Mark Gerstl, Owner at MGAA Architects
Website: www.mgaa.com.au
Contact Mark at: mgerstl@mgaa.com.au
What are the three essential elements in your designs, that your clients desire?
The design aesthetic that I bring to each and every design is a timeless modern-avante garde design aesthetic – an enduring dreamy quality where spaces fuse from one area into another.
I use this design aesthetic as a theatre-stage to apply a liberal amount of natural materials such as stone and timber. Adding humanist desires of comfort and function then allows the design to focus on the client and their needs. These elements are then combined coherently into exciting wondrous volumes of architecture.
The third element cannot be separated from the first two – and allows them and the project as a whole to come together successfully. And that is the personal service and the skills of a qualified project manager we provide to each and every project ensuring projects are completed within the programme and budget.
Do you have any tips for home owners considering renovations?
The most important thing is never to underestimate the importance of a good brief. The preliminary stage is when the whole project is scoped (performance, cost and timeline) and this first brief has the greatest impact in the overall performance of the project and will ultimately decide its success.
Apart from the brief, choosing the right architect that you can work with in a dynamic manner and one in which you can place trust.
What was your most challenging project and why?
Even the seemingly smallest jobs have their innate challenges. One of the most challenging was also the most satisfying – a 4 storey mixed residential/commercial building located on the boundary of the Chatswood CBD which required extensive negotiations between the lawyer/developer client and council. We managed to win a lot of concessions whilst maintaining the integrity of the design. The client is absolutely thrilled with the design and the way everything was handled. It is currently under construction and due to finish in 2011.
Your firm was one of the first in Australia that utilised Building Information Modelling. What are the advantages to your clients for using this technology?
We are an early adopter of this technology – first using BIM around 10 years ago. Clients love this technology as it allows us to spend more time in actual 3d design rather than manual 2d drafting – allowing better quality and minimising costs. It ultimately gives clients a better resolved design and gives them a real perspective of how the building will look. We do all our imaging in-house rather than outsourcing to other consultants which not only saves the client money but gives us design control until the time we present the proposal to the client.
Your firm has been involved in a number of institutional projects such as schools and hospitals. What are the key issues when designing such buildings?
Institutional buildings such as schools and hospitals are quite simple compared to residential or some other commercial buildings. They have a multi-focus issue that needs to be resolved by the architect between the user (students or patients etc) and the staff (doctors, nurses or teachers etc). The difficulty is always managing stakeholders and expected outcomes, but with our skills in project management this is done quite easily with our in–house standards and briefings so that project risk is mitigated in order for good design and outcomes to triumph.
Name three things about you that people would not know
I was blonde with long locks in kindergarten.
I cried when I watched Stormboy.
My foot was caught in an escalator in the Waltons store in Bondi Junction in 1976 resulting in the mandatory use of yellow lines in all escalators.
