after he gave the 2020 A. S. Hook Memorial Address in Melbourne. Despite COVID, the 2021 Gold Medal was judged in person at the Institute’s ancestral home, Mugga Way in Canberra. Extraordinarily, the 2020 Gold Medal

Tour continues even as this issue, the

Gold Medal monograph edition, reveals the 2021 Gold Medallist, Don Watson.

Congratulations to Don, who shines as a man of genuine achievement, architectural intelligence, altruism and modesty. With his polymath’s appetite for involvement in every kind of architectural enterprise – often simultaneously – he has synthesized the entirety of professional considerations into one wonderfully synchronous, humanist endeavour. And he makes it all look so easy, with his great humour and humility, and occasional recourse to appropriately colourful language.

By publication, I will be handing over the chain of office to presidentelect Tony Giannone. I have worked closely with Tony over recent months and can attest to his thoughtfulness, passion and intellectual rigour, as well as his genuine concern for education and international engagement. I promise a more edifying transition than the recent handover between US presidents Trump and

Biden, though Tony’s inauguration ends the Institute’s first trilogy of female national presidents.

The privilege of serving a profession I love so dearly, as president of an institution that I value and respect so deeply, has been immense. I take pride in outcomes I have striven to achieve for members: renewed international engagement through the International Union of Architects

(UIA) and the Commonwealth Association of Architects (CAA); medallions honouring architecture in every state chapter; the reconvening of the National Heritage Committee, along with an upcoming education series; increased representation in civil honours; a national archive policy; national committee chairs afforded annual engagement with National Council; progress towards reintroducing the fee guide; regular presidential updates on National Council meeting highlights; our ninetieth anniversary celebrations, including the forthcoming symposia and social housing competition; and the launch of our new member networking platform, Community.

An important part of handing over the presidency is ensuring that work not completed within the usual 12-month term is continued and supported by the incoming president. It has been my honour to support initiatives instituted by my distinguished predecessors, including Clare Cousins’ “Hands Off Anzac Hall” campaign and Helen Lochhead’s Climate Action and Sustainability Taskforce (CAST).

I am also acutely cognisant that none of this would be possible without all of our hardworking members – especially those on national and chapter councils, taskforces, advisory panels and committees – or without the assistance of our CEO, Julia Cambage, and her executive team, and the entire staff across all of our chapters.

H. H. Asquith, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1908 to 1916, is remembered as the last British PM who never visited the United States. Emerging from my COVID-impacted presidency,

I fear a similar reputation: I have been largely confined to my hometown, with only fleeting visits to Canberra, Melbourne and Hobart. Yet I will always cherish the connections I have made with so many members through visitations, both personal and virtual, and the exceptional courtesy and kindness I received from professional colleagues. National Council led the way, tolerating – even, I fear, encouraging – my eccentric practice of opening meetings with apt quotations from celebrated architects or poetical tributes to architecture. That has to be the epitome of generosity.