15 MINUTES WITH... Bruce Henderson - Director, Bruce Henderson Architects

1. So Bruce… Why Architecture?
I actually I fell into it – my subjects at school were Art and Mathematics.  I lost my father early and my mentor was my maths teacher who lived across the road. He asked me one day what I want to do with my life, I don’t know and he said I would make a great architect.  Then the next question was what does an architect do? So the journey started from his answer; it captivated me.  He was a great influence on my life, a great guy.

2.  What was your first job?
It was fascinating - one of my lecturers arranged a role with a sole practitioner, but there was not a lot of work, and he in turn suggested Erik Kolle’s office. (somebody helping me again). Erik was kind of like a revolution, right at the beginning of the high-rise building boom in Melbourne in the 60s and 70s. He actually knew how to design concrete reinforced buildings, being European, from Denmark, and was an engineer and his sister an architect. It was fascinating because he introduced to me that economics and architecture went together. So I was able to understand the way money controls the project in every form – both from a client’s and an office’s point of view.  Management is the key role to success in any development and any practice. You can tell the good practices because they are well managed, and you can tell the bad practices of architecture because they don’t have the management skills.

3. Who or what inspires you?
There are a those that aren’t architecturally related, but the inspiration comes from people who can see something when it doesn’t exist - someone who could go somewhere, look at it and offer new ideas. I’m also inspired by some of the writers of the world, those that can capture the moment in time in the social environment.  Tim Winton and how he captures Australia in all its forms, whether it’s colour, humanity, socially. I love reading his books.

People who deal with the psyche because as architects we are basically dealing with that constantly. There is something about the mind and understanding the social environment we live in.  As Architects we are essentially designing for the social environment, the way it works in that particular time and as a reflection on how things work.

4. Favourite Place on Earth?
People aren’t going to believe this – Melbourne. I can live anywhere in the world, I’ve got offices in London, Dubai, Hanoi, and Melbourne but there’s nothing like this place. You only have to ask visitors that come here, they just enjoy it beyond belief and I think honestly that we live in a city so remote from the rest of the world, yet some of the best architects in the world are here at the moment.

There’s a lot of great architects overseas, and many come here. A lot of the international groups that come here are doing great jobs, but Melbourne is Melbourne.  We are doing it ourselves and if you look at the architecture we are creating – it’s world class, cutting edge world class. I’m ever so proud when I travel around the world and you talk to people and tell them you’re from Melbourne, its so easy to say – I don’t have to cringe I can be quite proud of it.  We’re lucky.

5. Top 3 buildings worldwide?
Le Corbusier’s – Saint-Pierre Church, Firminy, France – Totally out of left field. Saint-Pierre church in Firminy France designed by Corb, who died 45 years ago, is just brilliant.  It was finished in 2006.  It’s an absolute gem even today.
Rem Koolhaas’s – Seattle Central Library.  Koolhaas in Seattle has created, without fear, an urban piece that challenges out beliefs in structure and architecture.  It talks about the complexities of urban form.
Toyo Ito’s – Mediathenque, Sendai, Japan building was supposedly inspired by floating seaweed.  It’s a thin-skinned wonder of light transmitting through structure.

6. Best project you ever worked on?
The most exciting project I’ve worked on is the current Casino bid for London which sits on a peninsula in the Thames, a bit like the Opera House in a way, with 80% of the boundaries being water, just connected to the land by a short boundary.  It’s exciting to be able to develop something out in the middle of the water that is going to be an iconic building in London.  It’s really fun for us! We might win it, we might not – see how we go.

7. Biggest change in Architecture over your career?
Easy, the quality of the students coming out of university and how we have to train them.  They come here and instead of knowing, say 70% of how to put a building together, we find they know less than that. They’ve got limited design and building construction knowledge, and generally would have difficulties documenting a house at detail level. To us they were the fundamentals, you had to come out being able to do that, and that knowledge is limited currently.  So we have to train, but often there are expectations of “I’m ready to design. You’ve got high rise buildings over there, I’d like to design 3 of them for you”.  

Number two, is the changing uses of technology, and that’s influenced the first one.  It’s almost like the expectation the computer does it for me, and it doesn’t.  It’s important to remember that people at some stage may have to get up in front of a court and explain why they just relied on a computer and didn’t have the knowledge. And they’ll get absolutely slammed.  It’s one of the biggest things that scares me actually. 

The builders are really running the projects at the moment because the architects have not been able to take that role.  First of all the architects handed it over to project managers, so architects lost part of their ability to work.  The next cycle was they then handed the next bit over to the builders. 

Let’s analyse what an architect does – he designs a building, documents it and administers the contract.  You’ve lost that administration to the project managers. They used to document a building for builders but you don’t now, they’ll take the architects design and go and find a documentor somewhere offshore at a cheaper price.  The architect potentially is just left with the front end now, and may have limited impact on the finished product. Is it what you actually designed and are you prepared to put your name on it? That’s where the dilemma is going to occur with the changes that are taking place during that process of documentation and on-site build, taking away the quality of the building because it does come back to the designers and the quality of the detail and its frustrating that there isn’t that flow on.

8. A sentence to sum up your view of ESD
I could be really contentious here and say the jury’s out, still on whether what we’ve got is man-made or is natural. I agree that all the figures show the earth is warming, that’s not my issue.

Irrespective of that, the real issue is we can’t allow ourselves to believe that its nature and it will come back together. We as a race have to do something about what we are doing as we go forward and architects are in that environment where they have an opportunity to help and in every instance they should do. I don’t think there’s an architect who has designed a house in the last 30 years that hasn’t put ceiling insulation in. I also doubt if there are any Architects who haven’t thought about the characteristics of the wall from internal to out – how you warm a house, how you cool a house with natural air and breezes. Architects have been doing that for years, and it’s a natural progression.
What I’m worried about is a whole group of people are out there demanding that architects should be doing something, but they’re demanding things that aren’t the way it should be.  As an example, back in 1980s I was doing a project in the city of Prahran and I had a building surveyor who had to issue the building permit. I said I don’t want to take the water off the roof and put it into the drainage system that goes down into the river, I’d rather it back in the ground the trees wouldn’t survive. We fought and fought.  I suggested putting tanks there; he said it was illegal to have water tanks on houses. This is an example of where we were, we were trying to change and now we’re being told we’ve have to do it and there’s almost a prescription.  The rules state you have to do this; it is almost like a penalty.  None of this should be a penalty where you tick the boxes; it should be a desire to achieve a better result.  Its just again missing the point; do you want to do it from the heart or do you want to do it off a score sheet?

9. Best advice you have ever received?
From my maths teacher, and it was the saying of his life. He said to me ‘God helps those who help themselves’. In other words, don’t ever think someone will do something for you, you’ve go to do it yourself, and then you’ll get the rewards.

10. Advice you would give to young Architects?
What I try to do in this office is give enthusiasm to the young ones, to give them the opportunities, and that’s where they are surprised when they come here, with the amount of opportunities they’re given to do something.  It doesn’t start with me designing the buildings and handing it to the next guy.  When they come in we design in groups and my role is very limited in that, I might set up the concept and they follow.  My belief is that they’ve got to have the opportunity to see how they go.

11. How do you unwind?
Go sailing down at Sorrento, it’s the best.

12. What do you the think the market will do in the next 12 months?
I am concerned, really concerned.  I think we’re faced with a two speed economy.  There are those for who it’s going to work, and there’s a group who are going to find it very hard. I think that 2011 is going to be a time when there’s going to be a little bit of pain out there.  But I still think being Australians, being in Asia and focussing on what’s happening in Asia there is a real opportunity that we will get through it.

13. What traits do you look for when recruiting staff?
You know, I often don’t even want to see what work they’ve done.  I want to see them, see how enthusiastic they are about their own life. That to me is the ultimate.  If you’re enthusiastic then you can do anything. You’ll notice that people who really achieve in this world are those that absolutely love their life and want to infuse that confidence into someone else.