INSIDER: Elizabeth Quay architect Lisa Anne Halton reveals secrets to success

“If you want anything done, go straight to the top.” That nugget of wisdom from her father has served Lisa Anne Halton well. Within six months of arriving in Perth from her native Ireland with $100 in her bank account, the architect was hired as principal design manager on the $2.6 billion Elizabeth Quay project. Halton, 40, has only gone from strength to strength since her inauspicious start in WA in 2012, soon after finishing a master of architecture at the highly renowned University College Dublin. Her Studio Kinship, which has been two years in the making, is this year expected to deliver the nation’s first culturally appropriate Aboriginal housing. The first five pods will be manufactured in Perth and trucked to Fitzroy Crossing, in the Kimberley region, with the capacity to house up to 100 people. If successful, they could be sent to other regional areas in other States and be hugely instrumental in solving homelessness and empowering Aboriginal communities. Halton has a strong moral compass, which has underpinned her success in the not-for-profit sector, which includes a focus on disability accommodation. Her other business, Studio Halton, develops specialist accommodation for the homeless and people living with disabilities. The secret to her success? Good old-fashioned tenacity — and some petty thievery. “I literally walked the streets of Perth — I know that sounds awful, but I did,” Halton says, referring to when she first arrived in WA. “I went into all of the contractors that I understood did very good work, and I would kind of pinch the business cards. Then I just called up the CEO direct to try and get a job.” It was survival of the fittest, and Halton is not one to shy away from a challenge. At the age of eight, her father taught her how to drive cranes on building sites. At the age of 19, she was managing them. A willingness to speak her mind ultimately set her on the path to winning the coveted Elizabeth Quay design contract. The Quay to success The eldest of four girls and one boy, Halton was raised in Dublin until the age of 12 before relocating to Maynooth, a popular university town in north County Kildare, where her family still live. “We were brought up like any other boy on a farm … we learned about cars and we learned about machinery, we were put up in the crane to lift bales of silage — all under supervision of course,” Halton says. She started out in her family’s construction and development business, Halton, in Dublin at the age of 21 and worked there for about 10 years. But the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008 changed things dramatically and Halton made the decision to reskill and study architecture. “I had a number of properties in Ireland and they were worth 50 per cent of what I paid for them when I got on that plane (to WA in search of work),” she says. After landing her first job at a small engineering company that contracted for Rio Tinto, Halton was invited to a forum the miner was hosting at the Hyatt. Rio executives dropped a bombshell that they were culling the number of contractors on their books from 5500 to 1500 as the company ramped up production. “You could hear a pin drop in the room,” Halton says. “I put my hand up and said, ‘Look, I’ve only been here for three months and I’m completely green to mining ... but I was on one of your sites for just one week and I got a half a million (dollar) variation, because your people decided not to show up on time.’ “I said, ‘That’s pocket change to you guys, but you’ve got 1500 projects on the go at the moment. Multiply that half a million by 1500 — now we’re talking your kind of money.’ “My advice would be, don’t dismiss the smaller contractors — they are where the innovation lies.” Her speech not only impressed Rio, who offered her a job in setting up their innovation wing, but also Peter Handel, who was then general manager of Leighton Contractors, now CPB. He offered her the pick of five jobs Leighton had on the go, including design manager at Elizabeth Quay. “He scribbled someone’s name out and put me on... so he had faith,” Halton says. Overseeing the artwork strategy, the Barrack Square redevelopment and architectural finishes for the public realm and inlet were among her many responsibilities on the project from 2013 to 2015. Lore and order Elizabeth Quay was a mammoth project that helped build Halton a name in the architecture world in WA. But ask her what she’s most proud of and she’ll tell you it’s the work that’s yet to come. A sustainable home where Aboriginal people can feel safe to practise kinship lore protocol — a system that provides social order within groups and is used by many Aboriginal communities outside the metropolitan area — is at the heart of Studio Kinship. Halton says houses have got in the way of how Aboriginal people practise lore and culture, and their connection to the land. “What we fail to understand as white people is the reason Aboriginal people live outside the house is not because they vandalise houses ... it’s because they can’t practice kinship lore protocol,” she says. “If you or I practise kinship lore protocol, every time we can’t practise it it’s like getting electrocuted; you’re breaking your lore.” The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare says Indigenous Australians “have increased risk factors for family violence, such as social stressors like poor housing and overcrowding”. Data from 2016 shows one in five people were living in overcrowded dwellings. Halton has secured private funding to the tune of $5 million for the first five Studio Kinship pods, which can each house up to 24 people comfortably. Her business partner, Aboriginal cultural business strategist Clifton Bieundurry, has 56ha of land in Fitzroy Crossing which he has offered up free of charge for the community to build on. “We’ve got five families ready to go, but we just want the Government to sign a contract to say that they’ll purchase,” Halton says. Golden ratio The pods were designed using the principles of the golden ratio, which is favoured by Halton and widely used in ancient architecture to provide a sense of balance and equilibrium. Each will have continuous “passive surveillance”, meaning occupants will have a visual to every bedroom and every living area. This was done deliberately to address family violence, which occurs at higher rates for Indigenous Australians than non-Indigenous people, and sexual abuse. “We’re not under any romantic notion that in our lifetime we’ll see a potential positive change; we don’t know. All we know is that this allows the community to practise kinship lore protocol and if that’s brought back, dignity is brought back,” Halton says. A host of leading WA businesspeople helped on the project including Perth property developer Adrian Fini, Mark Keogh from power and water solutions company UON and Cameron McDiven from marketing and sales consultancy Hoist. And Hollywood legend Hugh Jackman, who studied at the West Australian Academy of Performing Arts, is understood to be advising Halton for a potential future documentary on the project. Local construction company Timberbuilt will build the prototype to show to ministers, elders and government in the coming months. Feeling the space While it’s no secret that Halton has confidence in spades, she also has sensitivity to match. “I’m very confident, but I could see someone walk down the road and if they’re homeless I want to start crying,” she says. “I just go, ‘Oh God, I want to build you a lovely house’.” Halton did her dissertation in sensory architecture, looking at how people with a disability feel the energy of space when they can’t see or hear. She works with not-for-profits and designs specialist disability accommodation through Studio Halton. The designs are centred on health and wellbeing. Halton considers circadian rhythms, which help control the body’s sleep-wake cycle, to ensure residents wake up with the sun and have pockets of nature around their rooms to alleviate anxiety. Studio Halton recently assisted Identitywa with a group dwelling in Cloverdale, east of Perth. Halton says it is the only robust specialist disability accommodation of its kind available in Australia. The architect has made it her mission to eliminate the term “community housing” in planning, which she believes sends the wrong message to neighbours living next to people who simply need extra support. “It’s a disgusting term, it’s derogatory and I think at the end of the day, all we’re really doing is providing a home,” Halton says. “The poor neighbours think that there's going to be 15 ambulances around … there’s not. It’s just a home.” Halton is also calling out some developers who are not pushing for good quality design outcomes due to the higher price point, saying “there’s a lot of greed in the sector at the moment”. She says it’s especially disappointing in the wake of the pandemic, which exposed how important a liveable home is in making people feel healthy and happy. Studio Halton has addressed the health crisis directly by designing a COVID isolation pod. It could potentially be used by frontline health workers, people on the National Disability Insurance Scheme or people coming out of hospital after an accident or illness. “The beauty about this pod is it allows you to live, and isolate, but it’s still got visual and acoustic connectivity back to the main home,” Halton says. A home for everyone There’s no shortage of assets across the State that could be repurposed at a budget-friendly cost to create permanent housing, according to Halton. The challenge is finding good Samaritans willing to surrender them. Halton has designed a village for Rotary Perth, which would be set up on redundant land and provide eight to ten homes for people sleeping rough on the streets. The idea is to construct the homes using dongas from mine sites, which would be repurposed into cosy living spaces. “We’ve done the design, the fit-out, we’ve specified everything down to the spoons and the drawers — but we need people to come forward with the land,” Halton says. Studio Halton is expected to eventually make its way to Ireland, with Halton saying her dream is a “half and half” arrangement where she would use Perth as her base. Along with bringing her business back home, Halton wants to advocate for government to have a minimum standard for health and wellbeing in architecture — particularly residential developments. “I think we’ve got to up the ante with a design code for houses, big time.”

INSIDER: Elizabeth Quay architect Lisa Anne Halton reveals secrets to success

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