Kerstin Thompson, who is determined to show her practice “can tackle anything”, is thrilled with her prize. “But it’s a stark indication of how much we still have to do to attain equity.”
When Kerstin Thompson was announced the winner of the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal this month, she became the fourth woman in the award’s 63-year history.
Joining the ranks occupied by the likes of Jørn Utzon (who won in 1973, the year his Sydney Opera House opened), Harry Seidler (1976) and Philip Cox (1984), Thompson stands out for the quiet authority of her buildings.
Buildings such as the redeveloped Melbourne Holocaust Museum, which integrates a 1920s cottage into a new, variegated patchwork of white brick that adds a lacy distinction to the streetscape. “We used a decidedly abstract architecture that recognises that the Holocaust remains outside of representation,” Thompson is quoted as saying on the museum’s website. Or her conversion of the former Victorian Mounted Police Stables, with its robust octagonal entrance, into light-filled studios for the Victorian College of the Arts.
A clutch of deceptively humble, impeccably crafted Thompson-designed houses dot the Victorian landscape, from Hanging Rock to Cape Woolamai, commissioned by savvy clients since Kerstin Thompson Architects was established almost 30 years ago.
Read the article in the Financial Review.