Film - Interview, Peter Elliott, Jordan Kay and Fleur Watson (director/producers), 2022, Open House Melbourne

[MUSIC]

Modern Melbourne is a series of interviews that document the extraordinary lives and careers of our most important Architects and designers, and looks at their lasting impact on Melbourne. Today we speak with Peter Elliott. Growing up in the suburbs Peter studied architecture at the University of Melbourne in 1968, a time of the Vietnam War, moratoriums, and student and social activism. In 1975 Peter established his practice, Peter Elliott Architecture and Urban Design, and the office immediately demonstrated a deep commitment to social housing projects and the public realm. Peter’s practice has been founded on a lifelong interest in the relationship of architecture to the Australian landscape and to the urban condition. In 2017 Peter was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects’ gold medal, the highest honour for an Australian architect. The practice’s award-winning design for the annex at Victoria's Parliament House continues to explore and expand upon what Peter describes as a form of urban acupuncture, a dexterous, responsive and topographic approach to the relationship between architecture and the City.

Fleur Watson: So Peter let's start at the very beginning I think, it'd be great to hear from you a little bit about your childhood some of those early influences that kind of set you on your pathway to design and to becoming an architect.

Peter Elliott: Okay. Let’s start at the beginning. I grew up in the Burwood Wattle Park southeast suburbs of Melbourne which back then in the early 50s was the fringe of the city. It was really like the country. When I was about 12 I met an architect through family friends. And I visited his house in the neighbourhood which was pretty simple post-war houses and he'd built a studio out the back and when I walked into that space it was like it struck me, this was just an incredible moment realizing that as a young boy I could draw and I love to draw and I was drawn to art. And this room was full of books and paintings, and drawings, and models, and music and the room had a very Japanese sense about it as well which I didn't realize at the time but later on understood you know it had a kind of bamboo wallpaper and kind of beautiful timber lining. So it was very important, that first engagement with the idea of what I might be.

Fleur Watson: Can you talk a little bit about, particularly as an undergraduate architecture student, how that type of learning the environment that you were in really started to shape your position as a young architect.

Peter Elliott: As a young student you're stepping into an environment of a lot of activism. And the University was not really prepared for that. I think like a lot of institutions it was sort of stuck in some past time. So I recall those early years as a lot of resistance from University to change, and it led me probably to become much more self-reliant and also to look for things outside the University. The first year was about 130 kids and it was easy to get into architecture then like it was lower than the Arts in terms of a school, so it was full of just an amazing group of people like of all types, probably never the most of them never to be Architects. But what it was, was a very creative and quite eccentric environment. I remember the first day Hugh O'Neill - the year master for first year - standing out the front of rows of desks at the blackboard about to teach us how to write like an architect. Started with the Roman script, letter A and so on, and I, look I remember it just so vividly and also the space between letters how important text is and the visual world was introduced by Hugh. He also taught perspective and I do recall having to draw a dodecahedron, which I had no idea what that was, and the shadow of it. And it was ruling pens, watercolour washers, you know like this is like ancient, the ancient world almost. And so we were caught in that transition between you know the great traditions of architecture and trying to be you know more contemporary. He also taught Asian architecture which then was very unusual, and he was just an amazing man you know, he sort of had this incredible passion for other cultures. And for me as a young man growing up in the suburbs of Melbourne this was a new world for me and it was the beginning of an introduction for me in particular of Japan. There are others like George Tibbetts who taught more traditional architectural history and amazingly he started a course on the off his own bat on Urban Design. And it was like real-time lectures talking about the Housing Commission and the slum clearance program and the freeways invading the city, and this was all like just happening you know out the window effectively. And it started for me this real interest in urbanity and the fact that Australia really hadn't developed its own sense of what urbanism might be. It was an incredible period that soon after graduating I started teaching and my own practice. And I'd never really, I'd worked a little bit for other Architects as a student, but really starting to practice from scratch was kind of crazy idea but it was possible. I mean this was a time of great opportunity for emerging architects and during my student years I'd become very involved with a lot of other organizations in the Fitzroy Collingwood area which are where I was living and that sort of got me launched into a whole world of public housing in particular. And also community work so it was the beginning for me of this whole devotion to the idea of the public realm and public projects. The early days of the practice were in a studio with lots of other young architects in a similar situation, graphic designers, and landscapers, and it's the way you learn you know you learn from others. I didn't know how to run a practice, I had no idea and yet you know it was possible then to be able to do that and by the sort of collegiate atmosphere of the studio that you could ask and get help and there are always people there to support you. And for me that's kind of underpinned my kind of attitude to life entirely is this kind of incredible support that happened in Melbourne in particular and then you find the people that you have empathy for. So at that time there were some amazing architects. I think generally the feeling was the profession was moribund and so you sort out the guys you wanted to know. I moved into a share house in Fitzroy and it was a crazy place but it was just full of the most amazing people. It was,  you know there were draft dodgers, journalists, artists, political people, a lot of characters who you know a lot never even had gone to University and yet they were smart you know in a way that I found inspiring but also quite disturbing you know. I think to see into that world of hard-nosed politics was quite a shock for me and I've done my best to stay out of that I've sort of been on the fringes of that side of things but I did discover very early the importance of advocacy. And not only advocacy within the profession you know becoming an architect and fighting for that, but also just the whole connection we can't disconnect the practice of architecture I don't think from society generally and the benefits that we bring and the things that we do. And so those foundation years as a student and then in early practice were heavily involved in various voluntary organisations.

Fleur Watson: So Peter I think what would be really interesting now is to start to talk about some projects and really think about your practice perhaps by breaking it down via decade. So we're talking here now some of those incredible early community projects that you were involved in and really starting to hone your ideas around public housing. Let's talk about the Knox Schlapp project in Port Melbourne which was 1985, 4

Peter Elliott: Four, Five, yes thereabouts.

Fleur Watson: This was a really seminal project not only for your practice but also politically and socially at the time I believe so can you set a little bit of context around that and the design of that particular project.

Peter Elliott: Yeah like a really important project as you said for our practice. I think the late 80s, sorry the late 70s and the early 80s was politically interesting. I think it was 1982 that the Cain government came in. And in the process of that meant that all of those characters I mentioned before the Evan Walkers and Andrew McCutchens and so on were suddenly in government. And what that meant was that those years of activism had suddenly landed people in power and that began to have an enormous impact on the whole social housing program particularly among many many other things. But you know the great benefit of that was the old Housing Commission had become the Ministry of Housing. It had employed some very smart people like John Devenish in those early years and it was enlightened. They sought out young practices and you know I was one of the beneficiaries of that because I had done a lot, I'd known the social housing arrangement, I'd worked volunteering in rental housing associations and knew the whole issue backwards. And so the beginning of that period was the opportunity for young architects to do a whole range of new public housing typology. So it was the beginning of the infill program where instead of demolishing whole suburbs you know you just go back and fill in the little gaps that you know that they probably previously demolished. And rooming houses and then Knox Schlapp came along which is a funny old term but it's the name of an old factory that was in Port Melbourne next to the old gasometers. And we were appointed to design I think 37 or 39 units I can't remember now and it was to be family housing and I think at this time there was a really strong awareness that what we had to do was design public housing with dignity. And that it felt more what we might now call normalize, so it's not like, so it's trying to find that traditional relationship I suppose between a house and a street and that everyone got a front door and a little front courtyard and a back courtyard. And that's really what the model was, and because the site was this kind of strange trapezoid shape with very wide streets around it, you know it very quickly became this idea of what we call the perimeter block. So it's essentially four streets with four facing rows of terrace type houses split at the corners with a central garden. And so like it seems obvious now, and this kind of model has been repeated so many times, but back at that point Port Melbourne was still you know like a flat working class suburb and there were great chunks of it which we just kind of left derelict effectively. So I think for us that the success of the project was that you could demonstrate that with simple architecture and you know, like thinking properly about how buildings actually do sit in their in their public realm, was quite uh, is what the success of the project was.

Fleur Watson: And this was a really seminal project both in terms of public housing but as you're describing these kind of ideas about how a building sits in the community in the public realm perhaps leads us on to the Carlton Bars and Community Centre which was 1990, and ish, and won the architecture medal in 91. And a project that later on you had the ability to then go back and revisit. Let's talk about that project as this kind of I guess shift perhaps from that focus in terms of housing but now into the public realm with a community public building.

Peter Elliott: Yeah Carlton Bars it's kind of, it actually started in 1985, and it again the commission came through an unorthodox manner I suppose. I'd been very involved with a number of… I lived in Carlton at this point and the local Council was I think really at the forefront of reform in local government and their idea was that you know we need to employ a good local architect. So I got the job. And it's directly opposite the high-rise flats, and the pool was a late 19th century outdoor pool that got very run down. And so it got Government funding to I guess create what you would call a proper Community Centre. So it's not only a sporting complex but it housed Maternal Child Care, and play groups and you know so it was a proper Community Building. For us at this period, and the first major public building in a very prominent locations, like uh an interesting dilemma for a young architect, but we're up for it. And I think one of the things that struck me at that time was there was a bigger sort of community debate about de-institutionalizing public buildings and in fact that almost shifted away from any idea of the civic into the domestic. And that was somewhere I didn't want to go. I had this sort of long passion for the idea of the civic and so it drove the really the conceptual ideas behind the building. And so the Bars for us was really a collection of a little village of buildings rather than one singular building. And it tried to tackle the idea of the elements that make up civic architecture, so it starts in the street with a logia you know which is basically a shaded sort of space that separates you and transitions the building from the footpath into the building. Courtyards feature heavily as ways of the building being broken into little neighbourhoods within the building. The big Sports Hall had to be positioned so that it wasn't so dominant and yet you know we’re not apologetic for it. And then so this very strong idea of scale as well which we will talk about again later and the idea of distorting scale, which civic buildings do and they do it you know clearly on purpose for gravitas, for effect. You know most of our work has been like not new buildings, you know, they're basically reworking you know existing sites and there's new bits and there's old bits and they come out somehow got it all come together again so that's kind of what we do.

Fleur Watson: Which kind of perhaps brings us to the early 2000s and looking at Victoria University law school and the idea of you know that wonderful concertina top if you like, and ideas that you talk about in terms of companion building. So this earlier ideas of civic generosity and the public realm, and now moving into this idea of the companion. Describe that process and that project through the lens of this idea of the companion.

Peter Elliott: Well the building like, the first thing in the job was the former Records Office, which is a, I think it's called French Second Empire and it's sort of like a big fruit cake it's just an amazingly powerful building for such a modest sized building. And out the back was the old strong room so it was all where all the public records were kept. So the two tasks were very clear one was getting back the core of the beautiful interiors in in the original front building. And then a new law library to be on the back building. And so the early ideas for it were this idea of the folded form of the building, which had really, we'd already tried it Ballarat Botanic Gardens with the Robert Clark Centre which is a crystalline glass Glass House, but it had that same kind of really strong tectonic form where the shape of the of the building both on its outside on its inside are the same. So you know the crumpled form and the fact that the wall on the roof are the same. It really was a bit of a revelation to find this idea that this is more about a piece of sculpture than what you would call like a normal building. And as soon as the model was made with this crumpled form on it struck us as just being that companion. And you know we talk about companion architecture as - and this is as old as history of architecture - is that the new building or the alteration has to find a comfortable or whatever or a relationship of some form with the existing building. And in that sense the companion doesn't always mean it's a good companion it can be a you know an awkward companion, but it's got to form some relationship. And so what's nice about the building is it is a Jack In The Box, it looks like maybe it's sprung out of the heavily rusticated base building. O has someone squashed it, you know basically it was a taller building that's been pushed down. And so this kind of ambiguity is very purposeful like you don't know how many floors are in the building, and for me this is kind of like the great lesson from the Baroque Period of architecture which we might talk a bit about later when we get to traveling. But it's the sense of distorting scale and amplifying scale. So that in this case the crumpled form the lack of reading of it being our normal building but it being a little piece of sculpture that can sit in relationship to the other quite powerful building, is kind of why it's much loved I think and it's one of our favourite projects.

Fleur Watson: So that kind of urban infrastructure scale, where we're seeing again this idea of civic generosity and you know really bringing something to the public realm, we're going to talk about other projects in a moment but I just want to bring you back to talking about the idea of heritage. And you know it always seems to me that you have quite a different take on what it is to work within a Heritage context and particularly in this idea of how adaptive reuse - which is a term we hear a lot now - how that can help us really start to think through and make contribution to the future of the city through the way you approach heritage. Can you talk about that in a little bit more detail?

Peter Elliott: We kind of judge architecture from the, you know already from the intrinsic qualities of what you find in the place or the building or the environment and it's not it's almost as if well, let's not even worry whether this is actually a Heritage listed building or not, our attitude comes much the same. And it's partly born out of all of the early experiences, the practices were working on little projects which actually had to had to make do with that sort of thing, they weren't big projects. But we learned Melbourne Uni in particular that idea of the host building be whatever it is suddenly then having to take on a new changed use and a and a re-thinking is that you know a blank brick wall suddenly puts a window in, or a door becomes a little plaza, or you're at a stair to a roof. These little tiny manoeuvres have re-calibrated the building and its urban setting and that was a huge lesson for us because it said well you can work in a very modest way and still make quite a big impact. And so for us there’s the idea of buildings having intrinsic quality and us having to find them. And sometimes we don't do much sometimes we're quite drastic and radical and transformative but nearly always it's this kind of mix between keeping the best of what you have and then finding where you put the new things and sometimes that's not much and sometimes it's a completely new building next to it or on top of it or underneath it, and so it's this kind of robust connection between generations that we don't just eradicate history. And for me someone like Carlos Garpa was the great lesson in this. His ability to strip the building of the unnecessary things, retain the beautiful things, and then add new insertions into the building in a way that you both get the benefit of a new building. But you also get the reading of the prior histories of the building. And for us that's the secret really is that our cities, our better cities are not constructed from scratch they're actually generation upon generation, and that there is collective memory, there's histories there that that can be heightened. And this is not just in buildings but in urban form as well and so for me this more the tinkering the gradual change the lots of little things, they're the telling things that actually make great cities and the things that people are attracted to, as well as the big things, but you know for me that idea that as architects we can work at that more modest scale and still have an incredible impact is kind of where we positioned ourselves and where our kind of built experience is it's just through doing the work. You do the work, you learn what you do, it reinforces things, and then all of a sudden it just becomes almost automatic. That's just a way of working.

Fleur Watson: And through this experience and we talked earlier about the fact that you often describe yourself as a deeply Melbourne architect, but you've also talked about that you \ have a an eye overseas as well and I know that from talking with you,  and hearing you speak and write, that travel is an incredibly important part of your experience. So can you talk a little bit about the importance of traveling in those experiences on your practice and how that shaped some of these ideas.

Petetr Elliott: Yeah it's very important in the development I think, for me as a younger architect, is that perspective, and particularly when you're working in the public realm I generally don't know who the client is. Like we'll be building for people we don't know, you know, people on the street or people using a building in a way. So ,and being self-taught, I guess I've just learned powers of observation and the enjoyment of learning through, both through just first-hand experience as I said before, as well as travel, they've been the great teachers for my own personal development. And a lot of this is a bit subliminal, you know it sort of come, I'm not an overly reflective kind of guy but I think various things like you know, doing a master's, writing books, um having to talk about your work, does force you to be reflective. And it's been you know really quite interesting in more recent years after you know, what, nearly five decades of work that there are clear threads there that came from ideas I wasn't so aware of to begin with and have become very apparent now. So some of the, the architects of influence for me have essentially been what I call those of breadth, you know they're the people who are not just architects. In fact some most of these never even trained as architects, so Joseph Plečnik in particular, even Scarpa Louis Barragan in South America. Nut they're the people that I could see what my interests were, and some of them I only saw three books, like Barragan, I've never seen his work in real life. It doesn't matter in a way because I can see what I need from the books, the lessons are there. And for me books and travel have just been this enormous reservoir of inspiration and learning. And so to go and experience Italy early on was a revelation you know, uh, in particular the hill towns and ideas about the way the Italians just so effortlessly make a village fit in the land form. So what we now call, what I now call, topographic architecture, which is this idea that architecture in the terrain are sort of become one of the same. So we talk about that quite a lot in in the more recent work about this incredible connection between the form of a city or a town and the individual architecture sort of being one and the same. Instead of the idea of just in building individual buildings it's this idea that we build in a more complete environment. And so that breadth of design culture, that intent and idea that you spread between landscape Urban Design and architecture is kind of the sweet spot for me. And the other interesting one was the Baroque, I mean I'm hardly, you wouldn't describe me as a baroque architect by any stretch. And yet the lessons there were very much the idea we talked about before of amplification of scale and distortion, and the exuberance and the drama that's created. And there are many ways architecturally to do that it doesn't have to be through decoration, there's many other ways that it can happen. And Motta in Sicily is one of my favourite towns because it got destroyed in the late 17th century by an earthquake and got rebuilt in the Baroque style, but to a Greek gridded plan. So in that sense it's quite unusual in the way that the town plan, which was kept, had these quite robust Baroque buildings sitting in a very formal town plan, and the way in which as you walk your way -  it's sort of dug in the side of the hill - so as you walk your way through the town one minute you're on a staircase next, minute you're at a Belvedere, next minute you're on top of the roof of another building. And so that idea that you know, the building, the terrain, the staircases, the terraces, the Belvedere, the logia, are all the town. And individual buildings kind of almost don't matter. And so that's the big revelation, that both between the manner of the Baroque and the way that they could manipulate - and also control view, this this idea that that in Urban Design we don't get to design whole new cities but we get to manipulate parts of it, and that idea that you can orchestrate a view and create a piece of theatre is very much what I learned from the Italian town. In parallel with that is Joseph Plečnik, who's a Slovenian architect probably not that well… I learned about him through a book that was lent to me, and it described what was called an episodic journey around Ljubljana. And Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, it's a beautiful little University Town. And Plečnik was again this kind of polymath of a man, he was the city planner, he was an urban designer, an architect, he designed religious um material. And so he this idea of little urban interventions - which is what he is called the master of - was exactly where we'd been working. And when I first went to Ljubljana in 2000, it was already like two decades of work behind me, to find what Plečnik had been doing, and the interesting thing was that when you walk around you don't know where his work stops and starts. And yet your this idea of the journey around the town is incredibly cleverly worked out where in a little staircase, a little terrace, it's turned one way to control a view, you go through an old arch and he places another sort of little Roman pyramid or something. And so it's this idea of just many little components that make up urban fabric that he's just placed and manipulated in in the manner of orchestrating you know a piece of theatre.

Fleur Watson: We'll come to the 20 years that you've been working on the RMIT projects in a moment, but drawing on those kind of lessons and experiences of Plečnik and Scarpa and Barragan, but also your extensive career at this time and the various projects we've reflected on, seems to me all of those ideas around topographic architecture, urban acupuncture, civic generosity, are really coming to manifest in this place where we are today. So we're here at Victorian Parliament, we're very close to the members Annex of which of course is a seminal project for your project, you won the gold medal and the Victoria architecture medal for this project in 2019. S I'd love you to talk us through this project and reflecting back on all those influences and the projects that we've spoken about. How are they, how do they manifest in this seminal work, but also how did this particular context allow you to push them further, to advance those ideas further?

Peter Elliott: I got lucky I think. I mean I think for any architect to work in this environment is just a dream, and I think for me, a late career architect having described those things we've just been talking about, this was the perfect job. And it was hard fought, like I think we were interviewed, it took months to sort out the selection of the architect and in the end we were appointed. And so the first founding ideas were around the idea of the courtyard, and the topographic building. So and because it's being built in a garden, it makes complete sense that it has to deal with the Heritage Garden. And so what it does in two forms is allow the perimeter 19th century garden to flow into this large central courtyard and then the 100 percent of the roof becomes an Australian garden of a low scale because we don't want to interrupt the view. And so it is a hundred offices, all identical. Each office is got a beautiful view either of the courtyard or the perimeter, and so the language of the building is quite simple but it does deal with the idea of the civic and the legacy of important civic buildings in a, in the manner that it couldn't be exuber-, it couldn't be overstated because you know people are going to criticize it for being you know too lavish for politicians. So it had to strike that right balance between a building that's there for a hundred years, appropriate for its use, and its language, and its message, I guess, and yet not overcook it. And so all the experiences we've been talking about, plus you know one of my favourite buildings in Melbourne is the Yunken Freeman Catholic Diocese building at the back of St Pat’s. Which is exactly all of those same things we've been talking about, the topographic building, it's got a roof garden that you can walk on, it's got Courtyards cut into it, it deals with the transition between the street and the building, and it doesn't dominate you know the beautiful Saint Patrick's building. It's got all the lessons that you know a building in this same situation needs to um deliver as well. So whilst it's not the same, it does build on this idea that the lessons through architectural history, particularly those buildings that demonstrate you know the great qualities of civic architecture, then that's what we do. And I guess, you know, people have observed I'm quite a clear thinker. I'm quite strategic in the way we think about our architecture and the way we represent it and the story and the narrative that you tell to the client so they come on the journey with you. And in this case they had to come on the journey. This is, you know, quite a radical thing to build a building of that size in a heritage garden and satisfy you know the numerous people that are going to be looking over it. So it's, uh, it's language architecturally is in two parts. One is the perimeter which is what we call the kind of ramparted garden wall. So it's sort of like just a bluestone plinth effectively, one story high. And the courtyard is cut out in the middle which is two stories high. But you don't realize that when you're in the courtyard because it's part of the way the land form is integrated back into the garden, it just feels like part of the terrain. So there is that sense that all of the great traditions of architecture, whether it's sort of local or International, are kind of found their way into this building and it's very pleasing to work on projects of that kind of importance.

Fleur Watson: So Peter let's talk about your book ‘Episodic Urbanism’, which really charts around about 20 years of work at RMIT University, but really positions the University campus as a kind of contributor to the city, very much part of a living breathing city. And this seems to me a really fundamental idea across your work but particularly within this specific context. So talk us through those 20 years and how those parts and connections started to add up to the whole.

Peter Elliott: Mmm. 20 years it does seem extraordinary and I think it's not uncommon in our practice to have clients of that length of time. And I think it shows something about the way we work, but also the good fortune that you get to work in the same environment and build a body of work in in an unusual arrangement. We think of RMIT as you know the great city campus, so it proudly always felt like it didn't need a central campus, it just scattered through the city, it's kind of what its identity was. When it became a university in the early 90s… 92 I think, then it was a kind of reawakening of well who are we and what is the campus and you know what might that mean into the future. And this time having spent, what 15 years teaching there, and my masters as an alumni, it uh it became apparent that the place needed a complete rethinking. And Leon van Schaik to his great credit started this idea of employing local architects and those that had had connections to RMIT in particular. So I witnessed the Edmond and Corrigan building eight and the Ashton Raggat McDougall Story Hall which really changed Melbourne, changed Swanson Street, changed the University. And I think there was a fear early on that the Chancellor of the time wanted to just brick pave the whole place. You know, people realised that the campus was terrible and something needed to happen, but it wasn't going to be brick paving. So the early parts of the project were very, um, week by week, day by day,  until we sort of built this idea of the larger picture of the urban campus. And one of the most important things that happened was John Jackson who was at that time the head of Finance for the University, when David Beanland the vice Chancellor went on holidays he bought a high-rise car park in Cardigan Street, you know. And what that allowed was for the campus to become pedestrianized and it meant that all of the cars could be removed from the campus and that was the single most important thing to create the right circumstance for shifting the campus from this terrible car-ridden environment into a beautiful network of laneways and streets and squares and little courtyards which has become today. So once that had happened it was then all the lessons we've been talking about before about slowly chipping away and I think early on we took out more things than we put back, so it it's what we often call you know urban editing. It's the idea that in among the mess there are good things. And when you take the mess away and reveal the original kind of building forms and structures then, then that's a really good starting point to reinvest in the campus. We couldn't rebuild the whole thing, so often the budgets were modest. But they were sort of cleverly used to get the best out of what was already there. And I think it's the lesson about you don't have to be radical in what you do, you just have to be clever and thoughtful in the way that you begin to reorchestrate the campus around a place for people. And so what I love about it is that every bit of the journey, the episodic journey that you might do - like the Plečnik idea - is that every space is different, every space has a different what we call urban role. So some are courtyard, some are formal spaces, some are passages. And most of the buildings didn't - they had a back stair, like you know RMIT, it’s a rat run. Basically people sneak between buildings - and so much of the work was reorientating buildings giving them a new back front door, new stairs, new lifts, new relationship to laneways and to Open Spaces. And then particularly the locked up part of it, the old legal precinct, the old police garage, magistrates court, city watch house and what we call the Belvedere, which is the terrain in between the two, and opening those up and integrating them into the city and to the campus.

Fleur Watson: So universities generally, whether that's at Melbourne University or RMIT or even now Monash, have been a really important part of your practice and your life, and beyond your built contribution it seems to me that you are very committed to the idea of architecture as a cultural pursuit, and that teaching and scholarship, research, is very much part of who you are as an architect. Can you talk about that importance and that kind of idea of, of course, the great pleasure and gift is to build the buildings, but how that folds back into whether it's writing, or teaching, scholarship, research?

Peter Elliott: Right from the very beginning it was the good fortune of immediately on graduating, after all the ‘hoo-haa’, the fuss of you know try to reinform reform the university and the architecture course, was the opportunity to start as a design tutor like from day one. So there was a sense that the university needed to employ the younger generations, and for me this has always been the most important thing, that the best about Melbourne is the multiple generations that help each other and that communicate each other, and for me now, I don't do so much teaching anymore. Because it's a time for the next generation. So this idea that you, that you build um architectural knowledge through multiple generations and the experiences they have is just fundamental to you know why Melbourne is as good as it is in its architectural culture. Teaching, I mean it was a bit scary to start with, I didn't really know how to do any of that. But it, the revelation of it is that not only are you working with young minds and you're bringing to the table what you what your experiences are, but you're also trying to get out of out of them. And then there's the comradeship and the community of the teaching environment which to me has been fundamental to me as a young architect. And many in the town, like three years at Melbourne Uni and then a year off,  and then ending up at RMIT, started teaching with Howard Raggat, Ian McDougall, Norman Day. You know like there was just this incredible interesting collection of very diverse people both in personality type, and their manner of architecture, and it was robust. Like it was argumentative, it was I guess all the things that you know, we know we know about you know Melbourne architecture. So this is all self-reinforcing, I just think scholarship, teaching, practice, advocacy, they're all the things that make for a more complete human being and one that makes a much better bigger contribution. So for me I can't separate them, you know they're just so woven into me as a person and the experiences that I have, and the view that you have of the world is reinforced through all of those kind of cross fertilizations that happen.

Fleur Watson: And it brings me to the question of mentorship within your own office, because your office is well known for staying at a particular scale. But also having people that work with you for a very long time and part of that seems to me at least that it is about the mentorship that you bring to your office and also perhaps, of course with architectural knowledge and design being at the absolute forefront, but perhaps coupled with that ability to manage people, to work with people, to bring out the best in people, as well as a kind of acumen of how to run a practice. Would that be a kind of fair assessment? How do you think you approach mentorship in your office?

Peter Elliott: So the idea that the office is small is very purposeful. It's resisted, you know, early on - not so much more recently - but early on ideas of growing like all my mates did you know a sort of boom-and-bust kind of practice idea just didn't appeal to me, and so I just stuck it out. And thankfully because what it's done is create this quite beautiful workplace environment where you know the workplace for us is very important, that it's almost family, you know like, people in the practice we have very low turnover of staff. People are drawn to it because of the quality of the work environment and I guess the nature of the work that we do. So I think it's important that the workplace be a supportive place and a place of learning. And I now find you know as a sort of old guy that I get so much inspiration out of the different generations, the different skill bases in the practice, we can't do what we do alone. And so early on I found that quite hard as a young architect but as time's gone on, being at it so long, I've learned you know the importance of building skill within the practice and reinforcing confidence in everybody through quiet mentorship. I say we lead by example.

Fleur Watson: So Peter we're almost coming to the end of our time together, but I think it's really important that we reflect just for a moment on the fact that in 2017 you won what is Australia's highest honour for any architect the AIA gold medal. And the gold medal is awarded to an architect who makes an outstanding contribution through a collection of projects throughout his career and his practice. So looking back on that achievement, what do you think are a few moments that have perhaps brought you the most personal satisfaction in that journey over what is manually nearly five decades?

Peter Elliott. Yes. I feel really fortunate to have been an architect, I, the very first thing we started talking about was you know being a young boy at the age of 12 and realizing, you know, what the future might be. And to get to that point now and still enjoy what I do and reflect back on the last five decades, it's very satisfying. I feel like it's hit the sweet spot for me as a as a person, that I've had a really interesting career and it's been life-affirming, I think. The opportunity to build in the public realm, I mean you've seen, we've discussed the types of projects that we've been working on, but it's more than that. It's more that it's the larger conversation about cultural endeavour, design traditions, working with people. I've met some amazing people, inspirational people, both within the profession and clients and colleagues as well. And the office, I get to work with amazing people, I'm inspired every day by the skill of, and devotion to architecture that that we find in Melbourne in particular, but in my own experience. So it's been a great journey, I've loved it. And I think you can't know what the future would be for a practice like ours. It's a very demanding profession, and to have survived as long I think it's a reinventing. I think the decades for me of just rolled past, and if you don't adapt and find a new way of thinking and working then you're probably not going to survive so I feel fortunate I've got that sort of personality and drive I suppose that's given me that opportunity to kind of reinvent myself and keep it rolling.

Fleur Watson: Well Peter it's been such an incredible time to spend with you today and to reflect on those nearly five decades of your valuable and really important contribution to the city of Melbourne and well beyond. Thank you so much for your generosity today.

Peter Elliott: Oh thank you Fleur, it's been a pleasure talking with you.

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