Isabelle Toland & Amelia Holliday
The Two of us
Architects Amelia Holliday (left) and Isabelle Toland. Portrait: Brett Boardman
Interview by Janne Ryan | photography by Brett Boardman, tom ferguson
Collaboration is front of mind for architects Amelia Holliday and Isabelle Toland. Their practice is about shared goals. Ego is left at the door, everything is shared and empathy takes them forward.
what do you do and why?
We’re architects working in the public and private realm.
Amelia: I do this because I love the challenge of balancing the poetics and pragmatics of a brief.
Isabelle: I love problem solving.
HOW DID YOU BECOME THIS?
Amelia: My parents both studied architecture. I spent my childhood saying I would never be an architect because my mother’s clients always wanted to meet her after hours. She had a residential practice, so I spent my school holidays visiting tile shops and sitting at the edge of building sites. Then, a couple of weeks before confirming my university preferences, I realised it was all I had ever wanted to do and I entered architecture school wanting to design beautiful houses. I soon realised, though, that working on larger public projects potentially had more impact on city shaping. I love balancing the two skill sets.
Isabelle: My father, an architect, always said to both my brother and I that we should never do architecture as it was far too stressful. My Chinese grandmother was a ‘Dragon Mother’ expecting us to become either doctors or lawyers! But the pull of the creative profession was just too strong, and I knew I would never be happy if I wasn’t doing something creative, but also incredibly technically and mentally challenging.
Treetop Studio. Photo: Tom Ferguson
HOW DID YOU MEET and WHY DID YOU START your practice?
Isabelle: We met when working at Neeson Murcutt Architects. We were there for seven years. Rachel (Neeson)and Nick (Murcutt) had an enormous influence on us, both personally and professionally. It felt like the most challenging time in my life to be starting a partnership, but it also felt like the right time. I was impatient to get started and test myself without the protective layer that Neeson Murcutt provided.
Amelia: We started Aileen Sage in 2013. We were very upfront about our personal challenges, Isabelle had two small children, and I was keen to start a family. We felt we could produce better work in partnership than on our own, and ‘have each other’s back’ if family life was demanding.
Treetop Studio. Photo: Tom Ferguson
the name AILEEN SAGE?
Amelia & Isabelle: Aileen Sage is a pseudonym for our combined practice, based on our middle names. It focuses on collaboration, rather than ego.
CHANCE ENCOUNTERS?
Amelia: I did my Masters at the Architecture Association in London in 2011, exploring an early project for a village square in Bordeaux by French architects Lacaton & Vassal*. Based on their observations, they proposed to their clients to “do nothing”.
Isabelle: That advice left a very big impression on me – for architects to think strategically about maximising public benefit over their own. Amelia and I try to practice architecture in a similar way.
* Winners 2021 Pritzker Prize, architecture’s most prestigious award, lacatonvassal.com.
Paddington Courtyard House. Photo: Tom Ferguson
GAME-CHANGER Moments?
Amelia: We put in a submission for the Australian Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale with our project The Pool, in collaboration with urbanist Michelle Tabet. We didn’t think we had a chance, but surprisingly, we were shortlisted and won the commission. The project built our network and profile quickly.
Isabelle: It seems a bit a bit nuts that The Pool was a game-changer for us, because in reality, it was a small temporary exhibition, on a very tight budget. I can’t express enough the value this project. It brought us experience, conversations and relationships, distilling a way of thinking and working that continues through all our projects.
The Pool, by Aileen Sage Architects with Michelle Tabet, was Australia’s exhibit at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Photo: Brett Boardman
The Pool, by Aileen Sage Architects with Michelle Tabet, was Australia’s exhibit at the Venice Architecture Biennale. Photo: Brett Boardman
YOUR STRENGTHS & weaknesses?
Amelia: I’m efficient and strategic, and I’m good at conceptualising solutions. My weakness is the last 10 percent. I get attached to early ideas and sometimes accept things, whereas Isabelle will keep pushing the design to 100 percent and beyond.
Isabelle: We work really well together, we’re a tight team. A strength is that I am constantly thinking about how to do things better. A weakness is that I’m easily distracted and tend to have a billion thoughts at once.
Darlington House. Photo: Tom Ferguson
ACHIEVING GOALS?
Isabelle: We generally work together on all the projects. As a small team this was quite organic, but now that we are eight people, in total we find we need more structure and clearer roles. So one of us will be the lead director, the other is a support director and we generally both take equal ownership of the conceptual direction and strategy for projects. It’s important that we both agree on this.
Amelia: Our goal is to do good work that we are proud of. Good work comes out of a cohesive process, and for this we embrace both strategy and intuition.
Darlington House. Photo: Tom Ferguson
HOW DO YOU FIND CLIENTS?
Amelia: Mostly clients come to us but sometimes, if we hear about an opportunity, we go to them. We’ve discovered that our clients ambitions need to match our own for the project, otherwise it’s very difficult to get a good outcome on both sides. We’ve had some success with open tenders and competitions. Our submission for the 2016 Venice Biennale (The Pool) is a good example, however, these processes can be draining – personally and financially. So, we are getting better at determining if we have a chance of getting the project, whether our investment will pay off, and who might be the best collaborators to work with.
Isabelle: Our clients are often people we have got to know over time, so already come to us with a good understanding of how we work and what our approach is. This is important, as I don’t feel like our projects really have any particular aesthetic. They end up looking very much the result of the conversations and contributions of the many people involved.
“Good work comes out of a cohesive process.”
Artbank Waterloo. Photo: Tom Ferguson
HOW DO YOU STAY FOCUSED?
Isabelle: Sometimes it’s difficult for me, so there isn’t a day when I don’t appreciate the fact that I have Amelia by my side. We both have young families, so I think being empathetic with each other about managing work and family commitments is really important to our partnership. Empathy is important in how we work with all our team.
Amelia: We regularly challenge each other. We also work across lots of different scales (size) and typologies in our work. This keeps us and our team pretty nimble.
Artbank Waterloo. Photo: Tom Ferguson
WHAT KIND OF RISKS DO YOU TAKE?
Amelia: Our biggest business risk is investing in projects with little chance of financial gain. However, these projects always allow us to explore an idea or collaboration on interest, which often leads to more conventional projects.
Isabelle: We both like to take risks, to varying degrees. We like to push the boundaries of a project. We’ve been lucky to find clients that have been willing to take a risk on us.
Artbank Waterloo. Photo: Tom Ferguson
“Empathy is important in how we work.”
HOW DO YOU PUSH THROUGH DIFFICULTIES?
Isabelle: Sometimes we challenge each other a little too much. We both have quite thick skins though, and we both move on pretty quickly. We don’t tend to bare grudges or let things bog us down too much. It’s very reassuring to know that you have someone you can trust to just keep things going if, for some reason, you just can’t be there to keep them going yourself.
Amelia: I’m generally an optimist who believes most clients are ambitious for a great outcome.
Marrickville Half House. Photo: Tom Ferguson
WHAT KEEPS YOU AWAKE AT NIGHT?
Amelia: The past couple of years have been extremely challenging for me personally due to the breakdown of my marriage, moving house three times, a practice that has doubled in size, COVID, and juggling two small children. While Isabelle and I both go through periods of self-doubt, I’ve felt incredibly lucky to have her by my side during this time. We laugh a lot, at ourselves and each other. And that keeps us grounded. We are driven by joy.
Isabelle: Everything keeps me awake at night! Personal doubts, specific projects, thinking about whether the direction a project is taking is right. I used to email Amelia regularly in the middle of the night with thoughts or issues I wanted to put out there and try to get on top of as quickly as possible. Lately I’ve tried to do this less, and to take time out from overthinking things. There’s only so much we can control in life.
Darlington House. Photo: Tom Ferguson
“Every project should have at least one beautiful moment.”
YOUR HARDEST LESSON?
Isabelle: Be patient with people. I’ve also learnt to read between the lines a bit more.
Amelia: Every project should have at least one beautiful moment.
Ganbyuma (to make fire), a project from Aileen Sage Architects with Bangawarra, Djinjama Indigenous Corporation + Event Engineering. Image: Aileen Sage Architects
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
Amelia: We are excited to finally realise a number of larger projects we have been working on for some years. We’re hoping to build further on the Aileen Sage Collective – a group of (mostly) women who we regularly collaborate with on conceptual and realised projects.
Isabelle: I honestly feel we have no limitations to what we are able to achieve.
aileensage.com
