Colourful Kingfisher

Godwin Austen Johnson’s youngest partner, Graeme Fisher, gave MEA an hour of his time to talk about sustainability, structural gymnastics, Sasha & the Sultan of Brunei

From the tender age of 12, Graeme Fisher preferred the sharp edges and orthogonal lines of buildings and cityscapes to the blurred realism of flowing landscapes. Through the advice of his father, Fisher was able to mould his childhood passion for drawing and painting into a bona fide career choice by the time he was 16. Since then, he’s never looked back. “In fact, I can’t remember ever thinking that I didn’t want to do this,” he says.

A scholastic career that included as many A-levels and honour rolls as socializing and sport, Fisher graduated from the University of Nottingham (UK) in 1995 torn between a desire to get straight into architecture and a burgeoning wanderlust.

A decision to satisfy both passions landed Fisher in Brunei, despite his admitted inability to locate the Southeast Asian paradise on a map at the time of his interview. Despite being unprepared for the massive relocation, Fisher’s abilities soon positioned him well in the firm, working for the country’s most discerning client: The Sultan.

So there he was: 25 years old; a month out of university; working on commissions for the Sultan of Brunei and loving every minute. The fact he’s now a partner in one of Dubai’s most established and respected architecture firms begs a few questions….

You obviously found a good bit of success in Brunei. Why give it all up and return to the UK?

My time in Brunei was both good and bad. The good aspect of that was that what we designed, pretty much got built. In fact, I designed a really large international school which was built within two years of me being there. So, by the age of 26, I had my first major project under my belt. That’s rare in this field. It was brilliant.

But at the same time, I kind of felt that it wasn’t the real world and that I needed to get back to the UK and spend a period of time really practising and learning the essence of what professional architecture was about.

So, at the end of 1997, I went back to London and got a job with a large commercial practice called Sheppard Robson (SR), which is a great practice. When I joined, they were about 100 strong doing a lot of commercial and education work. I ended up being there for about nine years. I came through the ranks there. I was given some great opportunities there and I was made an associate in 2003.

Tell me about transitioning from London to Dubai. Was it easy?

I was very happy in London but I was fortunate or unfortunate enough to marry an ex-pat’s daughter – my wife Sasha, who I met in Brunei – and she’d made it clear that she’d like to do what her parents had done and live abroad. I’d had some great experiences in London but I also was starting to think about being an ex-pat again.

One cold morning in February 2006, we woke up freezing, and told ourselves that we needed to start thinking seriously about moving abroad. Within a couple of months, I’d come out here for some interviews.

The practice

Among all the options, why did you ultimately choose GAJ?

Although I looked at some of the other larger practices in Dubai, I walked in to GAJ and met Brian Johnson [GAJ managing partner] and immediately something clicked. I think it was that GAJ has a great reputation for doing great, unique buildings. It doesn’t cater to the common masses. Brian always describes it as offering a one-off solution to the one-off client.

The other thing about GAJ that appealed to me was that it wasn’t a polished diamond. It was certainly a diamond but it was a bit rough around the edges. I could see that Brian wanted to take it to the next level and that hugely appealed.

I chose GAJ because I thought, above everyone else, it was going places. In that respect it’s been a fantastic move. It was difficult to move from London because I enjoyed SR so much and I had a fantastic role there but, all things considered, it has been a great move and I can see that the practice has come a long way.

We still have a long way to go; we’re still very ambitious about where we want to take the practice and how we develop what we offer – from both a business and design point of view – but I think certainly it’s moving in a really exciting direction.

We are extremely client-centric. Some companies see the client as an irritation – almost an impediment to design – and they try to keep the client very much on the periphery. When we take on any new job, whatever it is, the client is at the centre of everything we do. We’ll always approach every project with new ideas.

The other thing we offer is a very good understanding of the culture and history of the region and problems faced here in the Gulf. Brian’s been here for 30+ years and the GAJ practice in Dubai is 21 years old. So we’re one of the largest and longest established UK practices here. We try to be cognizant of the local context and try to create design solutions that marry contemporary architecture and local influences.

The other thing that makes us quite unique is that we are a British company but our headquarters are here in Dubai. We’ve got six people in the UK office and around 160 people in Dubai and Sharjah. In a way, we deliver the best of both worlds: Clients get the professionalism of an international practice but an international practice that calls the Gulf its home. I think that is one of the reasons why we’ve come through a very difficult year in pretty good shape.

I’m not saying that we’re better than anyone else, in fact I think there is some fantastic work being done by firms throughout the region, but I’d like to think that we sit nicely amongst them. I’d like to think that we could work together with them. We’re never trying to aggressively outdo our rivals; we’re happy and self-confident in our work. We’re confident enough to not have to worry about rubbishing rivals or opposition – and that ethos comes from Brian.

I think GAJ stands out in people’s minds for some of its high-profile Dubai projects.

A lot of people think of us as a Dubai practice and, of course, our headquarters are here but we’re also working in Abu Dhabi, Oman, Tunisia and Morocco. We’ve got two huge projects in Sharm El Sheikh and also a number of projects – as well as a small project office – in Libya. We’re making very good inroads into almost the whole of North Africa. We’re very excited about that.

The GAJ philosophy has always been to grow slowly and responsibly – that’s another reason why we’ve done well in the past year. We could have fairly easily expanded to 300 people but that’s not the business model we want to use.

We are diversifying. The great thing is, we sit here today and we’ve got a far more diverse portfolio of clients and projects than we did 12 months ago, which is great. There’s no arrogance there, we’ve had a tough year and we’re facing challenges in the coming years, but it’s nice to know that we’ve managed to diversify the brand over what was a very difficult year.

What we want to do now is consolidate what we’ve learned and continue to grow, but in a contained way. We’re also looking at lateral opportunities within the company. We now have an in-house graphic design and corporate branding group as well as a small but flourishing structural department. It’s great for certain projects to keep the structural work in-house. We’re never going to be a huge multidisciplinary practice and we don’t want to be.

In its quest to offer contextual architecture, how does GAJ avoid the kitschy and the pastiche?

We really try to stay away from pastiche. We get some clients that really do want wind towers and slavish imitations of the past. In those instances, we make a conscious effort to show them how they can draw from the past without replicating it.

We show them that the essence of a wind tower is natural ventilation and the essence of Arabic design is routed in the interplay of light and shade, particularly the need for shade. We wouldn’t necessarily reject the use of mashrabiya or Arabic geometry etc. In fact, we might draw very strongly upon them both to inform the way we plan a development or conceive vertical or horizontal patterning.

I hate to see mashrabiya used for the sake of using them but I think it’s wrong to proclaim that they’re old hat and that we shouldn’t be using them at all because they are at the heart of what identifies this region on many, many levels.

I think you have to get under the skin of the essence of Arabic planning; the Arabic village. When you come from a European or American background, it’s all too easy to have everything axial. But when you walk around the Bastakiya, for example, you realise that things here aren’t historically built along axies. When we’re working on a hotel or resort plan, we’re not consciously wedded to strict orthogonal, more Western forms of planning. When I first got here, I had to re-educate myself to that.

A lot of the master plan work we’re doing is also being generated by looking back at history, looking at timelines, looking to see if there is anything we can take from history that might have an influence on the design. We recently did a large master plan in Saudi Arabia and the design leader for that project looked at the timeline of Arabs and Arabia and drew some fascinating parallels about mathematics and astrology from that. That was a magnificent way of creating the story of the master plan. Ours is a unique approach for each project.

Our clientele are just as pluralistic in their approach. Some clients might ask for a building that reflects Moroccan or Tunisian history, while others may want something very modern and contemporary. We have to be cognizant of that. We don’t dismiss either of them.

If someone comes to us and says they want a commercial tower that is 100% glazed, we would probably encourage them not to do that, and certainly not in this region. At the same time, if someone wanted us just to replicate the Al Aksari mosque in Iraq, we’d encourage them not to do that either. We’re trying to bring what we feel is the appropriate level of influence to each and every project.

The other thing that I think we’ve always stayed away from – something for which Dubai was becoming known – is the structural gymnastics. Any developer obsessed with producing buildings more akin with complex pieces of sculpture are coming unstuck. Those buildings are twice as expensive to build and engineer and, because of the skewed nature of what was happening in the geometry of these designs, you were getting apartment layouts and floor plates which were hugely compromised.

That is something that we’ve always rejected. It’s just not appropriate. If someone feels that those types of buildings are appropriate for the region, I’d like them to show me where they got that from.

The context

What are your thoughts on some of Dubai’s architecture?

The problem in Dubai is that, if you look at say Sheikh Zayed Road, you’ve got a load of skyscrapers that could have just been lifted from Europe or the USA or anywhere. So, in that respect, Dubai runs the risk of losing its cultural and national identity.

Buildings, architecture and urban design can strongly influence a place and help it develop a sense of what it is and where it has come from. Dubai is a very young emirate in a very young country, but it is our mission to help the UAE ensure that what is built is appropriate and is a proper reflection of its society.

I mean, in a very hot climate it’s inappropriate – it’s almost unethical – to produce buildings that are 100% glass. Sustainability is at the forefront of what GAJ does – I don’t mean necessarily active add-ons like PV panels and wind turbines – but if you look at a building like Bab Al Shams, for example, it’s a great and very appropriate example of sustainability that is contextual, passive and holistic.

When he designed it, my fellow partner Keith Gavin looked at how people have built here for 100s of years and he drew upon the old building techniques to achieve that. Once you get under the surface of Bab Al Shams, there is a great story about appropriateness and local supply chains and something that is at one with its environment.

Do you think Dubai has learned anything from the credit crunch?

One positive that might have come out of what we’ve just been through with the economy is that developers might start rejecting those proposals with awkward, near impossible geometries and always associating the biggest with being the best.

I believe that Dubai no longer wants to have a name for having brash architecture. I think we’re moving into a period of architecture in Dubai where things will be more considered and done a bit slower and that people will start to see the value of good design. I think Dubai – and designers as well – will come out of this with lessons learned and a sense of humility.

Are places like Oman, Qatar and Abu Dhabi learning lessons from Dubai’s mistakes?

I’m sure they are. I think Abu Dhabi has been learning lessons from Dubai for many years. There’s no doubt that there are plenty of lessons to be learned. It is fine to take chances and make mistakes but it’s wrong if you don’t learn from those mistakes.

What I like about Abu Dhabi in particular is that they have their 2030 Plan. There is a lot of collaborative thinking there. You can see very clearly how Saadiyat Island joins up with Yas Island and how they relate to Abu Dhabi Island. There’s a cohesive master plan there that demonstrates a lot of collaboration.

Yes, but is it realistic?

It’s so ambitious. Will it all be delivered? Maybe not. It would be incredible if it was all delivered but at least it shows joined up thinking. One of the things that I’d like to think Dubai will do is examine all of these slightly disparate developments and create a plan. I’ve still not seen a cohesive master plan for the city of Dubai.

I think if Dubai concentrates on the areas that are developed and functioning – Dubai Marina and the financial districts are two examples – and learns from its own mistakes, it will be a magnificent place to live in the future. It still seems to be the city in the Gulf where people want to live and visit.

Oman seems to be doing something very different…

Oman has a slightly different agenda. They’re very much led by conservation of the old forts and what have you. That’s great. They understand the importance of heritage, perhaps more so than any other place in the region, and their development is much less brash, low density, virtually no high-rise, and you’ve got to admire them for that.

In fact, when you’re building in Oman, the municipality is very insistent on protecting and preserving Omani – not Arabian, but Omani – heritage and rightly so. That in itself is a challenge to deliver something that is contemporary but still has the essence of Omani culture.

Who inspired you as a student?

In the early 1990s, the practices that inspired most of my peers were those questioning aspects of modernism and aspects of hi-tech and were looking to refocus their design in a different direction.

My influences at that time were certainly Morphosis, Eric Owen Moss and Frank Gehry. There was a whole group of architects in LA that I found incredibly exciting.

Coop Himmelb(l)au was also a very big influence on me as a young architect. The LA architects and Coop Himmelb(l)au weren’t necessarily deconstructivist but certainly had alternative ways of thinking and approaching problems.

Closer to home, I’ve always been influenced by Richard Rogers. He has always inspired me, as a person and an architect. The working ethos in his office is fantastic. He still has his desk in the office in the main studio. He’s developed this collective around him that believe in what he does and have been empowered in what they do as well. He’s been a huge influence on my career and an inspiration of where I want to go as a partner in the practice.

Has that changed as you’ve changed as an architect?

I’ve almost come full circle in more recent years. I’m now more influenced by people with more rational approaches to architecture. I look to some of the people that have been in the field for a while and use materials in very beautiful ways.

Sir David Chipperfield is probably one of my biggest influences. Rafael Moneo and the way in which he crafts stone in a contemporary way is something by which I’m influenced as well. My approach to architecture has taken on a more rationalist character. Perhaps that’s because I have started to reject the notion of complicated structural gymnastics. I think that what we’ve seen happen in Dubai over the past year has strengthened my convictions to a more rational, less is more approach.

What one building would you like to have been involved in?

Probably the Pyramids. We still don’t know how they were built. I would love to have been involved with them on many levels: what they symbolized and the vastness of the structures. Also, just to know how they were built because clearly there are aspects of learning that were known then but have been lost. Without a single doubt, the Pyramids in Giza.

What is the future of Graeme Fisher and Godwin Austen Johnson?

I would like to think that I’ll be here for a good while yet. My wife is an artist and she found London difficult to break in terms of the art scene, it’s very cliquey. She’s very talented and she’s managed to create certain success here and we’re both very happy in our professional lives and we both really enjoy living in Dubai. So, right now, we couldn’t be happier...anywhere.

Everyday at work is a new challenge but when I’m here, I’m just delighted to be here. For me, the future is within the region and with GAJ. We’ve come a long way in the three years since I’ve been here and we’ve still got a long way to go. I just know that I desperately want to be a part of that future growth – both in terms of developing our design output and in helping develop the business to where it needs to be.

On that note, we need to continue to enhance the brand. I think we’re very aware that you’re only as good as your last project so we don’t want to start dropping any balls now. We’re constantly looking at ways that we can not only match clients’ expectations but exceed them.