Case Studies
Issue No. 4 - February/March 2002
Tectvs Design
designed on cooperation
Tectvs Design’s very urban, rectilinear style can be seen around Adelaide in work ranging from multiple residential to institutional and commercial building projects.
Port Adelaide Football Club’s administration and rehabilitation centre, among the best sports facilities in the country, is a Tectvs job, as is the award-winning 55 Grenfell Street refurbishment now housing BHP’s call centre.
Spokesman Fran Bonato plays the complicated role of the assertive guiding spirit (he’s the founding director) who has subsumed himself in the team he has worked hard to build.
“Everybody is contributing ideas to the design as well, so there is a certain hypocrisy in the architect claiming to be a solo ‘artist’,” Fran says. “People run projects as cooperatives, not just in the financial sense, but in design also.”
In 1989, Fran founded a board that eventually numbered four full directors. From the outset, Tectvs was shaped differently; the firm, not individuals working in it, was the marketing focus. Clients would buy a Tectvs design service because of its quality and utility.
The concept was radical at the time. Tectvs embodied the idea that the “diminishing paradigm” of the architect who belonging to a privileged society was not only wrong, but had the potential to devalue architectural work.
By branding itself as a design house rather than a “professional” partnership of architects, Tectvs would avoid t...
