William Smart
Ceremony: 5 May 2017, 2.00pm
Speech
I’d like to acknowledge Mr Brian Wilson, Professor Andrew Parfitt, Professor Elizabeth Mossop, staff, distinguished guests, graduates, graduates’ families and friends. I’d also like to acknowledge the Gadigal people upon whose ancestral lands this university now stands.
I feel very privileged to be here today and to be honest, a little out of place. I come from an ordinary background; not the wrong side of the tracks or a famous lineage. I’m not a writer or a talker; I’m more a dreamer and drawer. And I’m not from UTS, or Sydney, actually, but I do feel a great connection to this city, after contributing to four major buildings across Broadway, including White Rabbit Gallery, Connor and a wonderful house called Indigo Slam. And that contribution to this area is my connection to this university.
Today is one day when you must feel very proud of your achievements. It’s a day that will be marked in your lives, for most of you, as the beginning of your careers, in this great city, this great nation, filled with opportunity. It’s a place where the foundations of great architecture have been established by extraordinary architects, such as Utzon, Seidler, Murcutt, all internationally recognised at the absolute pinnacle of their professions. And this is underpinned by the work of other great designers that have established standards and practices that are best in the world. And the role you all have today is to embrace your opportunities in your own way, and make our built environment and designs, design world, the best that it can be. And I say in your own way because each of our professions requires all different kinds of designers. Some are creative, others great at business, some are strong on detail, and others are great managers and organisers. We need them all, so my advice is to find your niche and become great at that.
For most of you, you’ve achieved this qualification because of your skills, hard work and love of great design. But you’ve embarked on something more than a job, or even more than a career. This is a vocation, which is like a calling, such as what you see with a professor, a nurse, an athlete, and it will be incredibly satisfying. What is so wonderful about this particular vocation is what you imagine and then draw actually gets built or created. We create physical objects that endure many years, shape our cities and public places, and interiors that shape our lives. And it’s a role with tremendous responsibility, as well as a wonderful opportunity. This message was driven home to me recently with one of my friends who decided to re-orientate his career and leave the world of banking, with all its prestige and financial reward, and enrol in his true love, which was interior design. I now see him with an energy and drive that I’ve never seen before, and his only regret is that he hadn’t done it sooner.
But it’s also a job that can be incredibly tough, especially if your goal is to get amazing results. I knew that I would fight with builders and engineers, but I’d never imagined a world of project managers, developers, design-and-construct development, and a world where mistakes happen all the time. You need to be very thick-skinned and very determined. You need to know when to stand your ground, and at all times, keep your eye on the end result. I went to see an established Chilean landscape architect deliver a talk at the AIA. She does amazing work for incredible clients like the founders of Google. At the end of the most extraordinary presentation, someone from the crowd asked her if it were easier in South America, and she laughed – not just a giggle, but an uncontrollable laugh – and declared ‘You can’t imagine how much of this all is a fight.’ And I’ve noticed that, even the most famous designers – they struggle to create great design. Great design is a vision and a conspiracy of circumstances and participants. It’s an amazing testament to a team’s ability to join forces and create something special. It requires collaboration, and is naturally susceptible to the quality of that collaboration. I look at this as impressive, and acknowledge the difficulty of coordinating such large numbers of people to provide their trade at the exact time, to the required quality.
Nearly 30 years ago, I participated in a ceremony like this, and then followed the advice of my parents, to travel off to Europe to work and explore, with vague plans and little savings. And by a stroke of luck and sheer bravado, I found a job in the south of France. I was really looking for an adventure but found so much more. And through completely unplanned consequences, I landed a job in London working for Norman Foster when the office was very small. I stayed there for about five years, and then returned to Australia to work on the Olympic project, and that was the last job I did before commencing my own practice 20 years ago. Now that I look back, the dots connect together beautifully, although at the time, they seemed like flukes, connected by unbridled confidence and the ability to ask for any opportunity that came before me. Congratulations to you all. I know that your actions have brought you here today, and will also define you in the future. I wish you the best in your careers, and your opportunities to shape our city, our country, and maybe even more. Thank you.
About the Speaker
William is the Founder and Creative Director of Smart Design Studio, a multi-disciplinary studio offering professional services in architecture, interior architecture, and design. Smart Design Studio’s portfolio consists of master-planning for urban centres, multi-unit residential developments, private dwellings as well as retail and commercial fitouts.
In 20 years of directing his own practice, William has developed a reputation for creating bold architecture, supported by work that is detailed and resolved. Smart Design Studio’s work embodies a philosophy of “architecture from the inside out”, where the potential for wonderful interior spaces drives the architecture as much as a deep understanding of a building’s purpose. The Crown 515 building in Surry Hills and the White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale are fine examples of his studio’s bold, innovative style.
His buildings have received critical acclaim and prestigious awards from the Australian Institute of Architects, such as the Award for Adaptive Re-use for Smart Design Studio's headquarters on Bourke Street, the Milo Dunphy Award for Sustainable Architecture for APRA-AMCOS and the Interior Architecture Award for the Mansfield Appleton Residence.
His design for the Singapore Art Gallery was shortlisted in the top 5 of an international design competition for its reconstruction.
William graduated from Curtin University in Perth with a Bachelor of Applied Science and a Bachelor of Architecture with Honours and a distinction for his thesis. He was also awarded the prestigious Royal Australian Institutes of Architects W.H. Robertson Memorial Prize in 1990.
