Chris Wilkinson, co-founder of Wilkinson Eyre and the architect behind the Crown Sydney, talks about creating buildings that welcome.

Chris Wilkinson, co-founder of Wilkinson Eyre, is leading the team behind one of the most controversial architecture projects currently being built in Australia. When it’s completed in 2018 (ahead of a 2019 opening), the Crown Sydney at Barangaroo will be Australia’s first six-star casino and hotel resort, and at 275-metres tall is set to become the country’s tallest building.

It seemingly has very little to do with the recently opened Maggie’s Centre in Oxford, a small drop-in centre with a domestic intimacy that offers support to anyone affected by cancer.

Yet, these two projects – disparate in everything from location, brief and use to scale and materiality – are both designed by Wilkinson Eyre and offer a shared vision of how to create hospitable, welcoming architecture.

“Maggie’s Centre and the Crown Sydney are at two ends of the spectrum in terms of scale and use,” says Wilkinson Eyre co-founder Chris Wilkinson. “But, it’s the same architectural approach, one which starts with a careful study and understanding of the brief and context.”

Read the full article, including Wilkinson’s approach to both projects, in the Hospitality issue of Indesign magazine, out on June 7, 2015.

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