Among architect Andrew Maynard’s proudest work is his CV08, the suburb-eating robot. It’s a conceptual structure designed to consume and recycle the Australian outer suburbs – predicted to be abandoned and decay with the demise of cars as the world runs out of oil – before the robot terra-forms the earth with native flora and fauna. While much of his work packs a socio-political or environmental statement, the Melbourne-based architect eschews the label ‘green’, given its commercialisation in recent times. For Maynard Architects, being green is simply intrinsic to good design. The media has painted Andrew as something of a wonder-kid of his profession, having started his practice at a youthful 27. Online design blog Inhabitat has perhaps put it best: “Maynard’s work offers a flash of illumination toward the next generation of smart, compact, elegant home design. Each project begs a long, awe-inspired look and makes the future look like a very nice place to live.”
His ecologically aware designs come, perhaps, from somewhere quite innate, given his upbringing in our southernmost state. The Tassie lad grew up with the proposed Franklin Dam and subsequent protests, not to forget politician Bob Brown’s rise to prominence, playing out on television. He recalls asking his kind-of-right-of-centre dad what it was all about. “Just some hippies causing trouble,” Andrew recounts, laughing. While his parents don’t necessarily share his political views, he says his mum remains his biggest fan. She encouraged Andrew’s early aptitude for drawing as he, inspired by the Star Wars visions of George Lucas and cartoons of Frank Miller, sketched his way around Australia as the family travelled with their salesman father.
This proclivity saw Andrew enrol in architecture at the University of Tasmania, a school with a natural emphasis on the environment. It’s no surprise to learn that this livewire was extremely studious in those days, putting in a lot of hours rather than spending time in the pub like everybody else. Importantly for Andrew, most weekends he’d head into the wilderness, a short drive into the secluded Western Tier, to redeem his catharsis – standing atop a mountain and “being able to see only the Indian Ocean on one side and mountains, forests and not a single thing made by man on the other”.
In his final year of university, Andrew and a friend won an architecture competition (the first of many wins and awards) for which the prize included a trip overseas. Travelling to parts of Europe and the US allowed Andrew to see in the flesh some of the work that he’d studied so hard on paper, such as that of Le Corbusier, “to see the scale of thought that went into the work, and feel the beautiful care and detail,” Andrew explains.
Referred to as a “young powerhouse of talent”, among many other exalted descriptors, Andrew explains that starting his own Fitzroy-based practice came down to the fact that he’s always struggled with working for other people and being constrained creatively by the 9-to-5 routine. After dipping his toe in a couple of firms in Melbourne and returning from a stint in London with enough pounds to last him six months, Andrew decided to force himself to become unemployed. “You’ve got seven days a week; what are you going to do with them?”
Since starting Maynard Architects in 2002, his team of six has built up an exciting and diverse portfolio. Andrew’s practice is not inhibited by building type, but rather navigates residential, retail and commercial arenas and is rich in envelope-pushing conceptual designs. Until recently, the firm’s ratio of conceptual versus built design was 80/20, but they have started building a lot more, nowadays designing mainly houses. Whether it’s an inner-city house in Melbourne or a theoretical protest shelter designed to draw attention to logging in Tasmania’s Styx Valley Forest, Andrew’s designs are at once well-conceived, playful and edgy. There seem to be no bounds to his creative energy.
Andrew’s rationale for shunning the idea of green being a trend is pragmatic and falls back on the first premise of good architecture – to get your orientations right. “You try to maximise your passive solar gains by facing north … this is a pretty simple tactic to make some really wonderful places for living that is also by its very nature environmentally friendly,” says Andrew.
He explains his frustration at the commercialisation of the environmental movement, or businesses rebranding as green. “We see so much ‘green washing’ out there. When people start knocking up the same old buildings they used to put up and instead of putting air-conditioners on the outside they chuck on solar panels or a wind turbine. And of course there’s more consumption and processing of materials in all this technology,” he laments. “If we actually did less – if we just reused materials and used low-embodied energy materials and got the fundamental premise of how we lay out our buildings right, we’d probably do a lot better than all of these high-tech materials and technologies.” Other simple, sustainable aspects of the firm’s design work include water harvesting and sourcing local materials wherever possible.
The biggest practical challenges Andrew faces tend to be council restrictions and the inevitable clash between the natural orientation of an inner-city site – where most of their work is currently located – given the Melbourne grid, and trying to orientate the house facing north. But Andrew relishes these challenges, and says the constraints lead to some pretty interesting ideas.
For a long time Andrew was more interested in conceptual design and an “uncompromised concept”. But his practice is now at a point where they’ve put out enough challenging ideas (or “silly ideas”as Andrew puts it, not one to take his work too seriously) that the clients they attract do not want the standard response and are looking for something grounded in rationalism. He is his own harshest critic (trained as architects are to be very critical). “I’ll design and then we’ll get a builder on board and by that stage I learn to hate the design, but then once the frame starts going up again, I start to see it in the flesh and start to fall in love with it again. It’s a long, cerebral process.”
In Andrew’s sketchpad, success is one of those dangerous words. “I’m doing OK,” he contemplates. “There’s an expectation being built up by the media that I’m quite nervous we can’t live up to. We’re just earnestly plodding along trying to build a practice that we find interesting, and other people find interesting.”
While the 30-something reflects that he’s still young for the profession and constantly evolving as a designer, he offers these words of wisdom: “Live like a student for as long as possible.” He continues, “A student’s lifestyle is typically fun, carefree, adaptable, inexpensive, debt-free and importantly sustainable. After our student years we typically earn lots of money, we become entrenched by the things we own, we become sedentary, riddled with debt, less adaptable and our environmental footprint grows incredibly large. You’ll never be as low impact, nor as sustainable as when you were a student.”
Interview by Sally Brown
