‘One year it could be bushfires and another year flood’ – what drew architect James Davidson to “unsexy” resilience work

Architect James Davidson managed the restoration of the Lamb House, now known as Home, cited as nationally significant by the Australian Institute of Architects. It was part of his radical switch from doing high end work for wealthy clients to climate resilient architecture that’s not always prized by the profession.

There are very few architects happy to do the grizzly work of responding to climate disasters. This was why James Davidson quit his job at Brisbane architecture firm Donovan Hill at the end of 2009, during the height of the GFC, to start JDA Co, a firm dedicated to responding to the climate crisis and advising on climate resilience.

“At the time, I was the director of a charity called Emergency Architects Australia (EAA). And working with Paul Pholeros, Lawrence and Andrea Nield and a whole bunch of other really good people … in Sydney’s Kings Cross,” Davidson said.

“I was at Donovan Hill doing big luxury houses and just got disenchanted with the idea of, on one hand, working in climate change adaptation, and on the other hand, continuing to pump out stuff as an architect that didn’t make the world a better place. If anything, it contributed significantly to the problems we’re all facing.”  

The charity group was linked to the French NGO Emergency Architects Foundation, which was formed in response to the flooding of the River Somme in France.

The Australian arm, where Andrea Nield led as president, started in 2005 in response to the Indonesian tsunami and has since responded to climate disasters in Indonesia, Pakistan, the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste, Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, India and Australia.

The EAA, alongside BVN Architecture, a firm founded by Nield’s partner Lawrence and formerly known as Bligh Voller Nield, led efforts during the Black Saturday bushfires, planning a temporary village in Kinglake, Victoria, and later rebuilt the award-winning Narbethong Community Hall.

Donovan Hill has since merged with BVN in 2012.

But this is the scope of work that Davidson, along with his team of 25, now tackles daily.

“We recently did the Sunshine Coast flood resilience component for the new planning scheme that’s coming out. We’ve got a bit of a niche in this area; I’m assuming it’s because a lot of architects prefer to do ‘sexy’ work.

“A lot of [our work] is to do with people who’ve been traumatised and in a space that’s necessarily not comfortable for people; a lot of other architects steer clear of this stuff.”

For that reason, his firm would not take photos of the climate resilience work they’ve done, other than occasional photos of big projects that “other architects would like”.

The company started with roots in delivering Indigenous design before helping the Brisbane City Council deliver a program involving retrofitting homes for flood resilience.

“And then in 2022, a lot of those [houses] got flooded and (the ones the company designed) they came out really well.” 

Another aspect that probably discourages architects from delving into the disaster field was likely the volatility of funding.

According to Davidson, the firm heavily relied on government funding, which would become available after a weather event or a climate disaster. “It’s part of why we’re so busy, and [it’s] a good space to be in.”

An example was the Queensland state government’s resilient homes fund, which was available after the 2022 floods with $740 million available for buybacks, house raises and retrofits. A similar fund is also available through the NSW government. 

Since starting, the firm has since participated in between 7000 and 8000 home assessments, including 1000 for Queensland, roughly delivering 300 house raises and 700 retrofits, with some still left to go.

The smaller program in NSW saw the firm deliver roughly 150 house raises and 300 retrofits.

Although more recently, people are approaching the architect with their own private funding, with some of the firm’s projects involving “high end residential work for high net worth individuals”.

This allows for a “diversity of practice,” Davidson said.

“The idea of the office is that everybody does everything. I don’t like the idea of silos in the office, so people that have come in more recently with heritage focus are now learning about flood work.

“With climate change adaptation, we’re going to need more all rounders and not more specialists, because the issue is you can’t predict what’s coming and when. One year it could be bushfires, another year it could be floods, and another year it could be cyclones.

“Diversity is key, and it’s also good to spread the risk in the practice. If you are just heritage, that’s a big risk, just flood, that’s a big risk, just residential work, that’s a big risk, and I see that happening.”

The practice also produces research reports from the results of its research and development, which often involves testing the climate resilience of materials and planning schemes, such as tackling urban heat in the Gold Coast.

Davidson’s practice is now also geographically diversified with offices in Brisbane, Cairns and Lismore.

Climate resilient buildings

Designing for multi hazard areas should be the focus of climate resilient design going forward, said Davidson.

“There are so many places around the country that you could either get floods, fires, or cyclones or all in one. For example, locations like Cairns or Townsville [are] bushfire prone, flood prone, cyclone prone, storm surge and storm tide prone. Maybe they get earthquakes.

“If you’re in a high risk bushfire area, generally those homes end up becoming a little bit of a Ned Kelly looking thing, where they wrap them in a screening to protect from debris and radiant heat. Steel homes generally become quite predominant, with very few eaves and gutters.

Davidson adds that when it came to flooding, he was an advocate for “wet proofing” – the idea of designing to allow water to come in to go out, instead of trying to keep water out.

“We’ve got such high flood depths in Australia, those kinds of what they call property level protection systems can only work for low level flooding. You put a flood door in but imagine the minute the flood level goes beyond the sill of your window, it’s hard to put in a flood window.”

“[Raising your] services are a good way to start [and] best value for money,” said Davidson. “For example, your hot water units, your airconditioning units, your powerpoints and meter boards, the kind of things you need to keep the house liveable or working.

Working with heritage and materials

Recent significant projects that Davidson managed include the restoration of the Lamb House, now known as Home. The Australian Institute of Architects cited the residence under its list of nationally significant 20th-century architecture as a “rare surviving example of a grand, intact Federation period residence in Brisbane”.

Davidson said part of the challenge included replacing old tiles that are over 100 years old. 

Thanks to previous work with James Cook University’s cyclone testing station, his team was able to get feedback on how to improve the roof detailing based on results from cyclone tests. This included solutions to how to stop 100-year-old detailing from being blown off.

“What they do up there is they throw a block of ice, other bits of debris and stuff at the tile roofs. And if it does go through, is there another layer of protection? Which was what we ended up putting in.”

Heritage buildings are quite often misunderstood, Davidson said. “Weirdly a lot of older materials are really suited to climate.

“The problem I have is when all those old materials get ripped out and inferior products get put back in. For example, horsehair plaster; [it] doesn’t need to be pulled out by the insurers, but they do, and they put plasterboard back in, which is like paper mache for buildings.

“It’s actually the other way around, a lot of the good old stuff is actually better than the new stuff, and oftentimes people don’t know about that.

Designing for climate resilience is actually cheaper, Davidson added.

“We don’t use anything out of the ordinary; what’s out of the ordinary is the way we use it—the material itself anybody can buy from Bunnings.

 “The reason I say it’s cheaper is that you don’t have to keep replacing it over time. If you look at it specifically in terms of broader cost benefit, it’s significantly cheaper to design resiliently.”

Cover photo:  The Lamb House, now known as Home