At the tender age of just five years old, adventurous Josh Crosbie knew he wanted to be an architect when he grew up. “I’ve always loved drawing and designing things,” he explains. “This profession allowed me to combine my passions whilst helping people create their projects and realise their visions.”
Something else Josh developed young was a love for extreme sports. “I started skiing with my family when I was two and I started rock climbing with my dad when I was about 10,” he recalls, explaining that mountaineering and snowboarding have since become his favourite pastimes. Every year he also sneaks away to Europe to enjoy alpine BASE jumping with friends. “I understand that some people label these pursuits as extreme sports,” he says, “but they’re just my passions — I crave nature and the beautiful wilderness of these mountain environments.”
During these jaunts, Josh finds limitless architectural inspiration. “I love exploring the houses in those parts of the world as they’re a lovely representation of their cultures,” he says. “I most admire the functional approach of these houses, where simple and effective details and forms are more important than superficial aesthetics.” As an example, he cites the beautiful traditional stone homes with massive exposed trusses and lofts he observed in the Dolomites region of northern Italy.
Closer to home, the vastness of the Aussie rural bushland, the beauty of the alpine high country and the ruggedness of the south coast’s beaches and coastline are his guiding lights. “These wild and natural environments inspire me to create adaptable and responsive architecture that’s robust and well considered,” he explains.
While studying at Geelong’s Deakin University — Josh completed a double honours degree of Architecture and Construction Management — he worked for two local architects, gaining plenty of residential experience, including freehand drawings: “I’m grateful for that opportunity to learn our craft in the traditional way,” he enthuses.
Having spent the first five years of his career on big commercial projects in consultancy firms, Josh established his own practice 10 years ago. “That shift allowed me to be more relationship-focused with clients directly rather than delivering large-scale projects for organisations or corporations,” he says. “Seven years ago my family and I moved to Lorne on the Great Ocean Road where I opened my gorgeous boutique design studio.”
AN ARCHITECT OF MANY STYLES
For Josh and his team — he recently expanded to a second studio in Geelong’s Newtown — truly understanding clients’ tastes and preferences is key. “We focus on completing designs that assimilate well into their surroundings,” he says, “so our design style’s certainly varied. We’ve completed many modern houses along the Surf Coast that follow the 1950s-inspired Surf Coast style (flat roofs, simple forms), but we love working with different genres — contemporary, French provincial, country, and restoring heritage-listed period houses.”
Many of their favourite projects, he adds, are renovations in which they salvaged an older house rather than taking the easy approach of demolition. “Despite the inherent risks, there’s a noble integrity about this process and we enjoy these challenges.”
Regarding Australian design, Josh believes it’s all about connection to landscape through site-responsive design. “Our favourite design elements include natural textures like rammed earth, concrete, native hardwood, steel and glass, and we love adopting clean, strong, horizontal lines that sit beautifully within our vast rural landscape, or perched alongside the ocean’s horizon.”
As a philosophy on both design and life, Josh strongly believes in keeping it simple: “There’s no need to overcomplicate things or unnecessarily adorn our journey.”
The Crosbie family home — Dorman, in Lorne — is a perfect example of this architect’s penchant for preservation. “It’s seen an extensive restoration to the original gorgeous 1960s beach house over the last seven years since we bought it,” Josh explains. “We’ve been careful to maintain the existing character and charm… lovely qualities like the exposed beams, internal timber lining and the stone fireplace. We started with the landscaping, actually, shaping three terraces into the slope and importing rough and natural elements like huge granite boulders, recycled jarrah sleepers, sandstone blocks from the 18th century and native plantings. Most recently we’ve come back to the landscaping, creating three amazing treehouses.”
It’s probably no coincidence that Josh completed his thesis more than 10 years ago on treehouses. “I’ve always loved the notion of spending time within the forest treetops,” he says. “Building our treehouses [pictured right] took more than a year as we were really careful to create them in a way that wouldn’t hurt the host trees: not a single bolt or nail fixing into the trees was used.” Instead, they created tension collars that allow for easy adjustment and for the trees to continue to grow and move in the wind. Indeed, Josh recalls studying such principles of biomimicry at university. “We’re proud that only salvaged, second-hand materials have been used, too,” he adds. “Now we have three interconnected treehouses that we enjoy every day, whether for kids’ playtime, yoga, reading a book or relaxing on the ‘top deck’ with a bottle of red looking over the ocean.”
FACING THE RIGHT WAY
Perhaps not surprisingly for someone over whom nature has such a powerful hold, sustainability is frequently at the forefront of Josh’s design. “The most important step towards environmentally conscious buildings for my firm is also one of the simplest pursuits: the orientation,” he reveals. “We can significantly reduce the energy consumption to heat and cool our buildings by facing our living areas towards the north so that the winter sun can passively warm the spaces and they become abundant with natural light. Summer sun, which sits much higher in the sky, can be adequately blocked with eaves or external shading.”
It’s often easier said than done to reach this ideal, he concedes. “Many sites have challenging aspects, especially along the Surf Coast, with predominantly south-east views over the ocean.” Here he recommends employing some design tricks, including avoiding exposure of glazed elements to the west, and internal cross-flow ventilation.
The energy needed to run our homes should also be reduced, using active means such as selecting quality fittings and finishes, Josh says. “Up to 90 per cent of the heat loss of an insulated building envelope will be through the windows, so their size and location should be carefully considered. Thankfully the cost for high-spec windows has come down a lot in recent years, thanks to increased residential uptake, and now thermally broken frames, double glazing with inert gas, solar tints and low-emissivity coatings are common.”
The carbon footprint and embodied energy of our houses can and should be reduced through the selection of secondhand or recycled materials where possible, he adds, citing Earthwool recycled glass insulation batts as one example. “We can also reduce the consumption of materials/goods and the creation of waste by carefully designing the size of our spaces to match the availability or modules of those materials,” he adds. “For example, selecting ceiling heights in 30cm increments avoids waste with each timber wall stud.”
Despite the significant investment required for stand-alone solar and battery setups, Josh also encourages his clients to purchase 100 per cent accredited green renewable energy “as an immediate way to avoid the greenhouse gases of traditional brown coal-powered electricity”.
Looking to the future, Josh is hopeful of change within the industry he loves. “I personally don’t think the reputation of the design industry is very good at the moment,” he says. “At the risk of alienating us from the architectural fraternity, I think we’re still suffering in the shadows of some egotistical architects from past decades who ran their projects with a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude towards the builders, and sometimes their clients too! It’s my humble opinion that today’s architects should focus on a few simple qualities: understanding our clients’ needs and preferences; creating buildings with practical and buildable detailing; respecting the budget and gaining meaningful cost-estimating experience; and teamwork, teamwork, teamwork.”
Nevertheless, Josh is eternally grateful to be able to make a living from doing the things he loves. “I feel so fortunate to be able to help people in what is often a very daunting and confusing process.”
