Beyond the ‘House Style’: Inside GroupGSA’s Pursuit of Truly Site-Led Architecture

GroupGSA Director Lisa-Maree Carrigan.

Designing without a fixed ‘house style’ means that instead of relying on previous design work, material choices, typology or decision-making, GroupGSA gives each project a completely bespoke design response, even if the team has designed for the client before.

Every project begins with the same questions: Where are we? What’s the history? Whose land is this? What’s the ecology?

“We believe in designing for people, for place, and for country,” says GroupGSA Director Lisa-Maree Carrigan. “Whether or not a client explicitly asks for it, we require our teams to think broadly about the context and meaning of the place.”

On a recent precinct-scale development in Sydney’s inner west, community engagement revealed that a stand of trees previously deemed insignificant by arborists held deep cultural importance. Ultimately, this discovery created a completely unique design response, shaping the project into something unexpected that embraces the history of the site.

A cosy residential interior in the Picket & Co co-living housing development.

Exterior render of the Picket & Co development.

Because they operate without a house style, when beginning a new project, GroupGSA always begins with extensive research that often explores realms outside of architecture and design. One recent example of a project that embodies this approach is a co-living development for Picket & Co, a design competition the practice won for its innovative and human-centred approach. The project brought together architecture, interiors, landscape and urban design in a single, multidisciplinary team.

“We drew on learnings from seniors living, hotels, multi-residential, education, psychology, and neurodiversity research,” says Lisa-Maree. “Because we’d been so rigorous and exploratory in developing the design response, there was so much depth to the design, which created a unique solution.”

Beneath that design rigour is a culture of collaboration that is entrenched in the studio. The practice is multidisciplinary and, as such, offers a blend of skill sets spanning architects, urban designers, interior designers, and landscape architects. Within these skill sets, there’s diverse expertise across various sectors, including living environments, lifestyle, hotels and retail, education, transport, and culture. That melting pot of skill and experience creates a rich foundation for collaboration.

“When you harness a breadth of expertise across the sectors, it’s really interesting. There might be something happening in one industry that affects another, and that can create really exciting and innovative design collaborations.”

A render of the Concord Central development, showing the line of trees, retained for their significance to the site.

A green connection belt in the Concord West development.

At GroupGSA, project teams are fluid; people work with different colleagues for different projects, and the cross-pollination of ideas happens organically.

“Sitting beside someone with a different skill set encourages understanding and respect for what everyone brings,” Lisa-Maree says. “That kind of collaboration and respect is really important to our culture.”

Collaboration isn’t confined to the studio. Researching different perspectives and understanding the people for whom places are built is key to the team’s design response. In the Concord Central project, a master-planned mixed-use urban village in Sydney’s inner west, meaningful engagement with the community became the catalyst for design innovation. The result is a series of human-scaled streets and open spaces that link residents directly to transport, green space and the daily amenities that make a neighbourhood vibrant.

These types of large-scale precinct-type projects, where masterplanning and multiple buildings are involved, offer an opportunity to make a positive impact to a community through the careful consideration of how the space can be used to its highest potential. It’s meaningful work, and it wouldn’t be possible if the team were confined to a specific house style or aesthetic, says Lisa-Maree.

“When you're talking about where the streets are going, where are the best connections, what's the activation? What's the nature of the spaces? What's the open space strategy? All of a sudden, you have the opportunity to make a significant change and a really positive impact on the community for generations, and that’s what is most exciting to us.”

Explore more projects by GroupGSA.