Award-winning spaces to feel good about

Shiro Architects exists to design spaces to feel good about.

On Friday, June 23, 2017, in Brisbane, Shiro Architects design director Hiromi Lauren was awarded the Queensland state Institute of Architects award for commercial architecture for the design of the Gold Coast KDV Golf and Tennis Academy. Winning a significant award for her first significant building completed in her own right represents great recognition for her talents, and of Shiro’s skills.

We recently took our catchline of “spaces to feel good about” from feedback we were given on the way to winning the award. Independently, each of two visiting parties representing significant Queensland property developers came on its completion to visit the facility. Both, as they were leaving the site, said the project felt good. We thought we would appropriate it as an expression of what we do well, and of our consistent design aspiration.

The judges of the Queensland Institute of Architects who first commended the Academy by shortlisting it in the initial local Gold Coast/Northern Rivers stage of the award, and subsequently named it the winner, clearly felt the same.

And we are now working for our KDV client on its follow-up project, its student accommodation building. To be successful as a hospitality venture, this especially has to be a space that makes its residents, young sportspeople from around the world, feel good.

Pedigree

Despite its early achievement, Shiro Architects is still a young Sydney architecture and design practice, but with pedigree beyond its years, and we’ve already previously been awarded acclaim for “design excellence.”

Our studio is led by Hiromi (née Shiraishi), a former associate of just under 20 years at world-renowned architects, Harry Seidler and Associates, where she was considered one of Harry’s favourites.

She won Harry’s esteem not least when working on North Apartments in Sydney’s Goulburn Street she managed to design an extra unit into each of 11 of its 16 floors to secure the client an unexpected windfall of around $5 million on its investment.

“Unrelated specifically to North Apartments, I always think architects should work to make money for the client.”

It is a product of Hiromi’s Japanese architectural background that she is extremely skilled and disciplined in the design of tight, demanding spaces.

Delivering such a bonus to an unexpecting developer gave both Harry and the client something else to feel good about.

Japanese flavour

Although we don’t always aim explicitly to deliver designs in the Japanese style, observers often comment they can see the influence of Japanese minimalism in Hiromi’s work.

In her Seidler years, she also worked closely with both Seidler and Harry Triguboff on the design of the George Street Meriton Tower. On its Meriton Apartments web site, the company clearly felt good enough to give her contribution the plaudit in the sidebar to this page.

Besides making better use of their space, we aim always to deliver our clients beautiful, practical, commercially focused buildings.

And our work is now diversifying, through our design of the current KDV student accommodation building, taking us into both hospitality and education, and through to being invited to submit three examples of our residential design for consideration in the nation’s most popular TV show on home architecture.

As our business and our workload grows, nothing changes. We exist to design spaces to feel good about.