Left to Right: Fooi-Ling Khoo, founder of OOF; David Brand; and Jack Wilkinson. Photo by Tatjana Plitt.

For a relatively young practice, OOF! Architecture has impressively produced two of the most recognized residential projects to come out of Australia in the past few years. Working in heritage dense areas, particularly tricky renovations with tight constraints and tight budgets —such as their Hello House, a renovated two-bedroom Victorian-era home, and their Acute House, a renovation of an extremely decrepit, weatherboard cottage—are typical projects for the Melbourne-based studio.

Outside of the office, founder Fooi-Ling Khoo also serves on the board of directors at ArchiTeam, a cooperative organization for Australian architects working in small, medium and emerging practices. Here, Khoo talks about the firm's work and her role championing the voice of Australia’s small architectural practices. 

What motivated you to start your own practice?

Freedom to make your own work, to work how you like, when you like with whomever you like. Also comes with the bonus freedom to feel stressed, insecure and the opportunity to live on toast. 

In the past few years, your firm has completed some highly publicized renovation projects—e.g. the Hello House and the Acute House; What draws you to those types of commissions?

Renovations, particularly in heritage dense inner city suburbs, are typical projects for us. There’s something about wrestling with quirks of existing buildings and the ‘tetris’-like puzzle of competing constraints that we love. The more extreme or weird the situations, the more unconventional the solutions have to be.

Those two particular projects also happened to have a natural prominence in their neighborhoods because of their location on highly visible street corners. The Hello House is opposite the local café—the neighborhoods civic hub—and the Acute House is on a wedge in the middle of a wide street.

How do you approach these projects? 

Define the constraints and (try to) make friends with them. That may sound boring but it’s the constraints and their conflicts that drive our design work. A lot of our projects are on tight sites with tight budgets, and in inner-city areas heavily controlled by heritage and amenity requirements. Any combination of these can make or break the job. This context, physical and cultural, is a sort of fertilizer that is used to grow the design. The exciting thing is, we never know exactly what we’re growing.

Define the constraints and (try to) make friends with them. 

We also typically collaborate closely with our clients as we hope the houses will be a sort of portrait of them in the fabric of the city. For example, the graphic lettering on the Hello House was a collaboration with the artist Rose Nolan, whose house it was. We were particularly lucky in this case that our client was an artist. I admire Rose’s work and feel grateful that the house was an opportunity to collaborate with her.

You are on the board of ArchiTeam. Can you talk a bit about the organization and your involvement with it?

ArchiTeam is an Australian not-for-profit co-operative of over 650 architects. It had its 25th birthday last year. I am one of its 5 directors and currently chair of the board. All the directors are architects who run their own practices alongside contributing time to ArchiTeam, and are elected by members.

Most ArchiTeam members are sole practices or small/medium and emerging firms who aren’t in a position to drive big initiatives individually. As a collective, we can pool and share resources to achieve much bigger things that benefit ourselves professionally and the industry in general.

We run CPD programs, a group professional indemnity insurance policy, a biannual conference, peer networking and support forums (online and in the flesh), an annual architecture awards program, public education and outreach workshops. We aim to continually initiate new – and often innovative – programs that directly reflect the interests of our members. We are currently in the midst of a new initiative to crowdfund research into small architecture practices with the University of Melbourne. The university has never had research funded this way and we are their guinea pigs – we’re a bit scared but who’s going to do it if we don’t?

What is the research project?

The crowdfunded research project is called RAsP (Research for Architects in Small Practice) and involves building an ongoing fund for research into our industry. Small practices typically cannot afford something as ambitious as commissioning serious research. Collectively, however, this could be possible with crowdfunding. Some really exciting news on this front is that the crowdfunding campaign just finished a couple of days ago and has been funded in full (slightly over actually) by 200 supporters.

The ongoing research project attempts to quantify the value of architecture. The first step will be examining the financial impact small practice architects have on the properties they renovate by looking at improved capital gains in the Melbourne residential property market.

How else has working with ArchiTeam fed back into your practice OOF! Architecture?

One of the greatest challenges of a small practice is isolation

In terms of the practice of architecture, ArchiTeam is hugely beneficial. One of the greatest challenges of a small practice, for example, is isolation from experience and perspective simply because you don't have enough colleagues around on a day to day basis to bounce ideas or workshop problems. In a larger office, you would consult the experienced, old hand for advice. Through ArchiTeam, we consult the 'hive mind' of members online where we seek advice from each other. I am often delighted by how generously fellow members share information and experience. Their good will is contagious and contributes significantly to the collegiate sensibility of Melbourne architecture's 'small end of town'.

In terms of design, architecture can be a confidence game. I find that ambitious design work is more effectively encouraged by peer enthusiasm than peer derision. I'm not into the suffering artist thing—enjoy your angst in the privacy of your own home if you must but spare the rest of us. As an architect, you should offer the world nothing less than passion and enthusiasm for architecture.

What advice would you give to a young designer starting out today?

Be prepared to roll with it and enjoy the quirks

It’s in the nature of design to be a highly idiosyncratic process. As a result, architecture offices tend to be a reflection of its directors personalities and can be pretty eccentric—especially true of smaller, design intensive practices. Be prepared to roll with it and enjoy the quirks. If you’re lucky enough to find a place you’re in tune with, value that as the rare and wonderful thing it is. If you can’t fit in, don’t feel like a failure, it simply may not be the place for you—try another one. If you don’t fit in with any office, you might just have to start your own!

You are currently in Venice. What have you seen on your recent travels that inspires you?

How long have you got? Each trip is an architectural pilgrimage of some sort. You can learn so much about a place from online resources but it’s just a shadow of what it really is. Architecture is about space and its effect and response to everything—this can only be experienced in the flesh. I saw Sverre Fehn’s nordic pavilion yesterday and have been much more excited about it than any exhibition at the biennale. It was so lean and pale and it’s roof of stacked skinny beams softened the sweltering venetian sun to a soothing glow. Love it!

What’s next for the office?

I have no ambitions to build a big office; it can be a beast that runs you instead of the other way around. My office is very small, very flexible, very close to our projects and our clients. We’re not slick or corporate and we’re more able to bend the office structure around what we’re interested in doing. 

If we need more hands on deck for certain projects, I’d prefer to go into a joint venture with another office rather than expanding just for that one job. I’m not a fan or hiring and firing on a project-to-project basis. Good work relationships are far too valuable to throw away so flippantly!