Talking Architecture & Design

Joel Williamson is the National Sales Manager of GH Commercial and Josh Haddock is the Managing Director of Dreamtime Flooring. Together they have embarked on a journey that has seen them create a partnership between the two companies that is designed to help indigenous artists expand their reach into the world of commercial flooring and providing a whole new inventory of flooring designs, while also go some way to helping Close the Gap for Indigenous Australians. They give us an insight into how they've achieved this and where it's taking both companies in this exclusive interview. This podcast is brought to you in association with GH Commercial proud sponsors of our 2024 Commercial series of podcasts.

Laura Connarty-Duncan is the Operations Manager at the Hire and Rental Industry Association (HRIA), the official industry association for hire and rental companies in Australia. Her aim is to increase the female participation in the hire & rental sector. She explains how and why this needs to happen.

Rebecca Plumstead, dwp sector leader for seniors living, has 25 years of extensive design and project management experience gained across diverse project types. She has a deep understanding of the profound contribution that built form makes to our environment, particularly regarding seniors living, residential, education and community buildings. In this podcast, our 200th episode, Rebecca explains what it takes to designing modern aged care facilities, and what is the future of aged care and how this will impact both the design and wider communities. This Podcast was brought to you by Siniat, proud sponsors of our 2024 Aged & Healthcare series.

Katie Rigg-Smith is the Chief Strategy Officer for WPP in Australia and New Zealand. WPP uses the power of creativity to build better futures for people, planet, clients and communities. Katie is a keen student of human behaviour and a futurist. Katie delivers strategic expertise across WPP’s network of agencies in service of their clients. This includes an emphasis on how cultural, social, economic, and geographic trends influence behaviour, and in turn, how these behaviours will shape the future of marketing. She spoke with TAD exclusively in Hobart recently.

Royce Epstein is a seasoned professional with three decades of experience in commercial interior design and architecture, spanning a diverse range of roles, including interior designer, product designer and developer, and university lecturer and educator. Her passion lies in understanding the intricacies of materials: how they're made; how they're used; and most importantly, their impact on the planet. She has created a series of Continuing Education Units (CEUs) to share her lifelong learning of materials with the commercial architecture and design community. She recently spoke to us from chilly Philadelphia in the US about the latest trends in urban design and how they are being influenced by what she calls, the ‘Culture of Care’ in design. This podcast is brought to you in association with GH Commercial proud sponsors of our 2024 Commercial series of podcasts.

After a turbulent year which included fears around the company's future, Metricon’s new CEO Brad Duggan says the outlook is bright for Australia’s biggest home builder. He shares some of the key ingredients on how to inject some sanity back into Australia's troubled, yet vital housing sector.

Nazli Almasirad, National Architectural Manager at Siniat Australia has been with the business since 2010 and leads the company's architectural strategy nationwide with a keen eye for emerging trends and a deep understanding of market dynamics. Nazli is committed to sustainable practices, strategic product development and forward-thinking innovation to foster better ways of living in the construction industry. Patrick Jeannerat, Head of Carbon and Circularity with the consulting firm Perspektiv Australia, a small bunch of sustainability experts dedicating their work to finding a better way. As an engineer and leader of a small team of specialists, Patrick is on a mission to accelerate net positive and regenerative outcomes for organisations. Together, they explain how acoustics matter in aged care design and how choosing the right materials helps not only manage acoustics, but also sustainability and resilience outcomes as well. This Podcast was brought to you by Siniat, sponsors of our Aged & Healthcare series.

Designed by Wardle and engineered by Aurecon, the $650 million Australian Institute for Infectious Disease (AIID) project in Melbourne has a majority women-led team, with six out of seven members being women, including the three most senior roles. With International Women’s Day (IWD) coming up, we speak with AIID Executive Director, Rowan Maclean to offer Architecture & Design about the work her team is doing to use the economic influence of the project’s development to influence gender diversity.

SFA Australia and New Zealand are subsidiaries of the SFA group which is based in France. For more than 65 years, the companies of the SFA Group have been working to provide professional and private individuals with ever greater sanitary comfort in their daily lives. They offer them much more than technological know-how; they offer inventive, reliable, and easy-to-implement solutions. Nick Moore, National Business Development Manager for SFA Australia and Gregory Waters, Technical Manager for SFA Australia and New Zealand discuss the Saniflo range of solutions and delve into the evolving relationship between plumbing and architecture and how plumbing influences design. This podcast was brought to you by Saniflo.

The second part of our 2-part series with Tone Wheeler over why our cities and housing are breeding inequality. An in-depth discussion of why the extremely low density city of suburbia with single houses is no longer fit for purpose: not in any of the three measures of sustainability - they are not socially desirable, not environmentally safe and financially ruinous making us a most unequal society. This fascinating discussion covers the reason why housing, schools and education, workplaces and recreation all leading to inequality.

In this episode, we talk with Moddex Sales Director, Joe Rowland about using steel in the non-residential and civil/ infrastructure sectors. Rowland explains the sustainability and economic benefits with using Moddex no-weld, hot dip galvanized barrier systems in civil and urban infrastructure projects. This podcast is brought to you in association with Moddex, proud sponsors of our 2024 Sustainability series of podcasts.

Part 1 of our two-part talk with architect, author, educator and consultant Tone Wheeler who has an abiding interest in environmentally sustainable design (ESD). Tone is also a past chair of the AIA national environment committee & a past member of the sustainability committee. He has taught extensively over the past 30 years, he has been on the faculty of 3 universities, is a sustainability advocate and frequent speaker at architectural conferences and seminars. he has been a judge on ABC TV ‘the new inventors’. In this recently-recorded interview, he discusses how every step in an architect’s work is broken: from the university education, to finding honest clients who understand the architectural process and value, to Councils and their ridiculous requirements, to consultants, to builders, the building commissioner, certifiers, and the whole box and dice.

As joint winners of the the Lifetime achievement awards at this year’s Sustainability Awards, Dick Clarke, founder of Envirotecture and David Baggs CEO, Technical Director & Co-founder of Global Greentag have both provided leadership within the profession and industry for over 40 years by engaging during most of this time in sustainability educational, advocacy and facilitation of professional outcomes and design excellence. In this exclusive interview, they talk about whether how we do business is becoming harder or easier in terms of environmental accountability, what would do differently in terms of their roles and why, what would you like to see happen in terms of our carbon emissions moving forward and how do they think we could achieve this?

We speak with Padraig (Paddy) Healy, sustainability engineer and Director at Credwell Energy. Healy covers all ESD Certifications and provides Energy Modelling, Daylight Modelling, WSUD, Vapour Management (condensation), Embodied Carbon Modelling, Greenstar certification and more. This podcast is brought to you in association with AWS, proud sponsors of our 2024 Residential series of podcasts.

Jean Graham is an architect, Founding Director of Winter Architecture, a collaborative architecture practice located in Fitzroy and Torquay in Victoria that has won quite a few awards in its relatively short existence. Jean is also the winner of the Emerging Architect of the Year at the 2018 Sustainability Awards. In this Shortcast, she talks about how designing for longevity is both cost-effective as well as being sustainable.

This Shortcast is with the current Mayor of Wollondilly Shire Council, the honourable Matt Gould. Located on the outskirts of greater Sydney, the south-west LGA is currently the subject of immense development, namely at the greenfields developments at Wilton and Appin. Here, Gould discusses the opening of Worklife Picton, a new co-working space in the Shire's heart, the current housing crisis and the need for infrastructure for the developments within his local area. Interview by Jarrod Reedie.

Judy-Lea Engel is a textile scientist and Product Developer for floor and carpet specialists at GH Commercial. She cuts through the jargon and explains the importance of good flooring design in both the general commercial and more specifically, the education sectors, and what are the key principles when designing flooring for student and teacher success. This podcast is brought to you in association with GH Commercial proud sponsors of our 2023 Commercial series of podcasts.

The Sydney Opera House is one of our nation’s most treasured cultural landmarks. With almost 11 million visitors per year, the Sydney Opera House illustrates how even the largest organisations can take creative approaches to energy and waste management to address the climate crisis. As environmental sustainability manager at the Sydney Opera House, Emma Bombonato helps determine the trajectory of the iconic institution’s sustainability program. The Opera House is a world-leader in sustainability. It was the first heritage building in Australia to achieve a 5-star green rating and achieved carbon neutrality five years ahead of schedule. Bombonato and her team are currently focussed on making the building and organisation climate positive. She talks exclusively to Jarrod Reedie about how sustainability is key to the Sydney Opera House's performance and ongoing status as one of the world's most iconic heritage and entertainment sites and what the ultimate goal of this sustainability focus is, now on the 50th anniversary of its completion.

From building Lego cities on a pool table to building homes and schools in Africa, it’s been an adventurous ride for this Australian architect who wears multiple hats – urban designer, social entrepreneur, philanthropist, community advocate, humanitarian, and author. Educated at Deakin University and later at the University of Nottingham, Landy has always been one to progress from challenge to challenge. The tertiary phase of his life saw Landy volunteering on international humanitarian projects, an experience that laid the foundation of his future ‘purpose driven’ career in architecture and design. He returned to Deakin to complete his degree and joined ClarkeHopkinsClarke, where he leads the design and delivery of some of Australia’s largest and most ambitious urban developments, including town centres, mixed use projects, and urban renewal precincts. Landy is also the founder-director of One Heart Foundation, an Australian ‘for purpose’ organisation working in Kenya to alleviate poverty by building and operating schools, children’s homes and skills training centres. Looking back on where it all began, Landy recalls how as a 19-year-old student in Nottingham, he felt the drive to learn a little bit more about the bigger world around him. Interview by Jarrod Reedie

Llewellyn Regler is the National Technical Manager for facades at Network Architectural. He helps to ensure that all products we deliver to the façade market are safe and of high quality. Matthew O’Neill has 10 years engineering and consulting experience in the façade industry. Leveraging his commercial and residential design experience, Matthew has expanded his expertise to include facade remedial works in the existing building space. In this wide-ranging and revealing interview, Llewellyn and Matthew explain the intricacies of facade design and what is and isn't the right way to address the issue of flammable cladding and where do we need to be in the very near future. This podcast is brought to you in association with Network Architectural.