Antony Martin. Photo by Tatjana Plitt.

After working in New York City for a number of years, Antony Martin decided to move to Australia and set up a firm of his own. Since it's founding, MRTN Architects has become one of Melbourne’s top residential architects—their work striking a balance between responding to his clients' needs and finding what works best for a specific site.

For this week's Studio Snapshot, Martin talks about what he's learned from building his vast and varied portfolio of residential designs. 

How many people are in your practice?

There’s five of us, but we have someone away on maternity leave.

What was the motivation for starting your own firm?

It’s kind of interesting, I never thought I’d actually start my own practice. Originally being from New Zealand, relocating to Australia, and then living in New York for eight years, I didn’t have what I thought was an established client base. But, I was always attracted to the idea of doing my own projects and own work—really I just thought: I should give it a go, I can always go back to practice. It was something I really did want to try.  

What firms were you working for in New York?

In New York, when I first moved over there I was working for Davis Brody Bond and was doing some University projects for them. But, then after a little while, I moved to David Howell Design, who was another New Zealander living in New York. He had an office on Union Square. I had a really great time working for him doing apartments and working within a five block radius of union square—it was fantastic.

What was your first project?

I was actually quite fortunate enough, my first project was a new house and it was a Venus Bay Bach—so it’s a holiday home, on a beachside location in Venus Bay, Victoria. The clients had three children and were looking for a place to go down on the weekends and holidays. It was a typical first project where the budget was very tight, the brief was asking for a lot and it was a steep and difficult site. Town planning was really difficult and it was difficult to get a builder, but, at the end of it, it is a project I am tremendously proud of. It has a really interesting and dynamic design—managed to get four bedrooms in 120 square meters. And the family, who are now good friends of ours and we visit the house all the time, they really love it and it is always a joy to go around and visit them.

How have things changed over the years from this first project?

I think what’s always been interesting in practice, and it just hit me after that project, is the variety in residential projects that we’ve done. We haven’t been pigeonholed or limited to doing alteration and additions in Melbourne. We’ve actually done a nice variety of residential projects from a couple of country houses, to working with some heritage buildings, to working on some very tight Victorian terrace houses. And also a couple suburban homes. It’s been interesting the evolution of experiences we’ve had in those different housing typologies.   

What are some of the difference working in New York and Australia, and because you did a lot of residential in both, how do you think this is reflected in different living styles between the two?

The most marked difference is personality type, I’d say. Your New York client is quite different to your Australian client. Clients tended to be very type-A personalities and pretty demanding for what they were doing, which was good—that is what you expect when you work there. And what it did help in is developing how I relate to clients and how I can communicate and how I met very high level of expectations. It also meant, other difference were, I was never doing a waterproofing detail, no gutters or roofing. It was all basically stripping apartments back to a white box and then finishes, and joinery and furniture. It was really good experience in that side of the work. Something I am pretty proud of is the level to which we pay attention to our interiors as well as the exterior envelope.

How do you incorporate sustainability into your designs?

When it comes to sustainable design and living patterns, there’s no one answer. We like to address a whole gamut of issues with our approach to design. From housing size—how big are these houses—to orientation—what’s the best orientation for its location—and then we get into the more technical parts of it, the insulation and window types and the things going into the building. We try to use only renewable energy in the house, we generally go into 100% electric houses so there’s no gas. Those are all sorts of nuts and bolts that are inherent in the project, But, we also like to imbue the projects with a tactile sensibility as well which also relates to our approach to sustainable design in terms of material selection—where they are being sourced from, how they’re being finished, and whether they contribute to the well-being of the home. That is important as well, you can have a highly insulated house but, you don’t want to have a sterile environment either. 

Exemplary Projects?

The Fairfield Hacienda project, it was a suburban home for a family. That project touched on what I raised earlier, in that the clients had originally gone to a Design/Build firm. They had a design prepared by them and were about to start building and the house was 320 square meters, had a double garage facing the street to the North. When they came to us, they were having doubts on whether that was the right direction. We were able to convince them to reduce the house size by a third and take it down to 200 square meters and orient the living spaces to the street and the north.

Why did you feel it was important to get your clients to move in this direction?

Its twofold: firstly, we just felt the house was too large. We analyzed every single room—how big they were going to be and how big they actually needed to be. And it was a long process. So A. it was about reducing the size, which increases you open air on the site so you get more garden space which is good. But, there is also the very pragmatic part which is if you look at cost per square meter, were able to build 200 square meter house at the same cost as their 300 square meter one, but it had much more comfortable character, had a better finish, had outdoor living space and overall, a much better outcome.

On the other side of things, another project often associated with us is the Trentham Long House. That is a very different housing type—its a house in the country and they were very interested in a barn or a rural type building and keeping a very simple construction technique. They were a retired couple moving to the country, and they wanted it to be comfortable for their adult children and grandchildren. It gets pretty cold up there—it occasionally snows in that area so it had to be thermally efficient. They needed a carport to park their car, and also a woodshop. Our significant design move was to combine all of those requirements under a singular, gable roof.

What have been some of the biggest obstacles?

The nature of architecture is its own obstacle—project time is a long time. From when people come into the office for a chat to us working through the design to the construction phase and then people moving in, it’s a long period of time. You have to have a strong level of faith and trust in your architect and also a good relationship with your client to make sure it survives that period of time. That is a significant part of what we do. And then, in terms of a sort of obstacle, when you invest all the time and energy into projects and for some reason their paths don’t go forward, that can be frustrating.