On a recent trip to see French Impressionism from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston at the National Gallery of Victoria, I found myself moved anew by the power of these works. The exhibition, part of Melbourne’s Winter Masterpieces series, brings more than 100 Impressionist paintings to Australia, many never before seen here; by Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas, Cassatt, Morisot and their contemporaries.

Though I’ve studied Impressionism, visited the Musée d’Orsay, and attended similar shows, seeing these vibrant, liberated works in person felt incredibly uplifting. There is a sheer delight in the way they frame the everyday, humble houses, winding streets, open fields, each rendered with astonishing energy and economy.

What struck me most was the way the artists stripped buildings back to their absolute essence. Intricate detail is gone, yet the form remains: the rhythm of rooftops, the mass of a wall in shade, the sharp cut of a silhouette against the sky. Roof and base, light and shadow. Architecture distilled to its most elemental. It is something I often think about in our own work: how a space or a building is perceived through narrowed eyes, when the noise is removed and the fundamental is amplified.

One of the most compelling reminders of this came from Monet’s Haystacks series—dozens of paintings of the same subject, yet each transformed by the light and atmosphere of a particular moment. These are fundamentally the same image, but what matters is the time of day, the season, the shifting conditions. This is very much how we think about the spaces we design: as experiences that are rediscovered again and again across the day, the year, and over decades of living in them. Light changes. Shadows move. Material patinas deepen. The architecture is constant, yet it never presents itself in quite the same way.

The Impressionists were not concerned with faithful documentation, but with evoking sensation, the way light falls across a garden path, the mood of a street at dusk. In our architectural practice, we seek something similar. We aim to create spaces that capture a mood, spaces that feel alive and resonant.

Walking through the exhibition, I thought about how, in design, limits can bring freedom. A reduced palette, a simple structure, controlled views and indirect light often result in a building that feels more considered, more deliberate. The Impressionists achieved this through brushstroke and colour; we aim for it through material, form and sequence.

Seeing this exhibition renewed my conviction that our approach shares much with that of the Impressionists: a focus on perception, light, simplification, and the clarity of experience. However, just as an Impressionist painting captures a fleeting moment and invites the viewer in, we aim to create architecture that allows people to inhabit lasting ones.

Over the years, I’ve returned time and again to the TarraWarra Museum of Art. Perched above a sculpted lawn, Allan Powell’s original museum building has long impressed itself into my memory — a massive, blank façade that once struck me as forbidding. Defensive, even. A castle on a hill. But with time, what once felt imposing now reads as protective. Familiar. The same wall that once challenged me now welcomes me, shields me. It’s a shift that speaks less to the building than to my own evolving perspective.

The original 2003 design brought together a museum and restaurant, linked by a courtyard that still feels monolithic and primal. Concrete forms rise from the earth like a modern-day stonehenge — assertive, ambiguous, and sculptural. That in-between space is not transitional but atmospheric. It announces that art, here, is something you move toward with intent.

The recently opened Eva and Marc Besen Centre, designed by Kerstin Thompson Architects, extends the experience with humility and quiet strength. Set behind the Powell building, it gently follows the existing crescent avenue — a gesture of deference and dialogue. The echo in form is deliberate, yet the contrast in materiality is striking: where Powell’s original wall is heavy and massive, Thompson’s new elevation is light, woven, and permeable. A stainless steel mesh softens the back-of-house functions, providing glimpses of the life within while maintaining a measured restraint.

The Besen Centre houses visible art storage, learning spaces, and areas for performance and community engagement. It literally supports the museum — its green roof doubling as the visitor carpark — and symbolically reinforces the museum’s foundational ethos: that art, education, and landscape can exist in quiet, enduring harmony.

The museum’s collection, gifted by Eva and Marc Besen, contains hundreds of works of Australian modern and contemporary art. But more than just a collection, it’s a gesture of cultural trust — a belief in the value of public access to art, and the importance of creating an architectural context that honours it.

Revisiting TarraWarra with the addition of the new centre felt like a jolt of clarity — a reminder of the power of restraint, and the joy that comes from resolution. Durable materials. Controlled views. A reverence for sequence. And above all, a deep understanding that architecture, like art, shifts meaningfully over time.

Reflections from the 2025 Melbourne Design Week Film Festival

Until recently, Arthur Erickson was a name I only knew in passing. It was just six months ago that I properly encountered his work—and what caught me immediately wasn’t the scale or form, but the light. Or rather, the contrast of it: the deliberate play of light and shadow, the sense of quiet drama. Erickson knew how to make a space breathe—how to create calm through control, and warmth through restraint.

So when Beauty Between the Lines screened as part of this year’s Melbourne Design Week Film Festival, I made sure to see it. What followed was more than a biography; it was a meditation. The film traces his career with patience and clarity, revealing not just the celebrated projects and public acclaim, but the inner world of a man who lived for architecture—and, at times, despite it.

What struck me most was the consistency of vision across his work. Whether designing monumental civic buildings or private residences, Erickson’s sensitivity to landscape, structure, and silence never wavered. The film captures this beautifully. It also delves into his relationships—with collaborators, clients, friends—many of which were close, sometimes complicated, always deeply human.

One scene near the end of the film stays with me. Erickson, by that point bankrupt and largely overlooked by the profession, is working on a coastal house. Just before a concrete pour, a serious issue arises. There’s tension, pressure. And then—he picks up a pencil. With quiet confidence, he sketches a solution, seemingly without hesitation. It’s resolved. Elegantly, effortlessly. The pour goes ahead.

Watching that moment, I felt a kind of reverence. It was mastery, distilled. The kind of clarity that only comes after a lifetime of drawing, thinking, making.

Beauty Between the Lines is not a loud film. It moves softly, just as Erickson did. But it leaves a lasting impression. It reminds us that architecture is not just a profession—it’s a life. It demands everything. And if you’re paying attention, it gives something back: a way of seeing, of shaping, of being. Erickson lived that truth completely. And through this film, we get to witness it.

See Arthur Erickson’s most significant works here.

Over the weekend I watched the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. Set against the backdrop of Cold War anxiety and rapid post-war modernisation, it reminded me how folk music emerged not just as cultural expression, but as a kind of resistance—raw, real, and rooted in something ancient. It felt eerily parallel to the moment we’re living in now.

Today, the world is in the throes of another transformation—AI, hyper-connectivity, and digital immersion shaping not only how we work and communicate, but how we think, relate, and even imagine. It’s exciting, yes. But it also feels precarious. Disembodied. In response, I’ve noticed a shift—not just in myself, but among peers and clients too—toward something quieter, slower, and more elemental.

In our studio, we’ve been thinking about what it means to pursue a “primitive” architecture. Not primitive as in undeveloped or regressive, but in the sense of the essential: forms and materials that speak to permanence, legibility, and human instinct. A kind of architecture that resists noise. That feels analogue—not digital. Solid and earthen—not elusive.

In many ways, it’s a return to fundamentals: heavy materials, clear structure, courtyards, thresholds, walls that frame rather than dissolve. There’s a renewed appreciation for things that age and weather, that hold heat or give shade. Our recent work increasingly centres around these archetypal moves—simple geometries, grounded floor plans, spaces defined not by novelty but by necessity.

This isn’t nostalgia and it’s not anti-technology. We use digital tools every day. But we’re asking: where’s the counterweight? If the world is rushing toward lightness, fluidity, and frictionlessness, can architecture do the opposite? Should it? Can it offer resistance in the form of slowness, stillness, and solidity?

We’ve found inspiration not in novelty, but in permanence. Ancient buildings that remain legible centuries later. Rural constructions built without drawings, only instinct. Rooms where sound echoes in just the right way. Light that enters once a day with purpose.

In some ways, the most radical thing we can do now is to make something calm. Something that doesn't move. Something that gives weight to your day and allows for ritual and consideration.

Architecture, at its best, is a cultural record—an echo of its time. But it can also be a correction. A reminder that in a rapidly dematerialising world, the most meaningful spaces might be those that are the most grounded. The ones made not of code or cloud, but of timber, brick, earth, and shadow. The ones you can feel.

So we continue, not with grand gestures or new theories, but with quiet convictions. A well-proportioned opening. A shaded courtyard. A wall that does what it’s meant to do. In pursuit not of innovation for its own sake, but of the primitive—simple, enduring, and deeply human.