Niall Durney has recently been promoted to practice director at Crone Partners. He now leads the design studio.

Durney joined Crone Partners as an associate in 2012 to take a design leadership role within the firm and has over 10 years’ experience as a design architect in Europe, Asia and Australia.

Architecture & Design spoke to him about his work with the University of Technology Sydney, the urban fabric of CBDs and why the design process in Australia could benefit from slowing down. 

Can you tell A&D about your work with the UTS school of architecture?

In 2007 I took a position as an associate lecturer for six months teaching design and communications during a period when the leadership and teaching staff were going through a transition. There was a unique atmosphere within the school and a change in pedagogy with new subjects being introduced. I was also given funding to produce an exhibition of graphic works based on my own research into urban mapping with digital software.

This led to future collaborations with teaching staff and the offer of a permanent position. I ended up returning to practice instead but continued to have a relationship through the university as a visiting critic. After one of the final year shows I decided to propose a masters studio that I thought would fill a gap.  

A lot of work from graduates I had seen felt quite disconnected from the realities of commercial practice and I had hoped this studio would provide students with an opportunity to impress future employers whilst designing through a contextually relevant prism of an existing Design Excellence competition. There were some great outcomes and the studio was successful in challenging student’s commercial perceptions. Some thrived on the opportunity to design a high-rise tower in Sydney with a developer’s brief.

How did Crone Partners become involved with the department?

Crone has had a long association with UTS with previous design directors working at the school and a continued sponsorship of student prizes. I think within the last 18 months that involvement has changed. As the firm looks to grow and become proactive in the development of the professional landscape, it recognises the importance of hiring young graduates. Our current design studio has four UTS graduates and we are looking for more.

Do you believe high-rise buildings in Sydney are adequately being integrated into the city's urban environment?

In the past, probably not. With the GFC, the last six years have slowed the industry down considerably, but with such large developments as Barangaroo, we hope this might change.

There is a distinct typology of high rises in the city. With grand corporate lobbies and podiums, there is a lack of pedestrian scale in the streetscape and integrated urban design. As such, the current program in most commercial buildings doesn’t lend itself to help invigorate the CBD. If you look at CBDs in other major cities you find a much greater mix of program that can be activated on weekends or after 5:30 on a weekday.

Can you tell A&D about the local community projects you have been involved with?

We have been working closely with Orange City Council after winning the commission to design the Orange Regional museum. This is probably the first cultural project for Crone Partners and highlights a sector from which to evolve the future aesthetic of the firm. We found the council to be extremely engaging and keen to push the building’s potential within a constrained site.

We developed the brief for the building with a local user committee and presented our ideas to the greater community, with an extremely positive response. This has led to us to tender for more council run projects and we have recently submitted a super scheme for a competition with a greater Sydney council.

You have worked in Europe, Asia and Australia. What has been your favourite country to work in?

Working in Ireland during the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom was a very positive environment to work in. Dublin was growing at a very fast pace and there was an abundance of work. The outcomes, both positive and negative, are very evident in the fabric of the city. With large areas of the city being developed such as the Dublin docklands, I would have liked to return to Ireland and work in some of the smaller firms such as O’Donnell Tuomey, Grafton architects and McCullough Mulvin Architects. They have produced some stunning pieces of work over the last five years.

What can Australian architects learn from other countries?

There is a simplicity to the style of architecture in Europe that results from a slower pace that I think Sydney could benefit from. I find the design process in Australia goes at 100mph and the intense competition for projects means that a design process is never given the time it needs to find the best result. There is a strong argument for allowing a slower, more thorough process and in the UK and Ireland the concept design phase is a lengthy one where adequate studies and options are thoroughly investigated.

What has been the greatest challenge of your career so far?

Despite architecture being a resolutely bricks and mortar reality-based type of profession, you find that the process of getting work built to be incredibly ephemeral. Having concentrated on the concept design stage of projects for the last seven years, you can find working three years on a project from competition design through to tender documentation only for the project to completely grind to a halt. There is the inherent risk that as a project increases in scale the probability of it being realised decreases.

Focusing on smaller projects seems to be one of the more effective ways of realising built projects and bypassing the increase in risk and financial uncertainty of raising $100m+ and various competing interests for a project to successfully come together.