With recent clients including the Alfred Hospital ICU, Victoria’s Royal Children’s Hospital and some work for the state’s Supreme Court, Billard Leece Partnership director Ron Billard brings 30 years’ experience to the table. He speaks to Kate Gibbs
What are you working on, and how are you approaching it?
We’re doing a fair bit of health work. We’re doing the Children’s Hostptal, a job in Macai, Brisbane, the New Royal in Hobart and some work here in Melbourne — a masterplan for Bendigo Hospital, Geelong Hospital, and for the Royal Melbourne hospital. David Leece and I set up the practice and initially did a lot of office work and residential, but we’re doing a lot of health work right now. One of he things we’ve learnt from the apartments we’ve done in the past I show to design places for people to live in. We’ve always had lovely bay windows, views and balconies, and now we’re applying all that to our health work.
What’s different about health work?
We’re learning a lot from evidence-based design. If you design a lovely environment for the patients, when they wake up they look out and see light or a park or something they have a shorter recovery time and leave hospital earlier. An important thing that happens with that is high staff morale, which leads to staff retention, which in hospitals is a big deal.
And does it impact the people who actually work there?
People like working in good spaces. Why has NAB and ANZ built new offices? Because they want better environments for their people to work in. The same applies to health. So in the Royal Children Hospital we did the master plan and convinced the government to put it in the park. Now we’re fortunate enough to act for the successful bidders, Lend Lease and Babcock & Brown. It’s a PPP project and we have a big team working on the one job. What do you love about your work? I love the process of creating buildings that people can live in and work in. I love going back when the building is and seeing they’re using it the way we anticipated it and that they really enjoy it.
How has the current economic climate impacted your work?
You’ve always got a tight budget so you have to get the best value for your client. It’s worse at the moment, but it’s always an issue. You’re always working with limited money.
What can be done to help the situation from your point of view?
I think the government should be showing by example how we can get density without repeating the detached houses that stretch into suburbia forever. People think you just build more apartments, more in the docklands. But for me there is a real alternative, like those 4-plexes down at Bondi Beach. They are easy to build, very economical, very affordable. You wouldn’t build them in Bondi any more because the land is too expensive. But go into the middle suburbs and build for the 60 per cent of people that aren’t families, so pre or post kids. They’re four times the density of a typical suburban block without it actually looking intrusive. So that’s the type of thing I am keen to encourage. You’re not taking up agriculture land. You can triple the density of typical suburbia by doing what I’m talking about, and have it close to existing transport.
What do you think of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s recent $300 injection of funds to local councils?
It’s good, I like that idea. It’s reinforcing the sense of community; it’s encouraging and supporting existing councils and public areas. It’s absolutely vital. If we don’t act like a community, we’ll make the current situation worse.
