Approach

What We Do

JHC - KT Brick Sketch_Early_02.jpg — Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Facade Testing

We create initial concepts and guiding principles with the multi-disciplinary team to capture and integrate all opportunities within the fundamentals of the project design. We find opportunities for the extraordinary in the ordinary and we consider limited budgets and other challenges as an invitation for arriving at new ways of thinking and doing. Our focus is on ‘getting the bones right’ – the rest follows.

We have an extensive portfolio of projects in the arts, cultural, education, commercial and residential sectors. The diversity and innovation in these differing contexts demonstrate our dexterity and depth of experience across government, local community, commercial and private environments.

JHC_Exterior View.jpg — Melbourne Holocaust Museum, Visualisation

Expertise

We can provide the following disciplines:

Architectural Design
Interior Design
Landscape Design
Urban Design
Environmentally Sustainable Design
Project Management

The principal and team of qualified architects on staff have extensive experience in the following areas:

Masterplanning and feasibility studies
Design for heritage and environmentally sensitive sites
Consultant team establishment, leadership and coordination
Briefing and reporting including client and user group liaison
Establishing strategic principles for design
Design for adaptive re-use of existing facilities including buildings of heritage value
Presentation techniques including physical models, photomontage and 3D computer rendering
Community consultation
Town planning, authority negotiations and VCAT presentations
Value management
Post occupancy services
Marketing drawings and images

Pub_Jewish Holocaust Centre_KTA_D Swalwell_17.jpg — Melbourne Holocaust Museum, view from internal stair to variegated facade of clay and glass bricks

On Country

KTA First Peoples Impact Strategy 2025-28

The KTA First Peoples Impact Strategy 2025-28 (The Strategy) reflects our fundamental understanding that as a non-Indigenous architecture practice operating on First Peoples’ lands, we carry an inherent responsibility to do more. Through our work across education, cultural, civic, and housing sectors across the continent, we recognise that each project carries a significant responsibility to support the voices, priorities, and rights of First Peoples, and take greater care of Country. Our purpose as a practice is to create environments that embrace, enrich and endure – a mission that cannot be separated from our obligation to contribute meaningfully to First Peoples and Country.

Beginning in 2019, KTA acknowledged a need for greater systemic change in our practice and sustained commitment to Country informed by First Peoples. We began this work by writing and endorsing a Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP), establishing a Reconciliation Working Group to deliver it, and engaging Louis Mokak (Djugun) as First Nations Advisor to provide strategic direction and oversight. Under this guidance, we came to understand that standard frameworks alone were insufficient. We required a strategy uniquely tailored to KTA’s vision, purpose, and capacity for genuine impact – one that would challenge us to move beyond performative gestures toward substantive action.

The Strategy is a three-year roadmap for structural and cultural transformation. It commits us to becoming better listeners, embedding genuine collaboration at every level, amplifying our advocacy for systemic change, and holding deeper accountability for impact. Through this integrated approach, we pledge to reshape our practice to be culturally responsive, centring First Peoples’ voices and rights, honouring Country, and advocating for change across industry. This Strategy represents not just our commitment to change, but our accountability to the communities and Country that sustain us all.

Uluru Statement

KTA supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart

“The Statement calls for three actions of Voice, Treaty and Truth addressed as follows in the Statement:

Voice:
We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution.
Treaty and Truth:
We seek a Makarrata Commission to supervise a process of agreements between governments and First Nations, and truth telling about our history.”

Sustainability

Our goal is not just to design buildings, but to create spatial systems that respect, support, and ultimately enhance their ecological context – positioning architecture as a collaborative dialogue between human innovation and natural systems.

At the same time, we recognise that true sustainable design goes beyond reducing consumption.

We are aware of the need to do better, to not just consume less, but to eliminate consumption and embed regeneration, in order to design buildings with a net zero life-cycle carbon footprint as soon as possible.

Our Sustainability Action Plan

Our Sustainability Action Plan [SAP] defines a strategic framework to systematically work towards achieving and surpassing Net-Zero life cycle buildings. The Plan’s primary purpose is to establish clear objectives and timelines while creating a methodical approach to tracking and evaluating the environmental impact of the buildings we design.

Sustainability Action Plan 2025

While we maintain a Climate Active Carbon Neutral Certification for our business operations, we are forthright about the limitations of sustainability claims. We acknowledge that labelling buildings as ‘sustainable’ can be misleading, as most contemporary construction still generate substantial environmental consequences.

Instead of using the term ‘sustainable’, we prefer ‘responsible’, which reflects our commitment to transparency and continuous improvement. To us, true sustainability means creating buildings whose resource consumption could theoretically be maintained indefinitely without environmental degradation—a standard we recognise we have not yet achieved. Our approach prioritises making careful choices that progressively move us toward this ideal, always selecting the most environmentally sound options available at each stage of development.