John Wardle | Principal
B Arch RMIT
M Arch RMIT
Registered Architect (ARBV)
Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects
Adjunct Professor School of Louis Laybourne-Smith of Architecture & Design, University of South Australia
John Wardle established John Wardle Architects in Melbourne in 1986. He has led the growth of the practice from working on small domestic dwellings to university buildings and large commercial offices.
John has an international reputation as a design architect and has developed a design process that builds upon ideas that evolve from a site’s topography, landscape, history and context and a client’s particular aspirations and values. The result is an architecture closely tailored to its place and highly experiential in nature.
The design of every project involves John at the conceptual phase, establishing ideas, discussing these with our clients and reflecting upon their response and conversation. His passion for detail and the inventive use of materials draws John into the ongoing development of initial ideas into a fully formed architectural work.
John has instigated collaborations with several important artists to create public art components for our projects with the strong support and involvement of our clients. The process of working with an artist has in every instance encouraged us to reconsider our building’s relationship to the public realm and has enriched our architecture in many ways.
John has been a visiting lecturer at Columbia University, New York, and lectures periodically at various universities across Australia. In 2005 he spoke at the EcoEdge Conference in Melbourne and in Wellington, New Zealand at the NZIA. He presented at the Dean’s Lecture Series 2006 at The University of Melbourne and at the RAIA National Architecture Conference in the same year. In 2007 he spoke at the World Architecture Congress in Shanghai. He has on several occasions served on RAIA Awards Juries at state and national level.
