Christopher Senior and Associates

13/05/2026

This house is stunning, although I would have used new zincalume! :)
https://architectureau.com/articles/simpsons-bay-road-by-dock-4/ #

Built almost entirely from salvaged materials, this Bruny Island retreat reconfigures the remnants of a demolished Hobart workshop into a calm and carefully composed coastal dwelling.

13/02/2026

This house was just featured in Houses. I have never seen this house before, it is worth looking at and reading the feature interview with Hugh Buhrich the Architect who designed it for himself and his family. It is in one word ... Stunning! 😎

As Hugh Buhrich tells it, his life has been more found than made, a crooked chain of accident and happenstance connecting...

05/09/2025

This is an article about the 'regeneration' of one of my favourite houses in Australia. First seen in an article about Glenn Murcutt when I was quite new to Perth after moving from the UK, it had a great influence on the way I viewed residential design in my new home.

A 1983 house built for two artists in serene bushland north-west of Sydney came to typify Glenn Murcutt’s growing philosophy of “touching the earth lightly” – an approach centring humanity within nature, not above it.

25/07/2025

I just love this house, a true gem. 😎

This late 1950s house by Keith Neighbour reflects the liberty and experimental freedom of a newly graduated architect, while subtly nodding to Southern California modernism and demonstrating thoughtfulness in working within the material constraints of the postwar period.

24/06/2025

It's been 13 years since CSA was featured in Scoop Commercial Building and Design. These are the two buildings that were chosen, the office building for Byfields Accountants in Keymer Street in Belmont and the medical centre in Almondbury Parade, Ardross for Southern Dermatology. Both these buidings are occupied by the clients CSA designed them for and when I visited them recently, they are both still please with them.

24/06/2025

The other day I was reminded of the building I designed at the corner of Cambridge and Jersey Streets in Wembley. I dont pass it often but when I do I usually take a photo or two of it. I am always please to see that it is aging incredibly well. This is testament to the quality of the construction and the high level of construction detailing CSA always put into their documentation. These two images show the intended design render; the other is a photo of the building thirteen years after it was completed. 😎

16/05/2025

I was looking at some old project details and found this photo. It's the pool and cafe CSA designed at the Ranges Resort on Karratha. The pool was at the time the largest pool in Karratha and the cafe was originally the pool deck cabana we converted into a full-blown restaurant. The resort itself comprises 109 individual accommodation units plus a reception and managers house plus support buildings. Each unit has parking there is trailer parking also, the resort has wonderful landscaping with barbecue areas for residents.

08/04/2025

Prefabrication is a great way to get your house built much quicker especially with build times in WA going backwards!!! Whilst prefabricated houses are not new, they were used in the UK after WWII and are now common in Scandinavia. If you want to know more just call me please. Also ... a prefabricated Early Learning Centre is not out of the question either. I tend to use steel frames anyway for my centres so having the units built in a factory would just save having it done on site. Same goes for medical centres by the way. 😎

02/04/2025

So, the Government is promising many new Urgent Care Centres. Call me a sceptic if you want but I am expecting these centres to be the same as the Superclinics that were promised. If you remember there were only a few actually built, the rest were ordinary medical centres re named! I was fortunate enough to design the two 'real' Superclinics opened in WA, the ones in Midland and Wanneroo. I was also fortunate to have worked with Dr Tim Haggett on the original Gemini Medical Centres and later on the Apollo Health Centres which where all designed to suit urgent care requirements.
If you want to know more about the design of Urgent care Centres please give me a call. 😎

26/03/2025

If you are interested in learning more about Passivhaus design, please give me a call.

Kin Seng Choo and Michael Robertson, the duo behind C. Street Projects, have spent the last five years developing a method and design approach to scaling certified Passivhaus projects suited to the unique challenges of Australian conditions.

06/02/2025

On some of my projects I have to explain to clients the number of consultants that are required these days to obtain approval for their projects and then get them built and finally certified for use. This was very apparent when an old client came to me with a new project after not doing one for about 20 years. I had to explain that the days of submitting a set of architectural docs plus a set of structural drawings to Council were over and that multiple consultants are needed to design and certify the project. He was amazed at the 'new' (to him) bureaucracy and asked how much these consultants would add to his development costs. He was not amused when I told him.
As an example of how many consultants some projects need these days, I copied this list from a recent article in ArchitecureAU relating to a project in Coffs Harbour:
Project
Yarrila Place
Architect: BVN Australia
Project Team
Matthew Blair, Kevin O’Brien, Liam Croft, Jessica Smith, Pi Saengporm, Laurie Aznavoorian, Phillip Rowden, Amelia Lipa, Tim Crawshaw, Kate Field, Ayelen Moure, Eric Yeoh, Barry Cantor, Jonathan Capparelli
AV and specialist lighting consultant: LCI Consultants
Access consultant: Wall to Wall Design and Consulting
Acoustics engineer: Pulse Acoustics
Arborist: Network
BCA and NCC: Philip Chun & Associates, Blackett Maguire + Goldsmith
BIM management: BVN
Branding consultant: SASO
Builder: Lipman
Building services engineer: LCI Consultants
Designing with Country: BVN
Environmental sustainability engineer: LCI Consultants
Facade engineer: Surface Design
Fire engineer: LCI Consultants
Floor consultant: GHD
Interior design: BVN
Kitchen design: Sangster Design Group
Land surveyor; Blair and Lanskey
Landscape consultant: Lipman
Museum consultant: Thylacine Design
Principal certifying authority: Group DLA
Project manager; Turner & Townsend
Public art project management: iAM Projects
Quantity surveyor: Slattery Australia, Altus Group
Statutory town planner: Geolink
Structural and civil engineer: Taylor Thomson Whitting (TTW)
The Track Artists: Ruben Browne, Denise Buchanan, Reece Flanders, Lilly Clegg, Josie Rose Atkinson, Lisa Kelly
Traffic engineer: Ason Group
Urban planner: BVN
Vertical transport consultant: LCI Consultants
Waste management consultant: SLR Consulting, Elephants Foot
Wayfinding: Citizen Group
Wind consultant: Windtech
Workplace strategy: Calder Consultants, BVN

Aboriginal Nation: Yarrila Place is built on the land of the Gumbaynggirr people.
Category
Public / cultural
Type
Community centres

Now I do realise that not all projects are this 'complicated' and that 'some' of these consultants will not be needed on projects CSA are involved with. I can assure you and my clients that I design my own kitchens, read and understand the NCC so don't need a consultant to do it for me and have never needed a Wind Consultant! :)