AGENCY is go.

A couple of weeks ago we invited a few people to join us at Wines of While to celebrate the launch of AGENCY, issue 01 of our journal.

We’d had a big party to launch PIVOT and thought that a quiet glass of excellent wine might be a better approach as we head into the festive season.

TF.A Principal, Kieran Wong, said a few words on the night, which we’d like to share here:

I want to acknowledge that we are on Nyungar land, country that was never ceded, and that colonisation is an ongoing action which requires us to be wary, and always open to new counter-measures…

So, the Fulcrum Agency was officially launched on Monday December 3rd, 2018 – that’s actually 238 working days….and we’ve managed to pack quite a bit in…

We’ve been busy growing an incredible team, working on projects from the NMP in Perth, to QAMPI in Minjerribah, Qld and across the Northern Territory – from Elliot to Maningrida and of course, Groote Eylandt. We’re enjoying collaborating with partners such as Lyons Architecture in Melbourne, KPMG in the NT and locally here with Mt Eyk and Arcadia.

We were Founding Signatories to Architects Declare Australia – calling for recognition and action on the climate emergency that faces all of us. I recently joined a panel with Peter Newman on what we can do in WA to radically and immediately change our fundamental operating model in the built environment.

We established the Fulcrum Research business, with Dr Jen Lorrimar-Shanks leading the initiation and scoping study for us on a measurement tool to be used in public and social housing.

We conducted a community housing survey in language across major communities in Groote using local Traditional Owners and Indigenous participants.

We are Principal Investigators on a joint Research Pilot with the University of Queensland and Monash, researching best practice design models for quality of life indicators on the Room to Breathe program, funded by the Northern Territory Government. The RTB program is close to our hearts, having written the Program Guidelines.

We are partnering with Monash on an ARC Linkage Grant on a large scale study of Mental Health in the architectural schools and workplaces.

Emma and I are co-directors of next year’s National Architecture conference, to be held here in Perth – the theme is ‘ leverage’ (cute, I know, from us Fulcrum types) and we are excitedly connecting with activists, writers, politicians, designers and thinkers globally to bring some of the best minds to Perth next year.

So – onto the Journal – yet again, the making of the journal has highlighted the incredible creativity, ingenuity and generosity of our contributors – as always, we have looked outside of architecture to learn from people and projects that inspire us and create impact.

It’s called Agency – and of course we love this word…it’s a noun and verb – to BE an agency and to HAVE agency are two distinct things, yet we are interested in how we can BE and DO both!

Coming into the end of the year can be a blur, but we are trying hard to keep a longer view – about what we can do next – the Agency is committed to make positive impacts across our profession, and more importantly in communities in which we work.