Our Story
Constructive Dialogue grew out of formative experiences and practice of original directors, Nick Seemann and Tim Turner.
Nick’s practice is rooted in four years of travel and development work in Papua New Guinea, were he supported village-based projects that boosted small scale enterprise, and in Nepal, where he worked on slum development projects.
Tim Turner’s approach to maximising the reuse of existing buildings, enhancing the relationship to gardens, and exploring crafting with timber lead directly into Constructive Dialogue’s methodology of maintaining as much of an existing building as possible and finding opportunities for creating beauty in the structure of new components to a building.
Following years of smaller-scale work, The Salvation Army and Society of St Vincent de Paul provided the first opportunities for the practice to bring together their experience on a substantial community building in Australia. Working with enthusiastic teams on challenging sites, the team explored the strength of existing programs and the opportunities for new buildings to provide a base for significant expansion of the services. The result is buildings tailored to programs, economically exploring structural beauty, and opening to gardens. This work has been documented in a New Directions in Sustainable Design.
Working on a range of new buildings, Constructive Dialogue discovered the strength of refurbishment projects. Work on homelessness services with Bob Seymour at The Salvation Army allowed early opportunities to work supporting program change. Both Foster House and William Booth House focused on the shift from an accommodation focus to case management and the development of a therapeutic space of change that began with the offer of “Socks and Jocks” upon entry to the services.
These were fast to complete, economic to build, and provided a chance to work with staff of a service already aware of the challenges that needed to be addressed. They also provided opportunities to work on building part of a project with those involved in the planning. This work is documented in a book that explores Christopher Alexander’s legacy and directly lead to similar projects in other forms of supported accommodation.
The significant need within the aged care sector has consistently arisen as a central focus through the life of the practice. This began with undergraduate research and lead to the first articulation of a better way to support older people when Uniting engaged Constructive Dialogue to write a building design guide as the blueprint for significant refurbishment and new construction work as part of an organisational restructure.
It was realised through work to carry out smaller, targeted significant improvements to buildings and later complete refurbishments as part of ongoing shifts in the organisations’ model of care. This work also lead to Nick’s engagement to lead the Environments Team at Dementia Training Australia and the development of an online course exploring the material.
Today
Our team over the last two years has significantly grown and developed. We are dedicated to continuously improving our capability in dementia design, sustainability and innovation.
