Brothers Mark and Paul Trotter are Queensland-based architects at Fulton Trotter Architects.
The duo aim to reinforce a rural presence and how they both work collaboratively together on their projects by sharing reviews and design ideas.
They are also avid managers in the architectural business – Mark is the marketing director and Paul is the finance and co-IT director.
Architecture & Design spoke to Mark about projects he is currently working on, his approach to the project and why Blessed John XXIII Church at Stanhope Gardens in Sydney’s west is his favourite project so far.
What projects are you working on at the moment?
Currently I have numerous school and aged care projects in progress. In the South East Queensland region I am designing a new 144 bed residential aged care facility for Wesley Mission Brisbane. This new facility is based on the multi-award winning Parkview, Wheller Gardens project and will integrate high-care facilities into a neighbourhood setting. I am also developing new designs for a very large $100 million integrated living environment with my brother and co-director, Paul Trotter, on the Sunshine Coast for Blue Care.
We are also coming to completion on two very significant restoration projects within the Catholic school sector which involve sensitively inserting administrative facilities and libraries into 1870s and 1930s architecture, along with new additions to accommodate access requirements.
Aged care facility. Parkview, Wheller Gardens
For Edmund Rice Education Australia and Youth +, we are working on seven new flexible learning centres for disengaged or disadvantaged young people. These centres are based on a new pedagogy which offers choice to young people who don’t fit into the mainstream school system which I find very interesting. A brand new school on a site with a heritage building designed by our founder, Charles Fulton, as the centre point is also on the books for us. In Sydney I am involved with a Greenfield 1,000 student Catholic high school and the redevelopment of four older schools into modern teaching environments.
What approach have you chosen to take with these projects?
Paul and I design every building with its own narrative or story. We regularly work together as design directors either on the same projects or act as peer review for each other. While similar issues of brief and climate arise, every client and site is different and they deserve their own unique solution in planning, form and space.
Aged care projects are often large in scale and our goal is to break down large communities into the normal legible components of urban centres and various scales or housing, parks and streets. For our education work – mostly for the Catholic and Independent sectors – each project and school has a different educational and social story. Some concentrate on academic performance, but most on the buildings exhibiting the qualities that the school’s ethics and goals for students in a broader sense. Interior and exterior space should be inspiring for teachers and students alike, and the buildings should contribute to their local environment positively and confidently instead of being seen as cheap and utilitarian.
Paul Trotter: finance and co-IT director
What is the most interesting project you have worked on and why?
The design of the Blessed John XXIII Church at Stanhope Gardens in Sydney’s west was a wonderful building to be involved with. It was built for a fledging parish with limited funds, but with a priest and congregation that were inspired by architectural ideas.
The building’s essential ideas were designed collaboratively with one of my associates, Katerina Dracopoulos, without touching a pencil. Throughout the design, documentation and construction, the ideas were reinforced and finalised. The building internally, externally and as a piece of place making, expresses the church’s namesakes vision for the church of ‘openness’ and ‘light’. I am not a Catholic, but I enjoyed learning, understanding, researching and interpreting these ideas.
Aged care facility. Parkview, Wheller Gardens
The other project of great interest was working collaboratively to develop Wesley House, the first 5 Star Green Star commercial building in Brisbane. We teamed up with Lindsay + Kerry Clare as Architectus Sydney to deliver this magnificent building to Wesley Mission Brisbane. The building is a 9 storey office building and we had worked on the site for almost twenty years before the project came to fruition. We hold a couple of parties on the rooftop entertainment terrace every year. It’s wonderful to have that ongoing connection to a client and the site.
If you could have designed one building somewhere else in the world, what would it be and why?
Ronchamp Chapel by Le Corbusier. It is for me, the quintessential exposition of the moulding of space, form and light, in a building which works at so many levels. I find it interesting also that Corb had a history of much more ordered and controlled buildings, only to provide this amazingly fluid space and form late in his career. The continual reinvention of design is a wonderful thing.
Parkview images courtesy of Fulton Trotter Architects. Photography by John Mills.
