Byron Bourke is a NSW registered architect specialising in the design of ecologically sensitive low impact housing. Byron gained experience from some of Australia's leading architecture practices as an undergraduate before later completing a Master of Architecture degree at The University of Sydney, where he was awarded the 2018 Advanced Fabrication Prize for robot assisted stereotomy of sandstone voussoirs (competition sponsor and stone material supplied by Gosford Quarries NSW). Byron holds a bachelors degree in Urban and Regional Planning and qualifications in 3D Animation (AFTRS) and Visual FX (Metroscreen). Drawing from his animation and character-design influences Byron explores the idea that architectural form / structure can express an inherent or emergent semblance analogous to the structure and form of a living creature. With his practice maintaining that: The creation of buildings should be from a locus of functional beauty, a life force achieved with material arrangement, with the site's local and broader world environment driving its evolution - ''to me the micro architecture is akin to something which is alive - a small intricate building can take on a sense of individual character in its response to a set of individual conditions. It feels unique when the pragmatic or natural relationship to the site's story and (natural and urban) systems drives a high-ordered tectonic beyond merely building - That's when you know a construction idea is working, when there starts to form an individual identity in it's arrangement of materials, a poetic narrative emerges in the (architectural) idea which is gleaned from the site, the client, and is ultimately specific to a surrounding land / time-scape.''
