David Gole joins JDA Co. as Principal

David Gole, one of Australia’s leading heritage architects, joins JDA Co. as Principal, bringing over 30 years of expertise in architecture, conservation, and adaptive reuse. 

His career has been dedicated to preserving and reimagining cultural heritage, ensuring historic places remain meaningful and accessible for future generations. 

Previously a Director at Riddel Architecture and a Principal at Conrad Gargett and Architectus, Gole has played a key role in shaping significant heritage projects. 

His experience includes training in conserving modern heritage at the Getty Conservation Institute in 2023, being a Getty Guest Scholar in 2020, and undertaking a Churchill Fellowship to explore conservation practices in Italy and the UK.

Gole’s notable projects include the restoration of HOME (former Lamb House), the UN Africa Hall, the Norfolk Island masterplan, and the QPAC Cultural Precinct Conservation Management Plan. His passion for storytelling through architecture aligns perfectly with JDA Co.’s vision for the future of heritage spaces. 

Architecture & Design: What inspired you to specialise in heritage architecture, and how has your perspective evolved over the years? 

David Gole: With a background in studying social history during my arts degree (back in the late 80's), I was drawn to heritage practice as a way of combining both of my areas of training.

Delivering built heritage project outcomes was a way of connecting people, communities and their stories (the social history part) to their heritage places, ensuring that they would be used and valued into the future.

Equally I was drawn to the sustainability angle - that the greenest building is the one that is retained, adapted and reused. I started working in the UK on adapting country houses into boutique hotels and working on more Victorian, Georgian and colonial era buildings.

In my very early career, I thought (like a lot of people) that heritage practice encompassed just old buildings and sites!  As my practice evolved, my perspective on what constitutes heritage has changed significantly with the understanding that heritage is really about what a society or cultural group value - this is a more bottom-up approach to defining cultural heritage. 

This approach also establishes the potential for "modern heritage" these are the places from our time that we might value and identify to keep for future generations.  

Can you share a particularly challenging heritage project you’ve worked on and how you overcame its obstacles? 

Every heritage project is unique with its own particular issues and challenges. Working on HOME (formerly known as the Lamb House) in association with JDA Co. from 2021 to 2023 was particularly challenging and required an entire careers worth of heritage practice experience to overcome the many challenges!  

The house was in a ruinous and highly dangerous state when we started (with part of the roof missing, roof tiles falling off regularly, ceilings collapsing,  box gutters had failed and there was water ingress and damage throughout the house, rotted and missing flooring, failed structure, peeling lead paint, etc)  and had been abandoned for seven years with much of the original heritage fabric removed and stolen.

It was highly challenging both as a conservation, restoration and renovation project in so many ways - initially how to work safely in the house, how to make the house stable and safe, what to keep and repair and what to replace.

Finding heritage trades with the right skills was also challenging. Then, as the project progressed the challenge of how to add modern services and new elements to the house in a sympathetic and sensitive way.

These challenges were all overcome through following a best practice approach where understanding of the place, its values and the levels of significance within the fabric of the place informed decision on how repairs, conservation and change could be made to conserve and enhance the values of the place. A close relationship with state heritage was also essential in this process.  

You’ve undertaken significant international training and research, including at the Getty Conservation Institute and through a Churchill Fellowship. How have these experiences influenced your approach to conservation? 

International training and professional development have played a significant role in the development of my practice. A pivot in my practice around 10 years ago in to conserving modern heritage (cultural places and buildings from the 1950's to the present) required new training and thinking - new approaches were needed and there were new material types each with their own particular conservation needs and challenges. 

The Getty Conservation Institute has a special focus on conserving modern heritage and have been instrumental in providing both training and knowledge sharing, benefiting many project outcomes.  

How do you balance the need for modern functionality with preserving historical integrity in adaptive reuse projects? 

In adaptive reuse projects there is always tension between retaining heritage values and making changes for new uses and functionality. The most important thing is that all changes should be informed by a clear understanding of the values of the heritage place.

This understanding must include what is of high value or significance and not able to be changed right down to what is of moderate or some value and is more able to sustain change and impact. 

Tolerance for change is how judgements are able to be made about where change is possible without diminishing the heritage values of a place. Impacts can be managed and mitigated through a range of measures and that is the great challenge of adaptive reuse projects. 

What role does storytelling play in your architectural approach, and why is it so important in heritage conservation? 

Telling the stories of place (interpretation) is an essential part of connecting people and communities with their heritage places, ensuring they understand them and value them into the future - without these stories, heritage places are simply brick and mortar.

Interpretation and storytelling can be integrated into design responses, telling the story of a change to a heritage place (at a detail level how a window is changed into a door for example can be expressed in the detailing). It can also include the more conventional panels and artefacts as well as using digital models and media. Story telling should also provide opportunities for new stories and new cultural values to be developed as well.  

With your extensive experience in conservation planning, what do you believe are the biggest threats to Australia’s heritage sites today? 

There are many threats to Australia heritage sites today - firstly there is often the negative perception issue that heritage places are costly to conserve and difficult to reuse and that you can’t make changes to them!  Secondly there needs to be greater advocacy for the value of our cultural places, and particularly our modern heritage places. 

Our cultural places from the modern era (1950s to the present) are ibn many cases currently under threat, not yet being identified on heritage registers and offered any protection through applicable legislation.  

The lack of incentives for owners of heritage places to invest is another issue - many other parts of the world have tax incentives to developers and owners to encourage personal investment to ensure good conservation outcomes. This has potentially contributed to many instances of neglect and some extreme cases of demolition by neglect. My final threat and challenge is the decline in heritage trades skills, which are essential to ensure best practice heritage outcomes.  

What excites you most about joining JDA Co., and how do you see your expertise complementing the team’s existing strengths? 

What initially drew me to JDA Co was the opportunity to continue to work on the contemporary additions to HOME (formerly known as the Lamb House in Brisbane) working with a client of over 30 years who first brought James Davidson and I together back in 2021 to collaborate on the first stage of the project. 

Stage 2 was an exciting opportunity to re-engage with the JDA Co. team. But in terms of bigger picture, the opportunity of joining JDA Co. 
was to integrate heritage practice with climate resilience, generating new design solutions that are responsive to our current and future climate challenges.  

Heritage practice has a focus on managing building fabric and how it is conserved which aligns very closely with climate resilience solutions which are also about the performance and resilience of materials.  

How do you think heritage conservation can contribute to broader sustainability and climate resilience efforts? 

Heritage practice can contribute to the broader sustainability and climate reliance efforts through sharing of knowledge, techniques, materiality and details that have been tried and tested over hundreds of years, demonstrating resilient performance and often able to be adapted for contemporary uses.  

One example includes the ability of traditional plasters to be able to withstand water immersion and inundation, having great elasticity and performing far better than our modern board products. 

This goes two ways of course and there is also the need to adapt heritage places for climate resilience as we upgrade them, particularly their rainwater goods and services. So equally heritage places can benefit from tried and testing new build resilience project outcomes - it’s a two way street! 

You’ve worked on a range of projects, from historic homes to cultural precincts. Is there a particular type of heritage site you find most rewarding to work on? 

All projects from large scale sites with heritage precincts down to individual public and privately owned buildings have their own challenges and rewards, sharing a similar process of course. 

However, personally the most rewarding projects for me are those that include sensitively integrated new additions and elements to a heritage place enabling new ways of using and engaging with these places. These projects are always both challenging but highly rewarding with the opportunity of responsive new design that complements and speaks to the heritage place.   

If you could restore or conserve any historical building or site in the world, which would it be and why? 

My choice from around the globe would be the Mill Owners Building by Le Corbusier in Ahmedabad, India. The reason I would choose this building is that it is a truly remarkable timeless piece of modern heritage that embodies Le Corbusier's response to both Ahmedabad's climate and cultural context. 

This includes the deep shaded concrete screens (brises-soleil) and grand pillared indoor-outdoor halls. The building has a remarkable arrival and movement sequence revealing the organic internal spaces contained within the building form.  

Also the building is still highly intact which few alterations since it was constructed in 1954. The building is currently unused, in a severely deteriorated state and at great risk - it needs to be saved and could be reused as a unique function centre for events and would be a great example of the evolution of Le Corbusier’s ideas in a cross cultural context.

Image: David Gole / supplied