The spirit of our Japanese design is winning us top Australian design awards

An inaugural award, and a hole in one

Through design principal Hiromi Lauren’s skills, on her first substantial completed independent project, the KDV Golf and Tennis Academy on Queensland’s Gold Coast, scored Shiro Architects “a hole in one” when, in June 2017, it won the 2017 Queensland state award for commercial architecture.

The Academy was first published here in the international online journal of architecture ArchDaily, and there is a link here to Hiromi’s first media interview, published since in the Australian Design Review.

Golf and tennis facilities aside, the Academy also contains a 20-metre outdoor/undercover swimming pool, gym, sauna and ice baths, an 80-seat restaurant, golf and pro tennis shops, two function rooms, outdoor/community function “hubs” with bbq facilities and a children’s playground area.

Its striking appearance aside, this was also a notably inexpensive building, built on time and to cost.

On its completion, we were given feedback independently by groups representing each of two prestigious visiting Queensland property developers that the project “felt good.”

We are now working for our client, KDV Sport, on its follow-up project, its student accommodation block, an environment that simply must follow this same rule.

Award-winning, advanced commercial spaces to feel good about

We create high-functioning commercial and residential projects, conjuring the simple, innovative spirit of modern Japanese architecture as core to their inspiration, and constructed to specification with great attention to built detail, budget and time.

We value clients with passion

We exist to partner clients passionate about bringing to reality the designs they wish to see in the world. In our concept development, we are zealous and refuse to be constrained by precedent and what may be thought possible, and what isn’t.

Developer windfalls

Occasionally, built on our legacy, we deliver to clients striking financial gains, and in this we can prove our claims.

Formerly 20 years and an associate at Harry Seidler and Associates, Shiro founder Hiromi Lauren earnt Harry’s esteem by securing her developer client an unexpected windfall of more than $5 million when she designed an unexpected extra unit into each of 11 floors of the North Apartments building in Sydney’s Goulburn Street.

Being extremely skilled, disciplined and able to think afresh the opportunity of tight spaces is baked into Hiromi’s practices as a product of her Japanese architectural background.

The commercial view

Through judicious and practical choices, we take a robust commercial view: we emphasise creating simple, beautiful designs that can be built within the given financial parameters and which, where appropriate, prioritise making money for developer clients.

We aim also to introduce to and localise for Australian markets other concepts established in Japanese tradition and in operation in its hospitality and leisure industries.

Young in years, rich in design pedigree

Shiro Architects is still a young Sydney architecture and design practice, but although we never set out specifically to design houses, around the time of our Queensland state award, we were also invited to submit three of our as-yet unbuilt residences for possible inclusion in Australia’s most popular TV show on residential architecture, Grand Designs Australia.

Before that, when Shiro was just 18 months old, we were awarded acclaim for “design excellence” when invited to contest a limited-entrant, three-party, invitation-only competition on a landmark residential site in Parramatta, NSW, hosted by Parramatta City Council.

Such accolades make us cautious but optimistic that somehow in some way we may be doing something right.

Recognition, pre-Shiro

In her Seidler years, Hiromi worked closely with both Harry Seidler and Meriton owner Harry Triguboff on the design of the George Street, Sydney, 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.

New directions

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

Our work is now diversifying, with our design of the current KDV student accommodation building, taking us into designing spaces for both hospitality and education.

As our business and our workload grows, nothing changes.

Whatever their use, we exist to design commercial, residential, hospitality and workspaces to feel good about.