Acclaimed architects and design commentators reflect on the cities, eras, inventions and trends that have inspired them.
Click through to read each individual interview:
Zaha Hadid
The internationally renowned founding partner of Zaha Hadid Architects was awarded the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2004. Hadid’s work over the past three decades was the focus of a 2006 retrospective exhibition at New York’s Solomon R Guggenheim Museum and featured at the Design Museum in London in 2007. Most recent commissions include Chanel’s Mobile Contemporary Art Containers in New York, Hong Kong and Tokyo, and the Zaragoza Bridge Pavilion in Spain.
Chris Bosse
Chris Bosse is the Asia Pacific director of LAVA (Laboratory for Visionary Architecture) and adjunct professor and innovation fellow at the University of Technology in Sydney. He was part of the consortium that designed the Olympic Water Cube in Beijing for the 2008 Games, which won the Atmosphere Award at the 9th Venice Biennale.
Steven Pozel
Steven Pozel is the director of Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design in Sydney.
Norman Foster
Foster + Partners has offices in more than 20 countries. Sir Norman Foster became the 21st Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate in 1999 and won the Praemium Imperiale Award for Architecture in 2002. Projects include 30 St Mary Axe (“the Gherkin”), London; the Reichstag, Berlin; and Beijing Airport.
Melinda Dodson
Melinda Dodson is principal architect with Canberra-based GHD. At 39, she is also the youngest-ever national president of the Australian Institute of Architects.
Stephanie Watson
Stephanie Watson is program director of the Australian International Design Awards, a division of Standards Australia
Craig Allchin
Craig Allchin is an architect and urban designer, director of Six Degrees and adjunct professor of design, architecture and building at the University of Technology in Sydney. He works across a range of scales, from individual buildings to city master plans in Australia, China and the Middle East.
Iain Halliday
Iain Halliday is a director of Burley Katon Halliday, an architectural and interior design practice with offices in Sydney and New York.
Neale Whitaker
Neale Whitaker is the editor-in-chief of Belle and associate publisher of ACP Magazines’ home and food group.
Junya Ishigami
Ishigami established junya.ishigami+associates in 2004. His works include Yohji Yamamoto’s Gansevoort Street store in New York (2008) and the Venice Biennale Japanese Pavilion (2008). Ishigami won the Architectural Institute of Japan’s Architectural Design Division prize for 2009.
Aaron B Schwarz
Architect Aaron B Schwarz FAIA has more than 30 years’ experience as a design leader for Perkins Eastman, a US architecture and design practice responsible for such notable projects as the TKTS Booth in New York.
Ken Maher
Ken Maher is a Sydney-based architect and landscape architect, and chairman of Hassell, Australia’s largest international multi-disciplinary design practice. He is professor of architecture at the University of NSW. In March he was awarded the Australian Institute of Architects 2009 Gold Medal.
Leanne Amodeo
Leanne Amodeo is editor of the architecture and design magazine Monument.
Source: Qantas The Australian Way July 2009