Woods Bagot among world's best in switch based on Adelaide classical tradition to modern architecture
The SAHMRI (South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute) building on North Terrace, Adelaide, and the former State Bank building off Currie Street, Adelaide, designed with Rod Roach, were part of Woods Bagot's transition to the modern.
SAHMRI building image by Robert Dettman, straydog photography
In 2015, Woods Bagot was named as one of the world's 10 largest architecture firms in Building Design magazine's World Architecture 100 list.
Woods Bagot became Australia’s largest architectural firm, with a global design and consulting team of more than 800 working across Australia, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America.
For a small Adelaide firm steeped in the tradition of classic ecclesiastic gothic in the late 19th Century, Woods Bagot made a remarkable switch to the modern progressive of the 21th Century. The firm’s origins went back to Edward John Woods being asked to improve and expand the design of St Peter’s Cathedral in 1869.
Woods was joined by the like-minded traditionalist Walter Bagot in 1905. After Woods retired in 1913, Bagot partnered the noted Louis Laybourne-Smith (1917) and later Adelaide lord mayor James Irwin (1930).
Woods Bagot's transition to the modern was asserted with projects such as the then-State Bank and the acclaimed SAHMRI (South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute) buildings.
The firm’s 20th Century switch to an international outlook came with a change to philosophical, as environmental and geological themes that may have bewildered E.J. Woods and Walter Bagot. Yet Woods and Bagot had an intellectual approach to architecture that underpinned the change.
For example, Woods Bagot design of the Nan Tien Institute in Wollongong reflected Buddhist principles: avoiding hierarchical components and providing a neutral environment free of materialism and excess. The Cubism-inspired Cubus, a 25-storey retail tower completed in Hong Kong in 2011, had lighting panels that emulated the shapes and forms of ice cubes.
In 2017, Woods Bagot was acknowledged among 25 South Australian Icons by the Design Institute of Australia for outstanding contribution to Australian design.