Profile

Julian Venning is an award winning architect known for his contextual ethos and seeking a people centric sensibility to his design. His projects are specific responses to their contexts, conditions, and domain with a strong recognition of the natural environment. Julian has established his own practice after over thirty years making architecture at some of Australia’s leading firms as a principal designer and manager of complex projects. His experience and collaborative work ranges from private houses, education, multi-residential and mixed-use, to civic buildings, commercial and master planning. 

Julians lived experience growing up in a variety of locations exposed him to diverse cultures as his parents work took the family all over the world to places such as Nairobi, Fiji, Saudi Arabia, England and New Zealand, finally settling in Australia. The multiplicity of diverse cultural references, climate and nature from Europe to Africa, Polynesia, the Middle East and the vast interior landscapes of Australia, has enabled a sensibility in Julian’s work and willingness to design with a bespoke narrative specific to each project, through rigorous analysis and conceptualisation of the context and what it means to the place and people using his buildings. 

Extensive travels through Europe, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, the Himalaya, Russia, New Zealand and Australian have given Julian a deep appreciation of the diverse habitats of our natural environment and the creative essence of colour, material and diverse qualities of light essential to design. 

For Julian, architecture is based in the acknowledgement of the natural environment and histories of place and the people inhabiting the homes and buildings, while creating something unique and special to that specific project, within its place and environment.

Julian is currently designing a mixed use theological building including a Church, communal meeting place, teaching and sport facilities. The complex program requires a deep understanding of the history,  cultural and social aspirations of an organisation wanting a new contemporary building adjacent to its current and cherished Church, to serve the community into their future.