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When architect Jennie Officer talks about sustainable buildings, her ideas go beyond ecologically-sound building materials and processes.

"I try to design buildings that are flexible, so they can accommodate different uses through their lives. There is now a new generation of multi-purpose spaces so that buildings can live on in different roles."

Ms Officer has been named WA's Emerging Architect by the Australian Institute of Architects. She is a graduate and a staff member at UWA, teaching design and digital design in the School of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts.

She also runs a private practice, Officer Woods, with another UWA graduate, Trent Woods. Together their vision is "imagining a future through public buildings".

"Our work is predominantly residential but we have done some public buildings and hope to work more in the public arena," Ms Officer said. "Our practice represents our ongoing research and we are constantly trying to be innovative and inventive without re-inventing the wheel. We would like to help more people with our skills than we can reach through residential work."

The Emerging Architect award is for practitioners who have graduated within the past 10 years and who can demonstrate excellence in practice, research and education, and leadership.

"My architectural life straddles those three areas," she said.

"My interest and involvement in education is threefold: it is a privilege to be immersed in the creative environment of an architecture school, to be thinking about a broad range and scale of work at all times and to be re-educated; it fosters a strongly symbiotic relationship with the work I do in practice; and it allows me an opportunity to redress and reassess any deficiencies I perceive in my own education."

She said architects had a huge responsibility to their clients and taxpayers (in the case of public buildings). "There must be some real value for money in our designs.

"We are less interested in working on homes where money is not an issue and more keen on designing hard-working buildings within a budget.

"We like the challenge and it's great for the clients to come on a journey with you. Many of them might not have expected that from a contract with an architect."

Ms Officer said she hoped the award would help to boost the profile of emerging architects in WA.

"They are often overlooked on the basis of experience, but are highly capable of more complex work," she said.

Published in UWA News , 30 May 2011