WORKS FROM THE KERRY HILL AO COLLECTION, SINGAPORE
Kerry Hill was a multi-award-winning Singapore-based architect who received the Australian Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal (2006), the Singapore President’s Design Award (2010) and, in 2012, was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).After graduating from the University of Western Australia in 1968, Kerry Hill’s first position in architecture was at Howlett and Bailey in Perth. He then held a role at Palmer and Turner in Hong Kong that marked the beginning of a decades-long career in architecture across Asia and Australia that included work in India, Bhutan, Japan, China, Croatia, Jordan and Spain and countries across the Middle East and South East Asia.
Hill founded his practice, Kerry Hill Architects, in 1979, which is headquartered in Singapore with an office in Perth. The practice has completed projects across a number of types, but has been recognized particularly for its work in resort and hotel design.
Hill’s work was roundly fêted during his lifetime. In 2006, the ABC’s Asia Pacific Focus described him as ‘the Australian architect behind some of Asia’s most innovative buildings’. In an essay for Architecture Australia, Geoffrey London said that Hill’s ‘rigorously ordered’ work was built on lessons learnt from a number of modernist architects, including Louis Khan, Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright. His architectural style and practice also lent on 'a willingness to allow his work to be enriched by understanding and embracing the architectural traditions of the East’, with a personal friendship with Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa shaping his early work.
In his 2006 AS Hook address, delivered in Sydney after being awarded the Gold Medal, Hill said that in preparing for the speech he had revisited those given by the 20 Gold Medallists that preceded him. ‘I am reminded of an old Chinese proverb, he said. “The future is only the past again – entered through another gate”’.
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Amanemu by Kerry Kill Architects
Image: Nacasa and Partners
In addition to the Gold Medal, Hill’s other accolades included the prestigious international Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001, the inaugural Kenneth F. Brown Asia Pacific Culture and Architecture Design Award in 1995 and the President’s Design Award in Singapore in 2010.Among his Australian works, the Ogilvie House at Sunshine Beach was a joint winner of the 2003 Robin Boyd Award for Residential Buildings, and the Ooi House at Margaret River in Western Australia won a RAIA National Commendation for Residential Buildings in 1998.One of Kerry Hill’s more recent works, the Amanemu resort in Shima, Japan, was awarded the 2017 Jørn Utzon Award for International Architecture by the Australian Institute of Architects, and 2017 Building of the Year by the Singapore Institute of Architects.
In 2012, Hill was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for ‘distinguished service to architecture, particularly as an ambassador for Australian design in South East Asia, and as an educator and mentor’.
PATRICK HUNN
This article has been republished with permission from ArchitectureAU.com.