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. 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.''
