Responsive Design - An interview with Ken Crosson

Ken Crosson is the Founder and Director of renowned and award-winning architecture studio Crosson Architects. Ken’s distinctive humanist approach results in distinctive and diverse homes that are inspired by rich narratives and strong underlying ideas.

For Ken Crosson and his team at Crosson Architects, treating every project as unique is fundamental to how they design homes.

Every brief, every client, every site, every context – and of course, every budget – is different. And, as such, they must all be responded to in unique ways. As Ken says, “it’s about understanding the challenges and the opportunities and being responsive.” In this way, he doesn’t see his studio as having a particular ‘style’. Instead, they aspire to respond to the particularities of the brief in a bespoke and memorable way.

Perhaps the most important yet most difficult to define aspect of the ‘uniqueness’ of the brief lies in the personalities of the homeowners themselves. For Ken, understanding, empathising and responding to the client’s character – and reflecting that in the design – is vitally important in creating spaces that are a subtle reflection of identity.

Of course, reflecting the environment around us is also a core part of this approach. In the early colonial days, New Zealand buildings were designed to protect people from the outdoors, and while this is still a core part of design’s function, especially when it comes to exterior design, Ken believes we now have the desire, understanding, and the technology to create homes that are more responsive and harmonious with the environment around us.

COLORSTEEL® is one technology that can help us do that. As Ken says, steel cladding is not only part of our heritage and culture, “it is also incredibly robust and remarkably flexible across look, colour and profile, enabling us to design in modern, thoughtful and responsive ways.”