A husband and wife team creating sustainable buildings that reinforce sense of place, community and identity in increasingly pressured urban environments has been awarded the Gold Medal for Architecture from the Australian Institute of Architects.
Kerry and Lindsay Clare are the first husband and wife team to win the architecture prize, with Kerry the second Australian female only in the Gold Medal’s 50-year history to receive the honour.
The couple is known for their sub-tropical, low impact, sustainable residential projects across regional Queensland. These houses are typically modest in size, elegant, lightweight structures bathed in natural light and cooled by natural ventilation.
Australian Institute of Architects national president, Melinda Dodson, says the Gold Medal jury believed Kerry and Lindsay "had made an enormous contribution to the advancement of architecture, and particularly sustainable architecture" during their careers, and were widely recognised for their "strongly held belief that good design and sustainable design were intrinsically linked".
The jury citation noted: "Their great body of work demonstrates an appropriate environmental response, developing the concept of efficient low-energy, sustainable solutions decades before legislation made it mandatory."
The duo have worked consistently as practitioners since graduating from the Queensland University of Technology in the late 1970s, completing more than 120 projects ranging from public, educational, commercial, attaching housing to single residences.
