FGR principal Feras Raffoul has spent decades honing his firm’s design skills to a fine edge. This is exemplified in the ensemble of bold, butter-like polished concrete forms, glazing-as-walls and generous volumes that define the body of the firm’s work.
The interaction between commercial and residential design constantly informs and invigorates the other. The FGR narrative is one of assured expression and resolve. Artfully modelled planar concrete forms are punctuated with operable glazing as light and fresh air sources. Glazing, often heroic in scale to mirror the robust concrete forms realize the panoramic and binocular.
In all, the firm’s work exhibits exuberance and optimism. Spatial continuity, elevated floor slabs, pre-fabrication, floating stairs, slender mullions and frameless glazing engender a gravity-defying elegance. A clear preference for the invention of prototype over stereotype reveals work for living and play. Illuminated by an authenticity of form and conviction FGR’s design provide a real sense of delight.
Soaring volumes, tuned materiality and clever connections offer a low impact, light-filled delicacy. The tactility of concrete and glimmer of full-height glazing are consistent throughout and the sustainable characteristics of locally sourced materials and trades consistently inform work.
A preference with the double-skinned envelope of earthy materials sees concrete for privacy and thermal massing, glass for a crystal cave of natural light and operable window walls to engage with landscape and climate. A unified material ‘flow’ and meticulous, unfussed detailing contribute to a consistency and ease of liveability.
And rather than exist as isolated entity, the firm’s designs bridge the existing and introduced landscape.
Feras Raffoul sees his role largely as one of translating client ambitions into streamlined, high performance beauty. He likens architecture to that of inhabiting beautiful sculpture. “It has to possess that beauty and loveliness that wraps and releases whoever moves through its spaces.”
This philosophy for understated, calm interiors is largely drawn from the world of art galleries where a meditative calm and restraint allow the personality of client art or furnishings to shine.
The work clearly sets out to surprise, rather than shock, with invention and serenity. It’s a signature that stretches and teases a myriad of shapes playing concrete – raw and polished, glass and stone off one another with sculptural élan.
All architecture is shelter, all great architecture is the design of space that contains, cuddles, exalts or stimulates the persons in that space.
– Philip Johnson
FGR’s pursuit of the sensory qualities – of sight, sound, smell and touch contribute to work of real conviction. Space utilisation, occupant circulation and organisational clarity drive the design narrative of planar elegance and robust delicacy. A language of pared, polished simplicity speaks of the quiet revelation rather than bluster.
Sprinkled throughout the suburbs, often amongst cookie-cutter period and contemporary homes, FGR’s architecture bursts with invention and understated surprise.
It is a reminder of architecture’s potential to influence and affect us in a multitude of ways, proving once again that the design whisper always trumps the shout.
