BREATHE ARCHITECTURE ON THE ARCHITECT’S RESPONSIBILITY IN A CRISIS
Breathe Architecture’s founding director Jeremy McLeod doesn’t like the trope of the solitary, dyed-in-the-wool genius architect. Raised by leftist political activists, McLeod credits them with his social conscience – a critical foundation that he carried with him into his career. “Architecture, for me, didn’t happen in isolation. I brought the politics and values that my parents had given me to the job,” says McLeod.
After high school graduation, McLeod moved from Melbourne to study at the University of Tasmania’s School of Environmental Design, Tasmania being the first university in Australia to offer an environmental design course. It was an education that saw McLeod’s ethics and design ambitions in alignment. Disillusionment came after graduation, when working for large architecture firms he witnessed an industry “inertia” created by the siloed relationship between clients, architects, project managers and financiers. The meaning of a project and its outcomes beyond the bottom line were, to McLeod, notably absent from the conversation.
“The last project I worked on before starting Breathe was a curtain walled tower with floor-to-ceiling glass facing north, south, east and
