Harry Leatham
Architecture, 2023
My fascination with architecture started very young; I was just ten when my family did a knockdown rebuild of our little one-bedroom beach shack. Experiencing this transformation firsthand, a place we called home, into a luxurious modern duplex. My mum was very involved and invested in this process, knowing exactly how she wanted the outcome to be, she drove the meetings with the architect and local builder. To see the results of her efforts and the joy it brought her, to the eventual sale of the other unit, close to what we built the entire place for, absolutely puzzled my young mind, I was hooked! Ever since then, I have wanted to become an architect and bring client’s dreams to life, just like they did ours.
What’s next for Harry? I am planning to study master’s part-time at Griffith University in QLD, and am looking to work in either Brisbane or Gold Coast in early 2024. This year I really enjoyed a 6-month internship at Filardo Ercan Architects, I learned so much there and it left me with a very positive outlook on the industry. I have much more to learn and am really excited for the next steps on this journey.
Selected Portfolio
Within : Spatial Porosity
A super lobby space servicing the city. An urban rest for all people; a place to meet and stay, a place to meet and go, or a place to pass through and continue on. A super lobby in the heart of Canberra featuring a rooftop bar, and an urban terrace garden. Drawing on the existing design language and rhythms from around Garema Place informed my design intent; Manipulating the existing axes, created a fractured grid that led to compression and expansion between spaces both in plan and section. Thus, enabling the percolation of pedestrian traffic within, through, and around the space created.
Sculpturesque living. Housing +
Achieving unconventional beauty. This form’s unique identity works within its context due to this hypersensitive reaction to its surroundings. When refining site engagement, organic, and neo-futuristic forms, I turned to Zaha Hadid Architects: Redefining Architecture & Design. This helped me understand how important it is for these forms to be flexible with purpose. The perforated skin element which wraps the form to provide shade and hold the form’s shape was influenced by the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI) by Woods Bagot. This glazing system has been adapted to suit the dynamic program. It opens over balcony spaces and is offset from the structure, Bagot also had multiple types of paneling systems, mine is synonymous with the form.
