PROFILE: TRAVIS WALTON
This award-winning Melbourne architect combines warm simplicity with the aesthetics of science
TRY GOOGLING ‘ TRAVIS WALTON’ and the search engine optimises the story of an American logger allegedly taken by a UFO in the 1970s. “Yes, I know,” says the Melbourne architect of the same name. “Our worlds are light-years apart.” And yet the 30-something practitioner has done the analogous disappearance into spacecraft, albeit one that orbits the world of luxury. Travis succumbed to its gravitational pull early in his practice, exploring the outer reaches of the prestige residence in Jack Merlo’s landscaping business before landing at David Hicks Design, where for six years he documented its inner surface and shape. The spacecraft primed the young architect for his solo launch in 2010, when at 28 he started pitching for projects that assumed mature insights into the modern marketplace. His prescient grasp of a world that wanted abstinence dished with indulgence was worked into the retail likes of Laneway Greens (a restaurant-quality health food takeaway shortlisted in the 2015 Eat Drink Design Awards) and Greene Street Juice Co (winner of the ‘International Store of the Year’ in the 2015 Retail Week Interiors Awards). Both Melbourne-based projects countered a world of ››
« complex extremes with a warm simplicity and the aesthetics of science. Walton works hard to distil the paradoxes of popular culture in conceptualised retail. He is of the conviction that you are only as good as your last project. Accordingly, he won’t rest on his laurels, but Walton will hang his hat on “the brand”, flowing all the firm’s concepts from its essence and communication. “Even if it’s just one person wanting a new family home,” he says, “that family will have a brand — a set of behaviours, a collective personality that we try to bring out in the detail.” Walton’s portfolio attests to this claim — projects nailing identity with either a wildly simple or simply wild idea. “Typically those wanting a house have experienced one of our hospitality fit-outs,” he says, referencing Pretty Please, a bar he designed that simulates a pumped-up rainforest. “For them, home is all about entertainment — they want to turn up the volume, have fun, throw out the rule book and possibly swing from Hollywood Regency to Victoriana across a series of rooms.” Working to define their personality within the parameters of budget and brand — both his and his clients’ — Walton won’t discuss values, but does table visions. He presents images of his recent refurbishment of the executive level of the Melbourne offices of French-based beauty conglomerate L’Oréal. These pictures embed the incongruities of the modern beauty business: consumers don’t want to be judged by their looks but forever seek to improve them. Walton has materially mediated the dual desire for stripped-back naturalism and high-gloss glamour by abstracting the bling of a jewelled make-up compact. Strips of gold mirror encircle a reception desk that glowingly reflects its activity under a ceiling of exposed services (pipework suggestive of Centre Pompidou in Paris). This office space and its adjunct amenity microcosms Melbourne — the park-edged city and its bistro-filled laneways abbreviated into a vertical garden bordering dynamic social hubs and a bustling cafe. It’s a hyper-local expression of enterprise in a design language that is not alien to others, which brings us back to the two Travis Waltons and their connection across place and time. Both claim a space that supports intelligent life, but only one can evidence it.