March Studio
Welcome to Office Talk, a fortnightly podcast featuring in-depth conversations with leading architects about their approach to business marketing and communications. I'm your host, Dave Sharp, an architectural marketing expert and director of Office Dave Sharp, a marketing practice offering specialized consultancy, marketing, and PR services tailored to meet the particular needs of architects. Visit office dave sharp.com to learn more or follow the practice on Instagram at officedavesharp. Joining me on the show today are Rodney Eggleston and Anne Laure Cavanu, the directors of March Studio, a Melbourne based practice known for its multi disciplinary approach to architecture, graphic design, interiors, and industrial design. In this episode, Rodney, Anne, Laura, and I discuss the influence their early years in Rotterdam had on their views about the role and value of design, and the unique ideas and approaches they brought back to Australia with them.
Dave Sharp:We spoke about why they've tried to avoid being typecast or tied to a specific stylistic approach or project type, and how you can position your practice to speak to a range of project types and scales. We looked at how they've designed their physical studio environment to encourage creativity and experimentation and the important role that physical model making, prototyping, hand drawing, and fabrication have played in their work. And finally, we discussed the importance their work on ASOP Stores has had on their practice, particularly from a learning and experimentation perspective, but also how they think about managing long term partnerships with a fast growing brand. So I hope you enjoy my conversation with Rodney and Anne Law from March Studio. Anne Laure and Rodney, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Rodney Eggleston:Thanks for having us.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Thank you for having us.
Dave Sharp:So let's talk about the history and go back to the early days. Can you tell us a little bit about, I guess, how the practice started? When did it all begin for March? Like, take us back in time.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Well, it all began officially in 2007 7 sorry. In 2007, but it had a bit of premise before that. Ronnie was a student, and I just recently graduate. When we came back to Melbourne, we started you had already a studio called Diatribe, which I joined, and started doing, you know, projects through that and literally explored what we would be interested, you know, as professional to become. And it was informal.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:It was not meant to professional, but slowly and surely it became professional as we were starting to have our first client. And our first client really was the kickoff of March altogether as pretty much is set up the frame of mind of what, you know, this bunch of people wanted to do. Some people left, some people stay, and then we changed form, which is just the name. We changed our track to Mars Studio, and we kept on what we were doing before. But until I knew I brought our names and pretty much with, the same spirit than today, I guess.
Rodney Eggleston:Just adding that, we met overseas in Rotterdam, a city that was obviously flattened in the 2nd World War. So quite a new city and a vibrant city. Dutch architecture and Dutch design in general was pretty big back then. You know, Rem Koolhaas had just won the Pritzker, and Drogue Design was everywhere. It was, you know, everyone wanted a bit of Dutch architecture.
Rodney Eggleston:So that sort of attracted us to Rotterdam. And, I was working for OMA and Anil was working for a graphic design agency called Animal. And, yeah, we met over there and I think that really also informed, a few ideas in in the way in which we go about our work that we brought back to Melbourne, and started in that studio environment.
Dave Sharp:What were the main sort of the Dutch architecture ideas and graphic design ideas that you guys feel like you transported back with you to Melbourne?
Rodney Eggleston:You know, design in general was holistic that it was, you know, through graphic design and, industrial design and architecture and interior. The Dutch were doing that really quite well. There was a sense of reuse. I mean, some of the Druig stuff was fabulous. They were taking old Bang and Olufsen, amplifiers and putting MP 3 players into them.
Rodney Eggleston:So sort of retrofitting these these great pieces of iconic design by ripping out the guts and putting something modern into it. So there was there was adaptive reuse in Rotterdam. There was, you know, crazy parties scene.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yes.
Rodney Eggleston:A lot of music, a lot of dancing, not much sleep.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:No. Not much sleep. There was some things that really we brought back, and I think it started to inform, you know, our first project is to see the beauty in the everyday object and really celebrating the utilitarisms as a form of design itself. And something that really Rotterdam at the time did wonderful is really merge different program without necessarily taking care of what was the parameters and create clash that was absolutely mesmerizing. And, that really blew our mind because, obviously, everything was so programmed and so restricted within the envelope of its own definition that we see so much freedom, to see so much, you know, experimentations.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Well, for us, that was just the beginning of maturation in a way.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. It was it was exciting. I think it would be a way of describing it. Sort of anything was possible and everyone there was living through design and architecture because they were passionate about it and wanted to be there. So, it was a great kind of melting pot.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:We came back, to Melbourne in 2, 000 and 5. I mean, you came back in 2004. I stay a little bit behind, exploring a bit of Europe and its possibilities. And, I arrived in Melbourne in 2005. And, we join I joined Diatribe.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:That was a student studio that was just above a tire shop called Bridgestone. It was just near was conveniently placed just near RMIT. So it was, obviously, you know, at the time, there was not a lot of desk available for students within the perimeter of the university. So it was a conveniently placed for people to come in and out. And And it was pretty much a 24 hours factories of anything and nothingness and everything.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:It was, we were 14 at the times part of this studio. And, yeah, it was just a very, very lovely civil place, you know, where we're sharing ideas, sharing, you know, research. It was very I mean, I really think of it as the fondest times.
Rodney Eggleston:It was a proper studio. So, RMIT didn't give the students any studio space. So unlike, you know, the European Universities or even Melbourne Uni, there was nowhere to do any work. And because we had to be in the city from usually, you know, 9 AM right through till, 7 o'clock at night because that's when RMIT's sort of tutors would finish working, come in, but other classes would be dotted throughout the day. Back then there was a drive to to rent, studio spaces and sort of split the cost up amongst a group of people.
Rodney Eggleston:Obviously it wouldn't be able to happen these days because the cost of rent is so high. But they were pretty, you know, pretty rundown places. We had I think, the Bridgestone 1 was our 3rd or 4th by that stage. And, you know, when Fed Fed Square went in, we had to move out of 1 because that area became kind of, you know, changed and the gas and fuel buildings came down. But yeah, they're pretty rough places, you know, lots of kind of rats running around, no heating.
Rodney Eggleston:I think Angela always refers to everything there was a potential ashtray. So people's coffee cups and pizza boxes. And it was they were great environments.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Back in the days where, you know, the long the long issue didn't exist.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. And we would we would sit around and debate. And, 1 of the guys there, Mark Reggett, was making a magazine called Support, so we'd help him with that. And it was a it was just a really great environment to be in, to to meet people and to collaborate with artists. We ended up making a gallery in the space.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:That that was probably, like, the the start of the inceptions of the I mean, the mentality of the studio with aspiration is because we realized the luxury of space that we had and all conveniently placed it was in the city. We saw and, like, a friend of ours, Humphrey Clegg. Sorry. Humphrey Clegg, was, you know, studying, creating and studying, creating, was working at the AGV at the time. And with him, was mature the idea of a gallery and kind of, a place where people could come and and work on a piece and then we'll have, you know, an opening for people who were interested.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:So we push the desk, we squeeze in on the side, and we build a wall. And that was the start of this idea that people will come in and we'll talk and we'll see how they do things and we'll analyze the technique, and we try to actually capitalize on the knowledge that we've learned from them and create something together. So, yeah, that that was the 1st days itself. And then we had a cinema club because cinema always been always been very important to us as exploring, you know, various universe, various possibilities. I mean, yeah, coming French French flop
Rodney Eggleston:It was design and art on all fronts. Yeah. And it was a passion. Yeah. And, hence, the word studio.
Rodney Eggleston:Like, for us, we don't use the word office, at all. A lot of architects do. It sort of gives a sense of kind of seriousness to it. Whereas for us, the studio is a place where you discover, you make accidents, you have fun, you stay late. Yeah.
Rodney Eggleston:You you love what you do, and you wanna do what you do because you wanna be doing it, basically. So that was the that was the premise in the beginning of all of that thinking.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. But the world studio is as serious as office, but I probably, put in the light a methodology. It's embedded in that word, that it's more than just 4 walls. There's things happening in there, and that's something that I mean, that's for something that we always try to foster, over the year of our practice to be able to actually have this methodology, you know, as literally all our DNA.
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Rodney Eggleston:Was there a
Dave Sharp:point where you felt like it started to take shape as a business, I suppose? Was it not really, like, at any point kind of viewed through that lens, I suppose? Like, it was just kind of exploring creativity and design and art and collaboration and across disciplines. Like, at any point, did it kind of start to narrow in and take the shape of, like, a a kind of a traditional kind of architecture and interiors sort of company, or was it never that boxed in? You know?
Rodney Eggleston:Big realization was getting into my op for the first time and trying
Dave Sharp:to Yeah. Okay. So that's probably the real cracker on the crux of the question. At what point did you get bookkeeping?
Rodney Eggleston:Remind yourself how to do it every 3 months. Yeah. That that was when I started thinking, oh, yeah. This is, this is now a business. But, I mean, I think that the design the design thinking hasn't really changed.
Rodney Eggleston:The the way that we approach the process, I think, is is unique to a lot of other offices. You know, we we don't sort of refer to our clients as clients. They're sort of collaborators and friends, you know, they become. So there is this idea of discovery and and the journey of the project, which we feel because it's so difficult to to do some of the projects, you know, any project, really. It's it's the emotional kind of toll, the financial, toll and and the time that goes into each project is immense.
Rodney Eggleston:So, we treat we try to treat them uniquely and and I think that they they end up being, a sort of non traditional, architect client builder relationship that's more about a collaboration. The successful ones anyway.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. And also, like, I mean, when we talk about exploring and and having fun, there's also a sense since the beginning of accountability. So in terms of, you know, the obviously, when you start having client, you you are responsible and, you know, you you word and and what you're going to deliver needs to be as strong as what you promised. So this is where you becomes the profession. So your professional because, obviously, you know, it has to be embedded in the real.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Gravity is your worst enemy. You know what I mean? So have to actually look at it with, you know, real eyes. And, of course, you know, you can dream a bit higher, but you need to always to measure, you know, obviously, how high you can dream and how realistic it is.
Dave Sharp:I think, like, what I am interested to explore in the conversation today is around, like, that unique kind of creative environment that you've created in your studio, which is, I think, really, like, unique and special, but also that relationship that you develop with clients over time, that collaborative relationship, and those 2 things that we'll definitely discuss some more. But I wanna kinda go to where you got that big client, where you started working with ASAP. And I'm I'm I'm wondering, like, how that kind of changed the setup and the operation of kind of what you were doing as a business. You know?
Rodney Eggleston:It's funny because it's it's the the notion of the big client. I mean, ASAP back then, we didn't even know what they did. We just knew that the place smelled really nice. So it's it wasn't the Aesop that sold for 3, 800, 000, 000 to L'Oreal that it was back then. It was just a, a warehouse that was next door to us on Bouverie Street next to the Bridgestone Tire Centre.
Rodney Eggleston:And, it was curious because the warehouse guys wore matching kind of, onesie overalls that were bright red and had a sub written on the back. But like most of our first clients, we we met, through, you know, having a drink and a smoke, and it was the warehouse guys that we were having cigarettes without the front that, were the first people that engaged and, you know, sort of they were asking questions about us, and we were asking questions about them. And we're like, well, who are you? What are you doing? Oh, we're a bunch of students that are all studying architecture and design and, you know, we we make soap.
Rodney Eggleston:Okay. Interesting. And, yeah, 1 day, there was a there was a graphic design crisis. Dennis had to change something quickly, and no 1 in Aesop could use Photoshop. So I was sort of that was the beginning of the conversation.
Rodney Eggleston:But, going back to your question about, you know, big clients, I think that from that point, every every project we take on always feels like another step, another step, another step, you know, and it's this this problem, well, not problem, but it's a it's a challenge in our industry. No 1 gives you a house until you've designed 1, and no 1 gives you a school until you've designed 1, and no 1 gives you a museum until you've designed 1. And so you're constantly having to punch above your weight and convince people, that you can do it by showing them other things that you can do. So I think I mean, it was a very natural relationship. And again, you know, we're still very friendly with Dennis, who started ESOP.
Rodney Eggleston:I think the way that we worked through it was was collaborating together and, you know, not overpromising. Sort of, you know, underpromising, overdelivering, and and working with the brand, to explore new horizons and take it into interesting and fun directions. And, we've been fortunate that we've been able to work with a lot of great people who can make the decisions. We sort of off the back of that, we were attracted to, you know, other kind of businesses. But unless you can speak to the person who's sort of running the show, it was invariably not the same result, not the kind of risk, not the kind of joy, not the kind of vision
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah.
Rodney Eggleston:That maybe some of these, you know, local companies that have a have a strong narrative, would be like if you went and worked for ESOP now, I'm sure it would be completely different to
Dave Sharp:Well, they were challenging their category. Right? And sort of, like, disrupting things I suppose as well. So there is that sort of appetite to be a bit more creative and take a bit more risk and be a bit more distinctive. Right?
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. Absolutely. And I think when you refer to big client, I will say more the big project, not necessary in size, but in the quality and intricacy that it can show your abilities. And, with Aesop at this time and especially with Dennis Bafetis, there was a real appetite, a real, enthusiasms that the next 1 will be better than the 1 president. So it was a so it was an exploration to to greatness.
Rodney Eggleston:And there wasn't there wasn't really any time to think either. So it was it was more about the act than it was about the strategy. And I think that that was quite liberating because, you know, there was this sort of instantaneous rollout, and we were flying around the world doing store after store after store. I think we had 3 or 4 on the go at any point in time. And it was awesome fun.
Rodney Eggleston:Like being able to just travel from Zurich to Singapore to New York and do it all through work, was incredible. And I think because there was no time to think it was quite, it was quite free and it was certainly quite liberating. I think these days there's a there's a manual, there's a playbook, there's a there's a kind of everything that we experienced back then has been now kind of put into a manual that, yeah, into a system to try to capture the same result, whereas,
Dave Sharp:we were
Rodney Eggleston:just we were just running.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:At the time, we were developing our own systems.
Rodney Eggleston:And that
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:is the thing. It was just between the locations and, obviously, it was it had to find source, a project from the ordinary or an object from, you know, your everyday life that will, you know, sing sorry, represent what was the the store about or give him a bit of personality. And from that, there was an exploration of how in masses or in repetition or subtractions, you could create an identity or a form sorry, an architecture form that will be interesting. But, of course, there were a lot of prototype development. There was the time for that.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:There was the appetite for that because through the eyes, you could see the in the the statue or the sculpture getting shaped. And it was, like, to try to find at the right moment, you know, okay. This is it. We've got the shape. How are we gonna make it a start of it?
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:And that was just so exciting.
Rodney Eggleston:The Flinders Lane store, the cardboard store was designed and built in, I think it was 2 and a half weeks. So there was this in in immense pressure of of time to get it out there because ASOP was hitting its straps in terms of people taking notice of the product. So it was about trying to get it out there as much as possible. And, you know, the cardboard store came from the fact that it had such a tight turnaround. Cardboard was about the only thing we could
Dave Sharp:You're like, what do we got on on hand at the time? Like,
Rodney Eggleston:let's go
Dave Sharp:to the dumpster from the factory.
Rodney Eggleston:Well, they had they had 5, 000 boxes.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. We just came back from it. We were doing it. That's actually how really it started because at the time we were doing this art, installation with children that was called Pen Plan, and it was literally creating 1 to 1 sculpture of, places and have children to come in and draw on the wood and reflect about what we'd be able to live into these places generally on the other side of the world. So we're literally having, you know, order on top from Vizzy inside of the office, you know, with, like, tons and tons of cardboard coming in and coming out.
Rodney Eggleston:Yes. So we were making 1 to 1 houses out of cardboard. So we were quite good at making models, and that was something I picked up at OMA was the ability to make a model. And then once you graduate out of, university, you sort of go, okay, well, what can we actually design and detail? And back then it was really, you know, the only thing we could make was things out of cardboard, like models.
Rodney Eggleston:So we've just they got bigger and bigger and bigger until they became 1 to 1. But there was this really interesting idea that ANLO brought to the project to take, you know, misconceptions and preconceptions of other cultures and to get children to then, you know, cover the replicas of a house manian prison apartment or a hutong courtyard house. And then the the kids would come in and sort of, you know, vandalize them, basically. It was it was good fun and it was a way of letting go and, you know, using design as a tool to set up a system that could then be distorted. It was something that we were always interested in with, you know, the way in which a city can organically grow or design is always better when it's not thought about.
Rodney Eggleston:There's, who's who's your favorite director? The South African guy, Kentridge.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Kentridge. William Kentridge.
Rodney Eggleston:William Kentridge always, when he's looking for inspiration, finds the most picturesque moment, and then he turns his back a 180 80 degrees to it and draws the opposite. So there's this idea of trying to use or draw or take inspiration from a system that is the opposite of what you would naturally go to that we've always found quite interesting. But, yeah, the cardboard then moved into an ESOP store. They saw all the cardboard coming up and down the stairs, and they're like, what are you doing with that? Do you reckon you could do us a store?
Rodney Eggleston:And that was where it all sort of began.
Dave Sharp:So at this point, you're kind of under the pump just getting sort of store after store out under pressure. I mean, as a practice, are you guys now obviously rushing to install MYOB with all these new invoices you're probably sending, but, like, suddenly going, oh my god. Do we need to hire 10 people? Like, what's happening here? Are you just getting suddenly this influx of attention on the practice, on the work you're doing, media coverage of the of the ESOP stores, which were, like, world famous for their design?
Dave Sharp:It's just like, what's that like? It's like Beatlemania a little bit. I know it's like more contained than that, but all of a sudden, it's really kind of taking off. Was it like that?
Rodney Eggleston:I mean, we were no. We didn't rush out and hire 10 people. We we used
Dave Sharp:Oh, good. We used
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:We always been a very small team for some reason.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. There was always a couple floating around. There was and it was, it was again a sort of continuum of the collaboration that was the studio model. So it wasn't Egleston, Cabineo Architects and Graphics. It was this idea of, using the studio as a collaborative environment.
Rodney Eggleston:So we had, you know, friends of ours who were helping us produce renders and we had Julian who was helping us work out how things went together. And, there was always still those debates, you know, around, a dinner about a better way of doing something. So it wasn't, it wasn't really, put into a system of, okay, how do we monopolize this and turn it into something? And in many ways we were still learning ourselves. So we were teaching ourselves, okay, how do we make a store out of glass bottles?
Rodney Eggleston:How do we make a store out of hoarding, you know, Swiss hoarding boards? So we were using each store as a way to learn about a material, and then make the entire store out of that 1 material. So, whether we were stacking timber or hanging paper or, looking specifically into material properties, we we just thought that it was an investigation into into that. And for us, it was a cathartic kind of learning process. The fact that it was getting international attention, we, we sort of understood it because we realized how different it was to anything else that was happening.
Rodney Eggleston:And we also, we knew and we thought mostly this was coming from the way Aesop was approaching everything holistically as a brand. So the fact that they didn't advertise, the fact that you didn't see, you know, a male model or a female model in any of their advertising, resonated, and it was it worked for everyone because, you know, 2 full pages in a wallpaper magazine, which would cost a £120, 000 at the time. We were getting them for free, and that was, you know, pushing the brand around the world. And architects and designers are, the great spreaders of, you know, new things, new cool things, and they they went into the right market and it it grew from there. But we were just we were just happy to be involved, to be honest.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. It was such I mean, it was a lot of fun. You're creatively inspiring and, obviously, you know, it's definitely also set us on our own journey and trajectory, but we realized very quickly or so. That as we were growing, like, the entire idea of to have a mojo and a motto or, you know, like, parameters was too early for us. And we we took sorry.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:How to say that? We we we we made a conscious decision to not to talk too much about us because first, because we were a studio. So there was many, many people of us, and there were no 1 really, like, that was more forefront than the other. And we didn't want to be perceived as this type of structure. And also because there was this idea that the work was more important.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:The work was the hero. And I wanted to talk about that, not about us. But the work should convey everything that the studio was about. And if you look into detail in every single project, there's plenty of, you know, talk things to talk about the studio. And that was a real conscious decisions to not have us as a poster poster people, but to have the the work being published in in the area where where we saw that belonged.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Not everywhere, Just, you know, with the people that we, you know, really respect, the critics.
Rodney Eggleston:I still take the bins out. And there was no PR strategy at all. And it was really just, you know, we were just reacting to what was being asked, but we, we tried to sort of anti brand ourselves as well because I mean, there was a bit of the thought that, hang on a second. We're going to go down as the, as the crew that just did Aesop Stores. A bit like when Frank Gehry designed that cardboard chair and then he pulled it because it was selling too well and he didn't want to go down as a furniture designer.
Rodney Eggleston:So we were conscious of of that becoming an issue moving forward. And in many ways, we then tried to actively separate ourselves from it as well. We were sort of trying to anti brand ourselves in many ways and and and not talk specifically about some of the stuff we were doing to, to help us, you know, keep as diverse as possible. And I think that pluralism still exists today at the studio. There's sort of many different arms and many different kind of, branches that come off, you know, all sorts of different projects.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, this is the thing. We could see people very because, obviously, when we started, there was a lot of other, you know, small studio that started at the same times and everyone really rushed in precise directions. Everyone came out with an idea, okay, this is what I want to do.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:This is my specialty. We were still learning, and we didn't want to indeed to be picture old or labeled to be just 1 type of architect slash designer that only do this. We're literally on 360 explorations of what we're interested in and how we wanted to do it and who we wanted to work with. And, you know, literally pretty much, you know, creating a libraries of and of I'm sorry. Libraries of ID and possibilities.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:And then, therefore, we didn't want to be labeled and sorry. This possibility get shut down. So in, you know, keeping quiet about everything was literally, really enable our freedoms to be able to pursue our journey without too much hiccup. And now 20 years down the track, it's not that we know better, but we've It'd
Rodney Eggleston:be nice to be able to specialize in something now.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:It's exhausting. We know we know better, but we have proven by the projects again and by repetitive project over times that we are capable to do that type of projects. And and in the value team, we have now some body of work that also, again, speak for itself hopefully to the person who wants to hear it.
Dave Sharp:It sounds like you were thinking, you know, if we go out there and we're we start going out there and sort of speaking about the brand and trying to define it, like, in the public realm, we're gonna kind of, like, lock in this perception of what we are right now if we're too, like, out there with it and too public and too visible. Whereas if we kind of keep it a little bit more mysterious and ambiguous and open to lots of interpretations, that just gives us a bit more flexibility maybe to start to, like, broaden out and make sure that we're not just getting pigeonholed into 1 particular area. Is that kind of it?
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Rodney Eggleston:Yep. Definitely. And I think because the projects are so varied and the the, you know, the people that we're working with are so varied, the briefs, the sites, the context, if it's a renovation or a new house or if it's retail or a public building, we needed to have that freedom to be able to shift, through, and come up with unique, responses to each 1. And in many ways, a lot of people who we started working with would always sort of not know what they were going to get. They they didn't I mean, they knew that they weren't gonna get passed the board.
Rodney Eggleston:I think that was about the only thing that we've never specified, but they they really didn't know what they were gonna get. I mean, these days, you you go to a designer because you like their design and you go, oh, well, that that'll look great in this house. Or, you know, I I like white bricks and polished concrete floors, so I'm gonna get these architects to do it. So we we we consciously didn't wanna fall into that trap of of trend and fashion and, you know, spend 20 years doing the same sort of thing for, the same type of person. We wanted to do, a variety of different works at at a number of different scales that would keep us interested in what it is that we love doing.
Dave Sharp:Do you think that presents some challenges though, sometimes do you find, I mean,
Rodney Eggleston:I mean, every day is like starting again, right? So it's, it's, it's always a new day, a new journey. Sometimes we just look at each other and shake our heads and say, this is the most irresponsible thing we have designed. And we have no idea if we if something's going to work and until it's sort of tested and the client or the people that we're working with the sitting there going, are we really doing this? And
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:yeah, so it'd be fine. Hold your breath.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. So the challenges are immense and it's, still very enjoyable though.
Dave Sharp:Do you think when you guys do a lot of hospitality and retail, I'm wondering about the balance between residential and hospitality retail here, because I kind of feel like those business clients who have brands and are trying to do something that will define their store or their concept for their restaurant or whatever, they might not be as keen to work with a designer that has, like, a very particular look that is repeated from project to project, I can imagine. Whereas, like, I kinda feel like on the residential side, there's maybe more of a pull to that in terms of you kind of wanna like, residential clients, I think they kind of wanna look at the work, look at the Instagram, look at the portfolio, and go, I like the look of those projects. I would want that sort of thing for myself. I don't know. I'm just theorizing here that maybe there's, like, an advantage to being a little bit harder to predict on the commercial hospital side?
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. Totally. I mean, but houses are a different beast in themselves and, you know, we we see them as a whole unique challenge. And what it looks like at the end is probably the last 2%. You know, the other 98% of dealing with planning, dealing with heritage, dealing with site constraints, res code, you know, there's so much there that I think gets overlooked and, you you're totally right.
Rodney Eggleston:It's the client sort of just wants to know, you know, whether or not we can do a couple of arches for them sometimes, which we've managed to resist, for that whole arch phase. But, it's there's so much more that the same sort of thinking goes into when you're doing either an ESOP store or a house that, come down to, you know, engineering and and, the economics of it. The way in which you translate a brief, the way in which you use a space, that that I think resonates through architecture and design in general. And it and it isn't what it looks like. And
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:We've been I mean, an interesting part is, a few of the houses that we we've we've done, were actually client of ours that we worked on hospitality project and our retail project. So I think we seasoned them through the of the in the process, And they they they trusted they trusted, you know, us to be able to actually, you know, go through the journey with the the, yeah, the certainty that the outcome will be worse, the travel. And, I think this is this is something that has been always quite unique to have the factory here and all the models and all the precedents is you can show that it's not just a prerender, that it's got a reality, aspect of it, that it works, and that anything can be possible. So
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. And I think they like that they get something unique that's sort of tailored specifically to them.
Dave Sharp:Since Since you bring up the factory, it's probably a good idea to talk about that. But I wanna talk about it in the context of, like, the client relationship probably. I I guess a little bit about what that looks like because it's pretty unique. I guess how you use it, as you're just saying, as a bit of a a way to get clients into the process and get them excited, I suppose. Like, how do you use it on in that way?
Dave Sharp:And what is it? What is the factory?
Rodney Eggleston:The factory? Well, the factory is so we're currently sitting in a, brutalist building that was finished in 1970 2. It happened to be designed by my great grandfather's office, Egleston, McDonald and Seachem, which at the time I didn't know. We were living and working around the corner in Langford street in, just next to the lost dogs home. And, we, I would always notice this building and 1 day came up to to copy the off form concrete detailing for a house in, for the compound house in Brighton.
Rodney Eggleston:And it was a for sale board on it. And so, we sort of, got together with a builder mate and sold the office that we're in at the time and thought about doing a development here. But we ended up just sort of moving our offices in and never doing the development. We've since taken over the whole space, but the original idea was to have a builder and an architect working in the same building. We planned it so that everyone sort of looks into this central factory zone.
Rodney Eggleston:And in that factory zone, there was ESOP stores being, you know, built. We bought a CNC machine so we can pretty much, you know, make joinery, we can make prototypes, we can make interiors. It was a space where you would, you know, or is a space that you spend, 5 hours on the computer and then maybe 3 hours putting something together. So it's a it's an active testing environment. There's lots of models lying around.
Rodney Eggleston:There's bits of buildings lying around. There's prototypes. We just spent this morning dismantling a 4 meter high model and and moving it onto a pallet so we can shift it around the the warehouse. So it's a it's it's a space that we couldn't really we couldn't exist without the space, basically. And I think when people come into this environment, get quite excited.
Rodney Eggleston:They they see the opportunities. They see, the level of of kind of interest that we have in materials, and they get inspired by that. So, invariably, it always ends up being something other than white plasterboard that we end up detailing, because there's so much to sort of there's so many different avenues to go down.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:It's very hard to describe what's inside of your heads.
Rodney Eggleston:There's no quiet spaces, though. We've looked
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:at that. Quiet space.
Dave Sharp:There's no way to record a podcast is the only problem. Yeah.
Rodney Eggleston:We tried the combi van. That didn't work.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:That didn't work? Well, this is the thing. That's in that's the continuity from the beginning, you know, from the first studio that we had. We we realized that we needed to have everything's in the be sorry. Every part of something's in its own process of making lying around us to be able to actually see its unicity and, to have the factory to have, like, there's hundreds of shelves here full of something in the making.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:It give you an idea of, you know, how you can literally play and experiment with every single object. And it's it's a visual thing, but you need to have it in front of you to really see it. And so, indeed, when people come here, they they are seeing a bit overwhelmed. They it's a there's a lot everywhere, but it it showed that it showed the process that we're always on. And there is always an idea that get picked up from the shelf saying, oh, this is this is it.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:This is the right idea for this moment. And, yeah, we get inspired by all that. And in the process of making sorry, you always find your next ID. Mhmm.
Rodney Eggleston:And
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:that's something that we really foster because everything is an accident. Sometimes you looking for something, you don't find it, and sometimes you're just playing, and then you find something that you would have never thought you'll find.
Rodney Eggleston:And
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:that's that's what is, you know, the beauty of having the factory.
Rodney Eggleston:We do we do think that architecture might have sort of shot itself in the foot a little bit during the eighties nineties as well in Australia, where it, took itself, maybe a bit too seriously. We, I mean, I, my, my biological father was a, draftsman and then an industrial designer, then a builder. And he sort of didn't, he didn't have a lot of luck for architects as a builder and as someone that was, you know, having to take drawings and, turn them into reality. And then my stepfather was a roofing contractor and later a cladding installer, for metal cladding. In law's father is an electrician, and her mother was an accountant for a printing press.
Rodney Eggleston:So we sort of my mother was a fashion designer. So we come from, hands on people that have constantly taken material and turned it into something. And I think sometimes when you look through reams of black and white drawings that architects have done to attempt to describe a waterproofing detail or how a building goes together, they're actually very far from the reality of how that works. And so, you know, the space for us is very much about, you know, rather than just drawing some lines and saying, you know, secret fixings is my favorite. Like, what is the secret fixing?
Rodney Eggleston:It's so secret nobody can know. But, you know, drawing flashings and drawing drawing things that simply are unbuildable because you can't get them in there was something we wanted to avoid as an architecture practice. And being able to make and test was is super important to us to to convince ourselves that we knew what we were drawing, what we were doing. So, you know, there's that whole side of things as well. And I could talk about software for the next hour and a half, but we've just recently changed all of that.
Rodney Eggleston:And we're almost going back to drawing by hand because of the, you know, the lack of knowledge that's being sort of, put into projects these days because so much of it goes into software.
Dave Sharp:It's still very common for architects in Europe and Japan and all sorts of places to have these very, like, production minded studio environments and design processes where you're making 1 to 1 models and, you know, experimentation with materials and this real, like, culture of, like, physical things is so normal overseas. But, like, why it seems to have, like, kind of fizzled out completely in Australia in this really sad way where I feel like you guys are the, like, you know, very, like, alter We
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:are the the dinosaur of the industry.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah.
Dave Sharp:I don't know. Why do you just feel like it's just become so, like, so on the fringes to be designing this way?
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Well, time. I think it's all come to time. I mean and, obviously, money, but time has been the biggest pressure. There's no time to do things anymore.
Rodney Eggleston:We've got, yeah, different opinions.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:No. Yeah. You have a different opinion.
Dave Sharp:But We'll we'll hear both of them.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. Yeah. No. But I really come to time because this is the things, like, when you start experimenting and everything, you need to have a contingency for time. Because if you see, you know, not everything go as a straight line, sometimes you can, you know, lost yourself in a curve.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:But, indeed, when you work in retail or in hospitality, everything has to move clockwork because, you know, by the time you sign the lease, you start paying the rent, and it needs to have profit very quickly. Same for big, you know, big building and, you know, governmental building and everythings. They will have to go fast because somehow they have to be handover to meet some expectation that sometimes are completely unrealistic from the beginning. And, therefore, there's not a lot of time to experiment or to, yeah, just go go a little bit off off-site.
Rodney Eggleston:It's it's sort of it's a multilayered loaded kind of answer that I'm gonna try to weave together. But I think time is a big factor. And, you know, over time is also another massive factor. The fact that it sort of doesn't really happen anymore in it, and that the, again, that the office or the studio space is treated, more like a 9 to 5 these days than a than a place where people wanna hang and and and live through their work. So I think that's a massive shift and 1 that we've certainly questioned and tried to maneuver as best as possible.
Rodney Eggleston:You know, I, when I was working at OMA, I think I was paid something ridiculous, like €6 an hour. If I took all the hours I worked and added them all up, that was the starting wage. It wasn't in the end, but the amount of knowledge and the learning that I got from that experience is was enormous. And there's there's a shift in the in the industry, and I think that's sort of for the right reasons and and for the people that were completely taking advantage of that system. I think it's stopped that.
Rodney Eggleston:But there's also this narrative that's come out of it that this is the only way of doing things. And I question the, the complexities and the, the duplicit environment that we've created by, an overcorrection as well. So I'm sort of interested in in the way that's informed the kind of spaces that people are designing these days. It's almost I mean, Lacaton and Vassalle, am I pronouncing that correctly? And all the French architects that I mean, the whole mantra is to do as little as possible, which is poetic and beautiful and works in when you're working with really old, beautiful buildings that are 100 of years old.
Rodney Eggleston:And I think that's all fine, but I also get this a bit of a feeling that we're sort of racing to that point as architects where we're trying to minimize the risk and reduce the kind of, aesthetic to almost nothingness, and getting to the point where everything's becoming the same, you know, globally, and that's being eroded by social media and it's all becoming this kind of sameness, which is super interesting.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:I agree. I mean, this is this is I mean, there those that's a conversation is always into the office because, obviously, I mean, it's come back to time, and and different time zones. Like, you somehow know expand experience space before you even see them because of the social media. So they consume before being somehow visited and that that fast forward as well the pay the pace that places are created and dumped in a way. So that's that's have, you know, really fueled the homogeneity because everything has to go faster.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:You have to create more more just to be able to feed the machine. I, indeed, you know, always reflect the how influence, you know, the the diversity and the variety of, this this landscape, like, of our industry and what we are able to create. And when you say, well, I need 6 time 6 sorry. When you say, oh, when you say I need 6 weeks to create a prototype and 6 weeks is your, you know, like, building timeline, well, that's not gonna work. So
Dave Sharp:It is interesting. Those countries that we think about, you know, that have this really rich culture of, like, creativity and model making and things like that, they also have, like, appalling working conditions. And then that's actually you remember that? You're like, oh, there's kind of, like, a kind of a reason that as you pointed out, it's harder for that sort of working environment that, like, hang out, work, you know, 80 hours a week, but it doesn't really feel like work. You're just kinda having fun sort of thing doesn't really work as easily in in in Australia.
Dave Sharp:Interesting in your comments then on, I guess, with then trying to be so efficient, trying to have a faster method and trying to be so efficient, but ending up making things so complicated, I like that mantra of try and do as little as possible. I had Mary Duggan on the podcast, and she was explaining that, you know, if she just works in models and simple materials, she can make a model in 20 minutes. That can be the whole concept for a project. It doesn't take 3 weeks of, you know, digital development to build this ultra complicated thing to get the idea across to people. So it's kind of like this sometimes things that are slower methods can be more efficient.
Dave Sharp:Is that what you guys kind of find in a way? Like, you've managed to make your process work in this industry here. So I just kinda wonder, like, where you find that you're still able to meet those, like, crazy deadlines and all that pressure and everything like that.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. I mean, I think that it's trying to find a system that works best for you. I mean, there's lots of, We we we try to balance, the digital and the physical as much as possible. So we're educated right on the cusp of that digital environment. I mean, when we're at university, we still had, you know, rolls of film for for site visits, and, then the digital camera came in.
Rodney Eggleston:You know, it was all pre Internet. And, we saw the benefits of many things digital. So but we also acknowledge that sometimes, you know, your your, adage about making a model to describe an idea, I mean, sometimes physically, the execution of a detail or an idea, there's no other way of replicating that digitally. So we find ourselves jumping back and forth and it starts with 3 d scanning a space or a site. So we do that ourselves, and then it's sort of moves through the computer, but then back to the physical and then it's the prototyping.
Rodney Eggleston:So it's those mechanisms and levers to to get the the kind of to communicate the idea and to to collaborate and workshop with, you know, the people that we're working with that gets the balance and gets us sort of moving to the deadlines. But in that, there's always other opportunities and things that you see as well. So I don't think I don't think any project we do starts with a very clear idea. It's always, you know, the testing and the act of discovery along the way, that reveals something that we didn't see before.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:And that's also where the when the value of the repeated relationship with clients come to its really fruition. Because, obviously, as you start a project and start opening the Pandora's box, you find, you know, other typologies or other material that could come in the at 1 stage are not the answer for the project that you're working on at the moment, but are coming, you know, part of a library of common ID sharing. And then the next project comes along, and, obviously, it's I mean, it's depend of the type of, category of project that we're talking about. Mostly, it's when it's in return of hospitality, while you're always on shorter time frames. But to have all this common baggage together help you to to give you, sorry, a head start from the beginning.
Dave Sharp:So so much of your business is repeat business with clients that you've worked with across multiple stores or locations or whatever on the on the retail and hospitality side. And and each time, each project, you're able to sort of push the envelope more and build that trust, and we'll talk in a second about how that works. But when a new client walks in the door with a new project and you've never worked with them before, do you sort of view it as this, if this relationship works, there's a sort of a longer term perspective that you have about ramping up the level of how far do we push this? How all out do we go with the ideas? Do we hold back a little maybe on this first 1?
Dave Sharp:Like, give them a taste of what this is all about and then with the expectation that, hey. There will be a second location. There will be a second place, and that's when we can kind of really, you know
Rodney Eggleston:No. We've got so many ideas that it doesn't matter. There's I mean, there's we only get to execute just see every project as an opportunity to do, to do the best we can with that, with that particular situation. And, we, we, I mean, 1 of the techniques we use is repetition quite a lot. So being able to have a repetitive element, means that we can control the kind of density or the, the pixelization of a design, based off its, you know, economic input.
Rodney Eggleston:So it's budget. So we can we can give variations and we can, you know, use scripting and sort of all these digital tools to be able to, give clients options as well. So it's there is that kind of choose your own adventure when you come to March where you, you know, you get you don't just get this is the idea. You get the 3 options, and it might end up being a blend of 2. And it's we try to tailor, our work to to, to the idea and the and the and the design drivers that are being fed to us rather than, you know, it's not we're not these kind of geniuses that sit back and go, you must have this and tada.
Rodney Eggleston:It's it's a lot more of a process.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. The process is is pretty hands on, and and we really, really enjoy and try to encourage the clients to be part of it. And they're generally the project's generally the more successful they are, the more the client has been involved in it. And I seem to be part of the journey ongoing journey and to be part of the ongoing conversations really led to the next. And generally, it's the clients that push further because they understand that there is possibility to go higher and to, you know, lift.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yeah. To go yeah. I don't know. The sky become the limit, I guess.
Rodney Eggleston:We we find that we get recommended a lot and work a lot with builders as well. So that's the kind of interesting, position to be in where, we're we're sort of speaking the same language. And I think from a, design perspective, the engineering is is kind of inherent in everything that we do, because there's efficiencies that lie within that that that give you, you know, more bang for buck, basically.
Dave Sharp:Just in terms of give, some practical ways that you guys, like, encourage or empower clients to to take more risk and be more creative, I suppose, as brands, as companies, as retailers. Like, I I wanna kinda get a sense of maybe how you think about that as well, like, strategically around, I don't know, just different things you found that can help with that.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Yep. Something that is I mean, this has been happening all the time is Ronnie always said the truth. Always. And that's that's actually been very interesting because it's literally sometimes, you know, scare people off and say, okay. Well, this is, I don't want I don't want to hear that.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:But when it comes to an issue of planning or whether there's an issue of timing of their initiative of of budget, you know, Ronnie would be straight away saying, well, this is not achievable for that budget. You can't have that. And that's actually been quite interesting because, you know, it's literally as, you know, selected our own own clientele. You know, the people who are with us, they know that what you see is what you're gonna get. There is no overpromising.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:There is not trying to take you and say, well, there's a unicorn at the end of the corridor. The it's it's not that. The reality is hard enough to to deal with. Then if you start, you know, building, you know, a project on on some sort of hot air, Berlin, it's inevitably gonna pop at a at a crisis moment. And I think that's been quite interesting because all the successful project have been, you know, made because from day 1, there was a 100% trust on either side.
Dave Sharp:I'm always interested in how things changing. You know? Do you guys have any thoughts on the potential of, like, what March could kind of evolve into or turn into in the future?
Rodney Eggleston:It's an interesting 1, particularly given that, I mean, it's hard to even know where the world's going at the moment. Let alone where an architecture practice can, can, how it can respond and, and, and give in that environment. You know, it's terrifying some of the things that are happening at the moment. And we question our existence on a daily basis and, and what we can do to, you know, help in any way, shape or form. So whether it's a primary school that we're doing in Frankston, you know, 1 of the toughest kind of primary schools in Victoria or it's, you know, a museum in Charleville, It's, it's very, it's a very real point in time.
Rodney Eggleston:Things are so expensive. People are living in their cars. The world's breaking out into war. And, you know, we're sitting back as architects half the time, you know, deciding on whether we'll go with the brass finish or a stainless steel finish.
Dave Sharp:I guess that is a bit of a a tough thing. Because earlier, you guys were talking about architects, like, starting to take themselves really seriously being a sort of a phenomenon that kind of happened. But it's tough in an environment like that where you're talking about, you know, a recession and World War 3 and all that sort of stuff to still take kind of aspects of what you do seriously while also, I guess, not just starting to look at architecture as this, like, save the world kind of thing because I think it also kind of isn't really that too a little bit.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah. Correct. No. No. A 100%.
Rodney Eggleston:And and we've we've got this, like, dual situation that's come up where since COVID the wealthier have got even wealthier and to a point that, you know, the divide is, is splitting in half. And you combine that with inflation and, you know, our, at the houses that we were doing 4 years ago that were $2, 000, 000 are now 4 and a half, $5, 000, 000 And, you know, there's fuller taps being specified, but then on the other end of the spectrum, and this is a lot of work, you know, that our law still does and is very active in, there's, there's women that, you know, are ringing up some of the associations that she's working for for a $100 so that they can, you know, get their kids to school in the morning. So it's, how design and architecture can respond to those 2 things is certainly of interest to us. I'm not sure we've got the silver bullet on it yet, but we're certainly, trying to stay as involved in possible as possible with both ends of the spectrum because we see the benefits with the overlap. And, you know, it's not I don't want to sound like a conspiracist or anything, but it's not government that's going to get us to the promised place.
Rodney Eggleston:It's private enterprise that invests, that, can take and give in that environment. That's going to help, some less people that are less fortunate.
Dave Sharp:How do you manage that? Because at the 1 hand, like, you guys are doing elevated interiors that are like in Vogue and things like that. Like, really, really, like, upper end stuff. But then it's like it's really hard, like, from a brand management perspective. I know I'm looking at it through the real cynical kind of marketing lens, but, like, you've got an image as a practice and you're sort of known for a certain level.
Dave Sharp:And it's like, how do you find that balance of kind of having both ends or doing something at the other end too where it's actually gonna make a difference to people?
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:To sustain, to be able to work into the non for profit sector, you need to be able to, you know, have a certain income. So let's say that some of the project help to also, you know, mature and develop project on the other side. So that's that's 1 thing. Then, also, through all the different project that we are doing into the commercial environment help us to actually enable systems and, solutions through, you know, all the diversity of problematic data, you know, processed. We learned about legislations.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:We learned about a lot of different things that becomes very very valued assets when you sit at the table and and talk about housing crisis and talk about, you know, people living in their cars and trying to find solutions because, obviously, you're already well seasoned. You experiment. So you've got experience into this area, but, also, you've got contact. You know who you need to talk to. You know?
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:So, literally, somehow, it all emerged as a quite a balanced landscape because, indeed, you you literally have already dig all the research. You don't come from nowhere. You've come from experience. So that's some things that, you know, I really value through the lens of March is and with Ronit also. We value this, this experience that we can gain so we can actually go and share it after with other people and turn it into something that is far more valuable within the community.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:And it's just something that always been part or so of the heart of my studio is to work in the community with the community and with people who wants to be working with the community. So we've grown over the time, very strong network of passionate people who come from all different fields. And, yeah, together, we we try and, you know, we don't we haven't found solutions. There's no miracle solutions. But there is attempt, to do things and I think altogether, you know, obviously, it's not like that we're stronger together, but it is in a way.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:And especially when you start when you start, you can't stop. And especially when you're passionate about design and enabling solution through the lens of design and see how it create a little impact in someone's life, then we become addicted.
Dave Sharp:So in a sense, that sort of that extreme variety of projects and making sure that you're doing something new or something that you haven't done before is kind of helpful in building those relationship and those learnings as well. It is an important part of that.
Rodney Eggleston:Well, we think there's a lot broken with the current systems in place as well, and we think that private enterprise is best suited to resolve those issues. So we've been able to sort out a lot of, issues that some of these organizations couldn't sort out just with architectural thinking. And that doesn't actually mean that we've delivered a building. But we've helped skirt around planning laws or we've sort of located, you know, ablution blocks or, found kind of bits of buildings that can be used and or gifted. So, you know, using our network of fabulous consultants, brought different people together rather than, I guess, you know, banging a drum and saying how, how wonderful we are at doing X, Y, and Z.
Rodney Eggleston:It's, it's more about being a conduit in a, in a bigger system. And some of these projects are very, very long burns. You know, some of them have been going for 5 or 6 years and, and pen has only got to paper, you know, now because, you know, some of these, organizations and some of these people are very broken and, building trust takes a very, very long time. And I think that the 2 are kind of inherently, connected in everything that we do. And, we've spent the last year and a half putting a book together, and it was, it was really nice to read the foreword by Vivian Mitsugiani from RMIT who talked about the kind of Vogue living that you mentioned, being there, but also that inherently there's this kind of, undercover kind of socialism in our work, and it's been there since day 1.
Rodney Eggleston:And it's probably because it's been born out of these social arts projects, that have been about community and been about kind of, you know, multiculturalism and all these kind of loaded ideas. And then, you know, the fact that you got sustainability that's inherently embedded in everything that we do as well. But we would never go and talk about sustainability as being, you know, the driving thing that we do. But, you know, a lot of the cardboard stores were all about, you know, taking the whole store and putting it in the recycling bin afterwards or the way in which a part of a building can be taken apart and reused. And, it's all inherently there.
Rodney Eggleston:And it's got sort of it's got further to go, I think. I'm hoping that we can, you know, keep working with a whole range of of people to find the best solutions for their particular circumstances because architecture and design have the ability to revolutionize people's lives, and and that's really what we're what we're most interested in. I think that that that fashion and and trend are are quite dangerous in
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:in architecture. That's probably something yeah. That we've, I mean, this is something also from the beginning that and that's probably why we didn't we didn't go so hard on the media or anything because we just there's this idea of you you are the flavor of the mouse. And then when you've been chewed and digest, you're thrown into the recycling bin. And we didn't want to be ending up into that.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Like, we didn't want to to just, you know, come out too soon, too quickly, unprepared. We've
Rodney Eggleston:been in the recycling bin.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:We've been in recycling once or twice. But it's it the thing is, like, we we try to to make a conscious effort to to be timeless in terms of, you know, projects. So, you know, steer away from trend, 3 sorry. Steer away from, you know, shortcut, tricks, and all this, and have something that is responding to the project, is responding to the location, is responding to the personality of the brand and the client that at the end, it's something that has been faceted, especially from it's been curated and faceted for 1 purpose and 1 purpose only, which was to be itself. And that's all.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:And then from that, the old project take their own journey. They own they will take their own life and they will last as long that it's permitted financials or time or anything, let it live. But it's it stand at itself, and that's always been very important for us.
Dave Sharp:I definitely see where you guys are coming from. At the same time, I I know from a communication of what you're about and what your message is standpoint. Sometimes, like, for some practices, when you when you're in a situation like yours, you're doing so many different things with so many different types of organizations and clients and briefs and budgets, and it's just, like, kind of a lot of stuff. It can sometimes be hard to communicate to each of those audiences because it can be difficult for them to really interpret, like, what your practice is about, I suppose, from a distance. I guess there's this thing in the industry of really trying to think about how do we distill what our message is and clarify it and everything like that so it's simpler and and easier to understand.
Dave Sharp:And I get the sense that that's not what you guys are about at all. You're in the process of putting together or have been putting together books that that's coming out this year, which I imagine has been a really great moment to sort of, like, reflect and sort of look at it from in 1 big thing and die and kind of go, like, what is it all kind of been about as a practice? But I suppose, like, living without the simple, clear, easy to digest kind of brand image and message and aesthetic and everything like that where it is a little bit more complex, Just honestly, does that just work fine for you, basically, or are you sometimes like, you know what? We may be a little bit hard to understand at all. I'm just wondering.
Rodney Eggleston:No. No. I'd I'd totally agree. I think to the to people that don't know us, yeah, we we are hard to understand. It doesn't really bother us because we, you know, we kinda like what we do.
Rodney Eggleston:We don't wanna be, I guess, reduced to a 1 liner because we we find that we'd get we would find that that wouldn't represent the multitude of people that are involved in the practice. So, you know, people in here to then the processes to then materials to then ideas, you know, views on the world, etcetera, and you draw that matrix, then any any outcome is kind of possible. And we the book was an interesting 1 because there's this there's this kind of struggle to distill the practice into, 3 or 4 threads. But the more you pull and tug on 1 thread, the more it unravels. And there's a multitude of kind of threads within those 3 or 4 threads that, make March Studio the the kind of interwoven complex thing that it is.
Rodney Eggleston:So w I mean, yeah, I don't think that really answered the question in a typical March studio way, but,
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Go on a tangent.
Rodney Eggleston:I don't think there's no, I gotta, I mean, if you had to distill us down to something, it would be, it'd be this idea of making, and you know, how that then translates into a built environment as if it was 1 word. I mean, we always thought when we went for March as a name, it was, you know, making architecture, which was pretty funny because then Mel Bright came out with, what's the name of Perfect Company? Make. Studio Make. Yeah.
Rodney Eggleston:And that that was 2007 as well. So I said to him, my god, we're gonna call ourselves Mike. And then there was someone else in London that called themselves Mike. And so, Mel had to chat. Well, Mel changed.
Rodney Eggleston:But, I think that would be, you know, that was the kind of nexus. It was making architecture, Melbourne architecture, masters of architecture. You know, for us, it is about that idea of how you how you build and how you construct and how you think through those processes. More than it is about Yeah. Anything else.
Dave Sharp:Well, the
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:thing is I mean, this it's very hard, yeah, indeed, to define for us was the March brand because we don't see us really as a brand. We're more living entity that respond to moving pieces and life in general. Things are changing. You know? It's been now pretty much 20 years now that Ronnie and I are working together.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:We've seen many different cycle coming back. There's I mean, just right now, what we are living through, which have, you know, has literally is literally pushing us or so to rethink, you know, the way we do design. You know, like, when you see the inflation, the price of everything going through the roof, you design for tomorrow. So if you design with cheap material, your tomorrow is not looking great. So, there's a lot of things indeed that we're constantly responding to and have to shift the poll.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:So the branding itself would be adaptability, maybe adaptability, and responsiveness, probably, maybe, if we have to come down to 2 words. But the consistency for us is indeed our portfolio. And the exploration and the way that we still manage to keep a hand on the ramp through the years with every things that we delivered.
Dave Sharp:I think there's something in the industry where, practices are pretty much carbon copies of each other, and the the input is the same from place to place. So they have to sort of tinker with the output in terms of the image. Like, how do we communicate it? How do we represent it? But I think you're 1 of those studios that has a genuinely unique input, and then you don't have to worry about how you manage the output.
Dave Sharp:You're just kinda like, something unique will just come out the other end of this because the things that we're feeding into the machine are, like, different. They're sort of, you know, individual and personal, and, yeah, we're not a replication of, like, a 150 other architecture firms down the road. Like, we are operating in a pretty unique and specific way. I just find lots of examples of where that then creates distinctive a distinctive sort of story of a body of work and a practice without it necessarily being a intentional or manipulated kind of thing, if that makes sense. I don't think that's for everybody because if you are just sort of more similar to the people next door, then you kinda need to be a bit more tactful about or what do we do to sort of say what's different about us.
Dave Sharp:But but for you guys, I kinda feel like you don't need to overthink that side of things maybe as a byproduct.
Rodney Eggleston:It would be nice if we were a bit more formulaic, I think, but,
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:it's too late.
Rodney Eggleston:It's too late for that. I think 1 thing we're very fortunate of is that we, you know, we don't have to there's always people that are interested enough to come to us. So, that's a fortunate position to be in where we can say, oh, okay, well, do we want to go on this journey with this person or do we want to go on that journey with that person? And in many ways, as you say, there's no 1 really competing with us to do that. I think and I think once people realize what it is that we do and how we add the value in what we do, they then go, well, let's do it again because that worked really well.
Rodney Eggleston:And, that's a good, good place to be, I think. And it enables us to be again back to those early ESOP days sort of freer with the thinking, to test more ideas and to sort of go a little bit further maybe than what we traditionally would.
Dave Sharp:Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it.
Rodney Eggleston:Thanks for having us.
Anne-Laure Cavigneaux:Thank you, Dave. We had a wonderful time.
Rodney Eggleston:Yeah, it was great.
Dave Sharp:That was my conversation with Rodney and Anne Law from March Studio. If you'd like to learn more about their studio, you can visit march.studio, or follow them on Instagram at march_studio. Office Talk is hosted by Office Dave Sharp, a strategic marketing and brand definition practice for architecture. We work collaboratively with clients across the globe, so to learn more about our process and book consultation, simply visit office dave sharp dot com. Today's episode of Office Talk was edited and engineered by Anthony Richardson of Simple Dwelling Studio.
Dave Sharp:That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll see you next time.
