Dedece together with Vola, and Architecture Australia organised an intimate dinner for Kerry Hill to celebrate Australia’s most internationally successful and prolific Architect.

Kerry Hill ( Australian born director of the Singapore (and now Fremantle) based practice Kerry Hill Architects ) has been an influential figure in South East Asian architecture over the past four decades. Not surprisingly Kerry’s favourite hobby is architecture ! He seems to live and breathe architecture.

“There are two qualities I have come to admire in architecture. One is exactitude and the other is authenticity” ……….. Kerry Hill

Kerry has distinguished himself as an architect of exceptional sensibility and expertise, with his regionally sensitive approach to the design and construction of buildings across the Asia-Pacific region.

He is internationally recognised for developing resort architecture that is both climate and site-specific, drawing on indigenous forms of tropical materials to produce high quality resorts in extraordinary locations. He has completed some of the most architecturally ambitious and resolved projects to be found in South-East Asia, work which is resolutely modern while in a traditional setting.

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“The future is only the past again, entered through another gate”

Kerry Hill’s oeuvre of the past thirty years reveals a patient “Pursuit of Architecture”. In many ways, architecture can be very autobiographical.

We see Kerry Hill’s architecture as tranquil, quiet, elegant and bold. Somehow these words also express the character of Kerry Hill as a person: a character that is tough, persevering, patient, inquisitive, with a sense of humour and, most of all, serene.

Through the informal “Q&A” format, Kerry covered many varied topics including – his upbringing in Perth, Western Australia, first architectural job at Perth-based Howlett and Bailey in 1969, and then onto Asian-based architects, Palmer and Turner in 1971. He recalled his first project overseas as resident site architect on Bali for the Bali Hyatt Hotel, and what was originally intended to be a three month working stint in Asia has extended to now 40+ years.

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“I draw. That’s what I do.”

Perhaps Kerry Hill’s influence is, above all, in his example of how an architect can calmly live a Life in Architecture – ” Life as Architecture, Architecture as Life ?

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