A JOURNAL OF JOURNEYS

“First an imaginist, second an architect”

i

The Love of Hospitality

When I was 12 and on a family vacation at the then, Regent of Fiji Resort, I was captivated by the transformation of how the resort changed from day to night. The shift of dramatic lighting and mood. How different spaces were during the day and the rapid metamorphosis that played out after sunset. How the spaces were more dynamic and dramatic through colour and movement. I was in awe. Bula !  This was the exact moment I knew hospitality would be my life's journey.

ii

Impression of Theatre

As a teenager, I recall my first outing to West End in London, theatre district. I was in awe with the pageantry of the process. The lights and energy, colour and sounds of the arrival sequencing. The fanfare and jockeying of to take one's seat. The dimming of lights. The focus of the audience. The silence was as powerful and the orchestral score. The actors captivated and moved me.

For that poignant time across those scenes of visual and sensory pleasure, I was taken by the power of theatre. The craft of captivation and storytelling. I was in the moment as the audience but moving along the same journey as the actor. Theatre was the process of storytelling that would forever influence my design process.

iii

Cluster Planning

Throughout my architecture and design studies, I was fascinated how spaces can be resolved creatively. I had a penchant  to give more than one purpose to objects; function & beauty, always trying to be the hero. In studying tight spaces, the requirement of multiple uses support efficiency, flexibility and adaptability. 

iv

Value of Emotive Design

As a young design student I was requested to attend a place of worship for a specific event. My observations were interesting.  I wondered whether the emotions being displayed by the large gathering of people around me where a result of the event itself, or was the architecture and interior design contributing to such emotional out pour.  "What was the role of design to bring about such expression?"  Interestingly, the more I believed that the design of the space amplified the senses, it then opened a plethora of thought; what other building typologies could I would seek to explore and see if any resounding or emotive equivalent could be found.  A journey I am still very much on...

v

Power of Dreaming

Life before the internet was not a bad place as a child. I would be a passenger on long drives with my parents across the desert and outback of Australia.  I recall the hours spent staring out the side window watching the never ending flat and repetitive terrain of the brown, sunburnt landscape of the country.  I would entertain myself through imagination.  Faces made in formations of trees.  Exaggeration of scale of land formations.  Shapes created through long streaky shadows made around sunset.  The stories conjured were all setting a foundation of future imagination; a Dreamscaping of sorts...  That era of analogue imagination continuously drives me in today's technology based era.  "If you cannot entertain yourself, how do you expect to entertain others?"