AWS Australia Collateral Emerging Architect Prize Winners: Class of 2016 | Page 14

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David
Weir
How has winning the Emerging
Architect Prize changed your life?
It’s made me work harder, and it’s made What is a project you have
worked on that you are most
proud of?
me think more about what I can do as a It’s always the most current one, since
practitioner and as an advocate for the it usually incorporates all the knowledge
profession. The title bestows a degree of and lessons learned from the projects
confidence to continue on the path you’re that have come before. There are some
walking, so perhaps it hasn’t changed my life past projects that I love and thoroughly
so much as reinforced what I was doing; a enjoyed working on, but I look back on
call to do it bigger and better. them and notice all the elements that
could have been better, smarter, more
beautiful, more useful; I want to make
sure that my current projects are better
as a result of that self-review.
How do you interpret the conference theme,
‘Praxis: Process. Propositions. Production.’?
I think it’s about the very heart of what we do as architects – immersing one’s self in
concepts and ideas, creating a framework which we can apply to our projects and the
problems presented, and following that through to see the creation of a thing which
didn’t exist before. It can happen on vast scales or tiny ones, and it’s what sets a good
architect apart from other practitioners in the building design world – the consideration,
the testing, the discussion, and then seeing it through to create something better than
what could have been.