Five components. One live bid.
- 1 · ContextWhy the practice has to change, and what it's short of.
- 2 · Brief and clientYou, the directors, as the client. What you need, and where we can go.
- 3 · Site, verifiedOur own timesheets, and tonight's site read in minutes.
- 4 · One elementA crit room for the new school: modelled, drawn, then visualised.
- 5 · Document systemA full bid, written live from your picks while I talk.
- CloserWhat the practice commits to. What I commit to.
We've seen where the hours go
On the Sydney Revival School homes, through occupied works, design time went to paperwork.
We already change things
We kept the wing at Brushbox. We can keep our design time too.
Everyone has the same tools
The practices that win will have the time to use them well.
Architecture isn't short on tools.
It's short on time to think.
You choose the bid.
Made in the Middle
Art made in the middle of the culture. A school in the middle of the city. Learning in the middle of art practice.
01 The people
Who leads it
02 The partners
Who we bring
03 The precedents
What proves we can do it
I'm pressing go.
It reads the brief and your picks. It writes every section, citing its sources, nothing after the cutoff. Nothing is pre-written. Watch the corner while I talk.
The client is in this room.
Win the right work
Schools and homes we're proud of, bid for without a blank page every time.
Mood board: Sydney Revival School, Yindyamarra, Hearth.
Keep the design time
Our hours leak in design development and on site, not in the ideas.
Diagram: hours earned against hours spent, by stage.
Stay small on purpose
No new layer of management. The change is done by people who also design.
Diagram: one flat team, no new tier.
Where we can go: a practice that designs more and documents less.
No blank pages
Every bid starts from a draft written from the brief and our own notes. A person checks every line.
Hours, not days
Site reading in an afternoon. A shared detail library that every project draws from.
Time back where it earns
More of our hours in ideas, fewer in paperwork. Targets agreed with you, measured every six months.
At Brushbox, we earned 86% of the time we spent.
The practice's own records: invented for teaching, like the practice.
Tonight's site, read in minutes.
Site Layers-overlay 0.4 (draft) on 32 Phillip Street, Parramatta: a real run, 21 Oct 2026. Four layers from public data in about three minutes; 88 facts written to a register a person checks. Not a survey, a planning certificate or planning advice.
One element, resolved: the crit room.
A round timber room in the middle of the school: five spotted gum terraces, three aisles, a dome of battens to an oculus. Drawn from the model, then reviewed.
Sheet SK-501 P4, A0. Modelled in Rhino, drawn from the model, reviewed by KT for buildability. Invented for teaching; not for construction.
The crit room, four views. Rendered by AI from views of the Rhino model; people cast for a fine arts high school. The school and its students are invented for teaching.
Made in the Middle: a complete expression of interest, written while we talked.
From go to a full draft, in this room.
Written from the invented brief, the practice's own notes and public sources. Not a real submission.
The practice commits
- A protected half-day a week for every designer to learn the tools on real work.
- No project file leaves our systems. Every tool cleared by IT before it is used.
- We measure it: hours earned by stage, reviewed with you every six months.
- Directors sponsor it: one for design quality, one for the business case.
I commit
- I run our next bid through this system and publish the hours it took.
- Every tool is proven on a live project before the studio adopts it.
- By June 2027, two people can run it without me.
- If it hasn't earned its time back in six months, I'll say so, and we stop.