29/06/2026
A highlight from my design career was attending a master class in 2008 in Pitwater, New South Wales at which I was starstruck by the architectural greats, Glenn Murcutt AO, Richard Laplastrier AO and Peter Stutchbury. The second photo shows me presenting a site specific work with my group for which I received a compliment on my drawings from Murcutt (a moment I'll never forget as an impressionable uni student!). We also visited the modest yet elegantly elemental treehouse home of Laplastrier. Whilst making tea for us in a giant billy he described how goannas would waltz through their home and kookaburras would dive into the cooking as their house was completely open to the wild valley - without any glass at all. We also visited some of the most beautifully crafted homes along Sydney Harbour and visited Stutchbury's Sydney office. I was a landscape architecture student at the time and lessons from this trip will always stay with me, along with an important moment where we all sat around a radio in the muddy forest listening live to 'the apology' to Stolen Generations in Parliament. It really crystallised my concern for Australia's environment and how important it is to 'touch the earth lightly' as Glen Murcutt espoused.
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