The Gold Medal – the AIA’s highest honour – recognises distinguished service by architects who have designed or executed buildings of high merit, producing work of great distinction that has advanced architecture or endowed the profession in a distinguished manner. For nearly thirty years, Durbach Block Jaggers (DBJ) has been a leading force in Australian architecture under the leadership of this year’s joint recipients: Neil Durbach, Camilla Block and David Jaggers.

The trio are celebrated for their intellectual rigour and highly civic projects that have profound impacts on communities. Their creative partnership has produced work that has greatly influenced Australia’s built environment and set the standard of contemporary architecture.

“As National President of the Australian Institute of Architects it is an absolute pleasure, on behalf of our 14,500 members to award Neil, Camilla and David our highest honor – the Gold Medal,” says Adam Haddow, Jury Chair. “It is rare that architecture moves your heart and touches your soul, helping you experience and think about the world differently. Neil, Camilla and David make architecture of beauty, delight and joy. Architecture is both science and art – and it is rare that these combine to deliver breathtaking outcomes that speak directly to an Australian sensitivity. We are incredibly proud of their work and the contribution their projects make to Australian culture and society.”

Related: Glenn Murcutt and Francis Kéré

The jury comprised Adam Haddow (AIA National President and SJB) as chair, Jane Cassidy (AIA Immediate Past President and GHD Design), John Wardle (Wardle), Emma Williamson (WA government architect) and Ingrid Richards (Richards and Spence).

The full Jury Citation follows below.

Neil Durbach, Camilla Block and David Jaggers – practising together as Durbach Block Jaggers Architects – stand as a significant and enduring voice in contemporary Australian architecture. For almost three decades, their work has demonstrated that architecture can be intellectually rigorous, deeply affecting and profoundly civic. In recognising the creative partnership of Neil, Camilla and David, we acknowledge an extraordinary body of built work, and a practice that has shaped the expectations and ambitions of contemporary Australian architecture.

Neil, Camilla and David’s practice is defined by a steadfast commitment to the creative act. Their studio operates as a workshop of ideas: walls lined with large-scale models, shelves dense with books and collected objects. Theirs is a deliberate process that engages the entire team – digital sketches inform drawings, drawings evolve into models that are continually reshaped, and these in turn inform drawings. This form of iterative exploration and making produces buildings of sculptural precision. It’s a method that privileges invention over formula and insists that each project find its own formal and spatial logic.

That their determinedly compact studio produces such substantial work is instructive. By remaining small, they have preserved an intimacy of authorship – a rarity in contemporary practice for a studio that delivers projects of such breadth and scale. Those who have worked alongside them speak of both the intensity of their ideas and the rigour of engagement. Humour is integral to the dialogue, and that levity finds its way into the buildings themselves – structures that push against convention with grace and wit.

Their architecture is one of context, invention, learning and consideration, where buildings work to amplify the landscape setting. It exhibits a vitality that captures the playfulness of people and place. In doing so, the team has contributed decisively to a distinct Australian architectural language – one attuned to light, climate, topography, urban immediacy and cultural specificity.

The foundation of their processes lies in an exhaustive knowledge of architectural history, and while influences may be discerned, the works are never literal translations. Instead, they reflect an understanding of stories of making and construction, place and history, reinterpreted with originality and assurance.

Across typologies, their architecture balances imagination and rigour with assurance. Commonwealth Place (2002, with Sue Barnsley Design), the Olympic Amenities Buildings (1999, with Nick Murcutt) and the Brickpit Ring (2005, with Sue Barnsley Design) demonstrate an early and sustained commitment to public life, while more recent projects like the UTS Thomas Street Building (2014, in association with BVN; now the UTS Vicki Sara Building), the Omnia building (2018, with SJB), Newcastle’s Fabric House (2017), and the Roslyn Street office (2009), exhibit a powerful public presence recognised well beyond the profession.

These works are consistently placed among the finest contemporary buildings in their respective cities – tactile and engaging environments whose details invite contact and participation. Their homes, from the award-winning Foster Street Apartment (1998) to House Holman (2004) and Tamarama House (2015), are at once intimate and monumental. They demonstrate that the house can be both laboratory and sanctuary – a site of formal experimentation and spatial complexity, responsive to life, climate, terrain and garden.

As teachers, lecturers, curators and jurors, all three have enriched architectural discourse here and abroad. Within the studio, mentorship is embedded in daily practice, with a continuous exchange of ideas that has helped shape many respected practitioners. Their work continues to influence the way architecture is conceived and discussed in this country, positioning architecture closer to a broader understanding of what an Australian cultural expression might be.

In honouring Neil Durbach, Camilla Block and David Jaggers, we recognise that through their patience, intellectual depth, enduring ambition and a sustained belief in architecture’s public purpose, they have created a practice together that has changed the Australian built environment for the better and elevated our collective understanding of the promise of what architecture can be. Neil, Camilla and David’s work is one of beauty, delight and joy, with their contribution to our professional community an equal match.

Durbach Block Jaggers
durbachblockjaggers.com