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Aaron Roberts and Kim Bridgland forged a shared perspective on social issues and interests as pertaining to the architecture industry, first as Masters students and later as co-workers. Realising their aligned intentions led the pair to found Edition Office, with the Melbourne-based practise gaining accolades for their forward-thinking projects, particularly those that are residential, ever since.
Beyond meticulous design, Roberts and Bridgland have a multifaceted and highly considered approach to their work, perceiving not just the aesthetic and function of a project but it’s cultural impact and significance, too. They aim to influence positive change on the people that interact with and are inevitably influenced by the spaces they create.
Counting collaborations with artists such as Daniel Boyd and Yhonnie Scarce as some of their most significant professional privileges to date, Roberts and Bridgland look to continue working with creatives from other disciplines, while seeking opportunity to broaden their portfolio with other building typologies. Read on for more about their industry vision, goals, and how they maintain the day-to-day running of Edition Office!
See more projects from Edition Office on Yellowtrace here.
Hawthorn House, Victoria (2016). Photography by Ben Hosking.
+ Hello Aaron and Kim, welcome to Yellowtrace! Could you give us a quick introduction on yourselves and the path that lead you to establish Edition Office?
We met while studying our Masters together and although we were both at different places in our own lives at the time, we soon came to realise that we had a shared set of interests and influences, both cultural and architectural. Several years later we began working together in a previous practice with different roles and responsibilities yet over a relatively short period these shared influences and concerns for a more thoughtful output led to stronger collaborations between us within the practice. We felt the need, or perhaps the possibility, to have a public voice on social and cultural issues with the design and architecture industry in Australia and wanted our work to begin to speak to some of these concerns. There came a point at which we felt we needed to take a leap and begin a new studio together in order to clarify our intent and to practice architecture in our own particular way, hence the founding of Edition Office.
Point Lonsdale House, Victoria (2016). Photography by Ben Hosking.
+ What is your main priority when starting projects? Is there something that is fundamental to your practice – your philosophy and your process?
We begin each project with the understanding that no matter what we decide to pursue in terms of a design framework, the outcome will always in some way be both a political and cultural gesture. This is because any project will exist within a landscape which has a colonial legacy that is yet to be resolved; will exist within a spectrum of wealth inequality; will exist within a deeply destabilised climate; and will also exist within a culturally loaded space, because we as the people who interact with buildings have a wonderful capacity to project and to generate meaning and significance in everything that surrounds us.
It may not be the project’s purpose to explicitly engage with these issues, but we know going in that they will be embedded within the final outcome. This is how we have come to see architecture as a kind of modifier, as an element that will have a reciprocal influence on its place and on the people that interact with and experience it. We then begin with a review of what might be possible within a particular typology and aim to create a refined framework within the architecture, reviewing how it can be used, how it’s experienced and how it’s viewed, and consider design outcomes that address a positive change. This is what I would call our baseline for starting any new project, however there are of course many influences and points of inspiration which breathe life into our work and allow them to find their own personality.
Our broader design process includes documentation of each project in a particular way where by each project is seen as a new edition to our total body of work, which adds to an ongoing archive. Each project includes a series of elemental components, important in relation to cataloguing within the archive; a key site portrait, a model and a diagram, each of which aim to capture an essential aspect of the project, which also reminds us that each project has different truths, and different ways of being seen. Projects can be complex, whether large or small, and obviously not everything can be captured through this method, however we feel it’s important to represent the work in this way to enable particular readings of a project within the studio. These readings are to enable an understanding of a key intent, or an experiential quality, or a unique attribute about a project. The Archive allows an ongoing cumulative review of the language we are using to enable the outcomes we seek through the architecture.
National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander War Memorial, Canberra (2018), in collaboration with Daniel Boyd. Photography by Ben Hosking.
+ For having only been established a few years ago, Edition Office has won an impressive series of awards and accolades. How do you foresee your practice evolving, and how do you approach growth and changes in the architecture industry?
We’re humbled and incredibly grateful by the industry support of our work over the last three years. Receiving recognition allows a growing confidence that there is interest in the way we are creating and thinking. Although we have only been established a short time, the two of us together with our excellent team have had many years of experience within the field of architecture, art and design which has enabled us to begin the practice with a very clear understanding of what we’d like to achieve, and also allows each project to begin with a clear intent.
We have established our practice on the creation of residential architecture and much of our earlier collective experience has been within this space. We have a great passion for this kind of work and in the wonderful intimacy and trust that is developed with our clients. We’re of course very excited to see these projects of domesticity continue and to evolve, however as the practice moves forward we are certainly interested in being involved in other typologies, particularly public or cultural buildings where there is an opportunity to interact with a broader community audience and allow our work to develop a stronger civic voice. Given this interest it’s likely the practice will evolve over time in a way to support larger scales of this kind of work. The architecture industry in our experience is always changing, adapting to social, cultural, political and environmental shifts. It is both an exciting and also urgent time to be practicing architecture, particularly given both the climate emergency and what we see as an increasing sensitivity and respect towards our indigenous culture, the traditional owners of the land in which we practice.
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