Architecture & Design

Architecture & Design | 13 How did your interest in architecture begin, and what led you to pursue it as a career? My interest in architecture grew from an early fascination with how buildings shape our experience of places. Growing up in Malta, I was surrounded by historic streets and buildings alongside rapid urban change. This made me curious about how new architecture could respond to its surroundings while contributing something of its own. I graduated in architecture and civil engineering from the University of Malta in 2002 and began working in private practice that same year. My postgraduate MSc in Town and Country Planning, with a specialisation in urban design, at the Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, and my PhD in planning and urban design, completed in 2013, built on that professional experience. They helped me understand how planning policy shapes individual design decisions and, in turn, affects the wider city. I founded STUDJURBAN in 2012, bringing those interests together while already having a decade of experience in practice. What experiences, mentors or projects early in your career had the greatest influence on the architect you became? The relationship between practice and academic study has been formative. Working as an architect after graduating taught me how ideas develop through briefs, technical decisions and construction realities. Early mentors Alex Torpiano and Konrad Buhagiar shaped my practice; later, as an associate at TBA Periti, I learned invaluable knowledge from all three partners leading the practice. In turn, several conversations with Richard England deepened my thinking about architecture, expression and context. At the Bartlett, I gained a broader framework for understanding how places succeed and how planning decisions affect urban design quality. Mentors Matthew Carmona, Mark Tewdwr-Jones, Quentin Stevens and Elisabete Cidre helped me look beyond individual buildings and understand how design, planning and public life shape one another. This built on my professional experience and strengthened my ability to assess the built environment. Malta's historic towns remain an important reference. Their buildings, streets and squares show what thoughtful design can achieve with modest means. Their proportions, thresholds and climatic responses continue to inform my work. The exchange between practice and academic inquiry remains central to how I work at STUDJURBAN and the University of Malta, where practice informs my research and teaching, and vice versa. You founded STUDJURBAN in 2012. What prompted you to establish the practice, and what did you want it to do differently? I established STUDJURBAN in 2012 because I wanted a practice where architecture, urban design, research, and policy could inform one another. By then, my experience in practice and my doctoral research had made me increasingly aware that the quality of an individual building depends partly on decisions made beyond its boundaries, within a wider urban and social fabric. I wanted to engage more directly with the forces that shape the places we live in. I wanted us to ask broader questions from the outset. How does a building contribute to its street? What does a public space offer the people who use it? How can policy support better design? The intention was to promote responsible, context-led architecture and better public spaces, bringing the care we give to an architectural detail into our thinking about neighbourhoods and towns. Working with communities, public bodies and other professionals became essential to that approach. That ambition has evolved, but its underlying principle remains the same – to make places that are meaningful, responsive and enduring, whatever the scale. If your aim was to bring together architecture, urban design, research and policy, how has this broader approach shaped the way you think about architecture? For me, architecture has always been inseparable from the context in which it exists. A building does not stand alone; it becomes part of a street, a neighbourhood, a city, and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Bringing architecture together with urban design, research and policy has therefore changed the way I think about what we do. It has made me see design less as an isolated act of creation and more as a process of understanding the relationship between people and place, buildings and landscape, past and future. Research allows us to question what we take for granted, while urban design reminds us that often, what matters most is the space between things. Ultimately, architecture carries a responsibility to contribute to the life of a place, rather than simply occupy it. My academic work at the University of Malta and our work at STUDJURBAN inform one another. It is a useful exchange because ideas can be tested against the difficulties and opportunities of real projects. How has the practice evolved since 2012, and has it developed in ways you did not initially anticipate? Since 2012, the practice has grown in both the scale and complexity of its work. We have embarked on larger, more demanding projects, while urban design has come to account for a significantly greater share of what we do. Alongside individual buildings, we increasingly work on streets, public spaces and strategies that address the needs of entire localities. Research and policy continue to inform that work. Although urban design was central to STUDJURBAN's founding vision, I did not fully anticipate how substantially this aspect of the practice would develop. Projects such as Slow Streets and the redesign of Mosta and Birgu squares have deepened our involvement in mobility, community engagement and the practical challenges of bringing about change. Our research and policy work has also become a substantial part of what we do. The team has also grown in experience and responsibility, allowing the practice to draw on different strengths. Our founding interests remain, but we have become more aware of what it takes to carry them through to implementation. Working in Malta's rapidly changing urban context has further pushed us to look beyond individual buildings and engage more deeply with questions of place, development, heritage and quality of life. I did not necessarily anticipate how significant these aspects would become when we began, but they have enriched the practice and, in many ways, changed the questions we ask. " A building does not stand alone; it becomes part of a street, a neighbourhood, a city, and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Bringing architecture together with urban design, research and policy has therefore changed the way I think about what we do.

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