Tim Horton on PIVOT

There are two ways to think of a pivot: both as a verb – an act; a change in direction – and a noun; a shaft (yes, or fulcrum) around which something spins.

I prefer the noun as a way of describing my own path through architecture because, what might seem to be abrupt leaps from practice (Public Works cadet, Lahz Nimmo, JPW, Hassell); to policy (advising a South Australia premier on design, planning and development); to regulation (policing professional standards from the Registrar’s seat); and now planning law (as a Commissioner of the Land and Environment Court), has felt more like regular oscillations around a fixation with the profession’s relationship with the external forces that give it shape.

But the initial push in to this different orbit was a mid-week phone call one morning in Adelaide in 2010 that went something like “It’s Wendy from the Premier’s office – will you take a call from the Premier?”. 24 hours later I’d resigned from Hassell and been appointed as a Commissioner. And while I haven’t returned to design practice since, everything that’s followed has been what we know as ‘strategic design’ at some level.

* Tim Horton is the current Commissioner, Land & Environment Court of NSW. His musings on the word Pivot appeared in issue 00 of The Fulcrum Agency’s journal.