Evolving Design, Community and Circular Thinking with Architect Bill Dowzer

Sitting down with Bill Dowzer offered a rare chance to follow a career that has stretched from the abattoir plains of Homebush to the dense streets of Manhattan.

What struck me first was the ease with which he moved through each chapter of his life, describing his early days placing barrels on a future Olympic boulevard, then shifting seamlessly into interior design, workplace strategy, public buildings and global practice leadership. His account of BVN reaching its hundred-year milestone highlighted how a firm survives by constantly reshaping itself and nurturing a culture where good design and good people are inseparable.

Hearing how his career began in the 1990s with the Sydney Olympics revealed the scale he was exposed to from the very start. The stadium, the tennis centre and the entire master plan formed the backdrop to his early professional education. Yet he shifted later into projects like the MLC Campus, which challenged workplace conventions and explored how personality and user experience can transform daily life. As he explained the shift from cubicles to environments that uplift wellbeing, it became clear that his view of design has always been about people, not just buildings.

His years in New York brought a completely different perspective.

Running BVN’s small studio inside WeWork’s headquarters forced him to rethink what a practice could be. The pandemic then flipped everything on its head. With no work and a city boarded up in fear after the death of George Floyd, Bill and his team found themselves walking together each day, noticing piles of plywood destined for landfill.

That simple observation sparked rePly Furniture, built on reclaiming discarded material and turning it into outdoor dining structures so restaurants could operate on the street.

Listening to him describe collecting plywood in a U-Haul, storing it up three flights of stairs and building prototypes in the West Village made the venture feel audacious, scrappy and profoundly human.

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