Shane Thompson, principal at Shane Thompson Architects, recently won the $40,000 Smart Design Fellowship.
Thompson established his first practice in 1981 on the Sunshine Coast, eventually going on to become a director and principal at BVN Architecture in 1987. After spending 24 years at the firm, he then established his own practice, Shane Thompson Architects.
Architecture & Design spoke to him about why he made the move to his own practice after so long at BVN, how his designs differ at his own practice than at BVN and his pro bono work.
What prompted the move to establish your own practice after so long at BVN?
There wasn't any one reason, but rather that there was a certain way of working – very personal – that I wanted to pursue that was better done in a different environment. I had invested most of my professional life taking an all-consuming approach with a great bunch of people.
We led and developed a very special type of collective practice committed to very high standards in BVN. Inevitably, with the growth and maturity of the practice, it became more and more difficult to find the time to work directly on projects and influence the work in the manner that you are used to.
As managing client demands increase and the practice depends on you to do that, you become less involved in making the work. Anyone who knows me will tell you how ultimately unsatisfying I found that.
Whilst larger projects, in particular, need large collaborative teams with insightful leadership and many people enjoy that type of role, it's not really me. I wanted to be more deeply involved in fewer projects. I enjoy spending time with clients and with colleagues in the studio thinking, talking, drawing and making the work and nurturing it into being.
I've always been very interested in the auteur approach to making work, where there is a particular individual as the driving creative force. This is not exclusive of collaboration, but rather an approach which enables the work to be invested with more intimate and personal ideas, experience and knowledge.
I've always been most interested in art where there is a more particular trace or presence of the maker. There is a deeper concern for nuance and an authentic response to place, not necessarily dulled by the groupthink which can emerge where process takes precedence.
What design philosophy have you adopted at Shane Thompson Architects?
We don't really have a formal design philosophy. Frankly, I've never seen or read a design philosophy from an architect which resonated as anything much more than a marketing position, and that is the antithesis of what my new studio is about.
What I can say in response is that we are very concerned that we make work which has a poetic or lyrical resonance with its place.
We have an eclectic range of interests from contemporary art, cycling, surfing, social justice, sport, indigenous cultures, music and many others. These things which are a part of our lives and which are passions we share with each other are often lenses through which we see and think about the work.
When we talk about place, it is closer to the indigenous definition of ‘country’. Much more than an observable landscape it is a place of memory where our ancestors dwell; a place of food; ecologies large and small; and a social, cultural and natural network with rich lessons if we know how to look, listen and feel.
We believe in the personal subjective experience more so than the universal. We try and uncover or find a way of thinking about making work which we think is very authentic to that place or our experience or reading of that place.
Is your design different at STA than BVN?
Perhaps it is too early to tell and also maybe that is best left to others to observe and comment. What I can say is that I am enjoying practice more than any time previously, notwithstanding the significant drop in income, but it doesn't seem to matter. I have a lot of respect for any smaller practice that can create a sustainable practice given the non-discretionary overheads involved.
We are currently assessing the work of the first year for a small publication, and we are astounded at how much work we have managed to complete, the range of media we have employed, from the roughest of hand sketches to multiple cardboard and balsa study models, 3D CGIs, multiple 3D prints, etc.
Each project has generated its own type of process and demanded the use of different combinations of media to assist in the design. There is an underlying discipline with a freedom to use whatever means are most appropriate.
What project are you most proud of designing?
I'm not sure I can answer that question. Pride is not something my good Protestant upbringing allows me to indulge very easily.
Lavarack Barracks in Townsville was significant for me, not for all the publication and awards, but in how we were able to make something so very particular to that place in the dry tropics and bring an intimate level of experience and sense of community to a project type where none of those things had previously mattered.
Lavarack Barracks. Source: BVN
In similar ways the USC Faculty of Arts building was where we were able to test many ideas we had been developing, especially in creating a soft visceral quality in both the experience and fabric of the building. Working with very constrained budgets on housing projects of varying scales has also brought a degree of satisfaction and proven that budgets are far less critical than a preparedness to rethink, reinvent and advocate better.
You grew up in Brisbane. What was one of the most lasting memories that have stuck with you?
Just one? I have great memories of being very brave, feeling stupid, excited and nervous all at the same time at the age of 11, when walking home from football training at night through the dense bushland.
Can you tell A&D about some of your pro bono work, how you came to be involved, what it means to you and why you are carrying out the work pro bono?
It seems to have always been a part of my work from soon after graduation. I describe myself as a lazy social activist. With the support of partners and colleagues, who have tolerated these distractions, I have worked with the Murri School in Brisbane, the Mental Illness Fellowship, Centacare, the Cape York Institute and even the Australian Institute of Architects, as well as odd jobs for a whole range of charities and local groups.
I do have a strange desire to help if I can. I enjoy the challenge of working with almost nothing, encouraging and organising assistance from industry and giving hope to people who seem to otherwise not know what to do or how to do it.
It's less about architecture and much more about problem solving and organisation. It's amazing what you can get at a good clearance sale! These projects seem to find me. Maybe word gets around that I'm a soft touch. More often than not it's both incredibly frustrating and incredibly rewarding.
If you weren't an architect, what would you be doing?
All I can think of is painting or surfing, but I'm not good enough at either to make any sort of living out of them.
