Established in 1851,
JPE Design Studio is Australia’s oldest architectural practice and is
responsible for many of Adelaide’s landmarks including the original buildings
of the Adelaide Railway Station, Adelaide Oval Members’ Stand and Prince Alfred
College, to name a few.
More contemporary JPE projects
include Pridham Hall for UniSA in Hindley Street, the adaptive reuse of the
Mayfair Hotel and Lot 14 innovation hub at the former Royal Adelaide Hospital
site.
Architect Adrian Evans, who has led JPE since 2002, is confident about the new generation of directors guiding the multidisciplinary practice into the future. Director Josephine Evans says the 168-year-old firm has survived and flourished due to its ability to continually “explore and challenge the status quo”.
JPE Design Studio directors Tom Vinall, Simon Dodd, Josephine Evans and Matthew Thomas “I feel like we’re still
emerging, and I think we’ve been emerging since 1851,” she says.
“A baton, a way of thinking, has
been handed on from generation to generation and we’ve always been able to
adapt and respond to change.
“We’re a little bit experimental,
and a little bit ahead of the norm with that attitude. It’s our professional
role to be innovating all the time and that’s probably why we’re still around.”
Evans describes JPE as “really
ingrained” in the state’s history but says the team also wants to further
develop its global mindset.
JPE brought award-winning
Norwegian firm Snøhetta here to work on UniSA’s Pridham Hall building and also
collaborated with progressive Danish outfit Bjarke Ingles Group (BIG) on its
art gallery design for the Adelaide Contemporary International Design Competition.
Evans says she was inspired by
observing how the international firms constantly experiment within their own
studios.
University of South Australia’s Pridham Hall “They employ researchers,
scientists and thinkers as part of the architectural service, and we relate to
that because we can see it’s the future,” she says.
“For JPE, our future plans
include expanding our disciplines, really starting to test the kind of creative
mindset in terms of what we can offer clients.
“For example, if we have a
scientist in the room who specialises in the creative brain, we could explore
ideas about workplace design and how to get the best out of staff by creating
spaces that encourage thinking in an innovative way.”
She says this collaborative
mindset is the key to smart design. Creative thinking “is not a risk, it’s
actually essential”.
“Great design is hard. It does
take people around the table who trust in the process, and trust that, to
really innovate, we often have to do something for the first time.”
Another company that has its
origins in Adelaide is global architecture firm Woods Bagot, which celebrated
its 150th anniversary in August with an event staged at the site of its first
project, St Peter’s Cathedral in North Adelaide. A more recent example of its
design work is the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute
(SAHMRI) building on North Terrace, one of many in a portfolio of projects
around the world.
St Peter’s Cathedral: Woods Bagot’s legacy includes some of Adelaide’s most historic buildings Woods Bagot’s chief executive,
Nik Karalis, is leading the company into its next era of creative practice and
attributes the firm’s longevity to an enduring interest in moving the purpose
of architecture forward.
“What makes us different is that
we’re not afraid of change,” Karalis said.
“We maintain a rigorous curiosity
about advances in construction processes and the building industry, emerging
technology and always, always, how people actually use space, not how we think
they use space.”
Karalis says Woods Bagot has invested heavily in its own research and technology agency, SuperSpace, which uses digital design software to achieve better, more innovative and human-centric environments. The agency uses state-of-the-art digital analysis and big data to create an “emotional dimension” of how people respond to space, volume, light and darkness.
“Changing social economics and
the profoundly different values of millennials require a reconstruction (of)
how designers regard the built environment. I want to nudge audiences to think
about this a little more carefully,” he says.
SAHMRI Building Karalis heads Woods Bagot’s
operations, which includes 15 studios in Australia, Asia, Europe, the Middle
East and North America. Its global studio model means it can work
collaboratively across time zones and borders with the help of the latest
technology.
Evans also acknowledges that
technology makes it possible for JPE to collaborate with architectural studios
in different time zones – and has inspired thoughts about working beyond SA.
“Adelaide will always be our
headquarters but the work we love, and opportunities through meeting people
with similar attitudes to us, is something we want to explore,” she says.
“It’s probably just a matter of
time [before] we broaden out of Adelaide.”
As their peers at Woods Bagot have shown, it’s possible to do so without forgetting where you came from.
jpe.com.au woodsbagot.com
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