Our architecture has always been concerned with sustainability. Working as students in the late 1970s in Gabriel Poole’s office set us on track exploring the best ways to enjoy living in our South East Queensland setting. The work gave us a deep understanding of passive solar design principles through observation and experience.
Growing our practice in a region meant graduating from house extensions to houses, to small local public buildings. And being in Queensland meant using lightweight construction methods predominantly. Generally, the public buildings could be designed to perform well with natural light, natural ventilation, good shading and integration of landscape. Any added mechanical heating or cooling was only needed to temper extremes.
In the 1990s, Richard Hyde (then at the University of Queensland, now a professor of architectural science at the University of Sydney) monitored the performance of some of our buildings and provided statistical proof of the good outcomes from passive principles. We had also engaged with an environmental engineer,
