Richard Francis-Jones


Richard Francis-Jones is a highly awarded Australian architect. He is the design director of the multidisciplinary design practice Francis-Jones Carpenter, formerly Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp. He is a Life Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Architects and a Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Education

Francis-Jones graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Science in 1981 and a Bachelor of Architecture with First Class Honours and the University Medal in 1985. He attended Columbia University on an ITT Fellowship, where he studied under Kenneth Frampton, completing a Master of Science in Architecture and Building Design in 1987. He subsequently taught at Columbia University as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture. Francis-Jones has taught at many Schools of architecture in Australia, is a former Visiting Professor at the University of New South Wales, and is currently teaching at the University of Technology Sydney.

Practice

Following his studies at Columbia University, Francis-Jones practised at firms in New York, Los Angeles and Paris before returning to Sydney in 1989 where he joined FJMT’s predecessor, MGT Sydney. He became a director of the firm in 1996 and was a founding partner of Francis-Jones Morehen Thorp in 2003.
FJMT has a reputation as an ideas-driven practice "with an agenda for strong public engagement and masterful resolution of tectonics" and the firm’s work demonstrates "an extraordinary ability to uncover the real and often contradictory issues and potentials of a project by a very careful analysis of purpose and place".
Most of the firm’s major commissions have been won by competition and Francis-Jones is supportive of the power of the architectural competition to produce good architecture and create new opportunities for practices: "the more public the competition… the greater the contribution to the wider culture of architecture."
Francis-Jones’ approach is a response to the transition from industrial to digital economies and investigations utilising emerging sciences and technologies are evident. Yet, Francis-Jones considers the potential of this knowledge to address society’s challenges and give architects new scope for imagination is limited by the tendency for architecture to be reduced to fetishised object for consumption. "An authentic contemporary architecture should not only attempt to somehow begin to reconcile humanity’s place in the world but also be directed towards rejuvenating, repoliticising our desiccated public realm. We should pursue an architecture appropriate to citizens rather than consumers."
'…Francis-Jones has possibly been at his best in civic works... More than any other contemporary practice of comparable calibre in Australia, FJMT has been consistently engaged in the design and construction of large-scale public and/or commercial buildings...Many of these works derive their plastic character from the unique, rather theatrical concept of lateral exfoliation, that is to say the folding out of brises soleil so as to visually engage the surrounding landscape, thereby emphasising a topographical affinity between the building and its context. In all of this work the issue of sustainability is given priority…'
Francis-Jones was the creative director of the Australian Institute of Architects’ 2008 National Conference,, and is an editor of and Content: a journal of architecture. Francis-Jones was President of the RAIA from 2001–2002 and was a member of the NSW Architects Registration Board from 2001-2004.

Books

Notable projects

Awards