First project: Anton James Design

After graduating from UNSW, I spent a decade or so working in Sydney, Europe and the USA before returning to Sydney to attend art school, teach and, eventually, set up Anton James Design. My friends Thierry and David had just started Lacoste and Stevenson. Together, we rented a floor in an old warehouse and set up a studio.

Several other fledgling practices joined shortly afterward. We were energized, relishing the opportunity to build design-based practices. The supportive environment, the collaborations and the friendships were an important part of a culture of practice – it helped us push through the long hours, survive the competition losses and mark the celebrations.

In 1998, my architect friend Harold Straatveit put my name forward for a multi-use residential project, The Hudson in Alexandria. His director at Allen Jack and Cottier, Reg Smith, gave me the job and the opportunity to build what was the most significant project I had undertaken in my own practice.

I looked to develop a conversation – to engage with the architectural language in a way that made an impact. I wanted to provide scale, use spatial arrangement to direct flow, invite you in and surprise you.

The conversation developed easily. Smith and his team helped to bed the ideas into the project, which was built in 2000. It gave me the opportunity to begin what has become an ongoing interrogation of figuration in the landscape: what scale, and how embedded and how connected, should any new intervention be? The large pots and associated elevated planters, with their clearly artificial plants, set up a dialogue with their context, activating the courtyard void where vegetation was necessarily limited.

The project confirmed my interest in scale and highlighted the fact that scale – being fundamentally relational – is different to size. In landscape, we operate within a vast range of sizes, so scale is a powerful tool.

Project credits: The Hudson, Alexandria (1998–2000)

Landscape architect Anton James Design Project architect Allen Jack and Cottier Architects Client Pongrass Development Group Builder Barclay Mowlem Landscape contractor Bates Landscape Ongoing maintenance Pepo Botanic Design