About
I think of a house like a portrait.
Not a likeness of how you look, but a revealing of how you live. So every project begins with a single question: how do you want to live? The answer emerges as the conversation unfolds.
I love the entire process of making buildings, from the first sketch to the final brick. I believe in remaining fully engaged across the whole architectural process: listening to my clients, attentively considering the story they want to tell, then answering it with a vision of my own, designing, detailing and overseeing the construction myself.
I grew up in Durban, South Africa, studied architecture at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and began my career at SAOTA in Cape Town. A whirlwind romance brought me to a whole new life in Sydney, where for some years (and two children later) I stepped away from architecture to explore other creative interests. But life has a way of bringing you back to where you once began. I found my way back to architecture freer, far clearer about what I believe, and genuinely excited to be shaping the places we live in.
Today I make architecture with one clear directive: that it be sustainable in every sense. In beauty: what I design should still be loved and useful long into the future. In budget: a home should be a joy to run and not a burden to its owners. In environmental responsibility: reducing our gestures, responding to climate and land, and building something durable enough that it does not need to be torn down and begun again. And beneath all this, I have a conviction that architecture is about people; those who live within it, and those who live around it.
I think the architect's real job is to bridge the divide between the seen and the unseen. The unseen: your desires, your dreams, the idea of a life. The seen: budget, regulation, structure, site. I see my work as weaving these competing threads into something both useful and beautiful; something that responds to the people, to the place, to the rhythm of an ordinary day. It's like when light enters a room and makes you stop for a moment, and a space simply feels like it belongs. This is the magic of architecture!
A creative life
All creativity comes from somewhere. It emerges from a life lived, felt and experienced. When I'm not making architecture, I spend as much time as I can in the places that creatively refresh me. Over the years, these have become the things that shape who I am, and what I create.
