About

Practice Matters designs holistically and resourcefully — reusing materials, adapting existing buildings, creating resilient homes and places built to last.

Our practice is bioregional and ecological, integrating built form with the landscapes and systems it sits within. We are contextually embedded in the bustling heart of Naarm/Melbourne and the remote wilds of Lutruwita/Tasmania, and always working within planetary boundaries. We specialise in material and adaptive reuse, defit/refit, and design for disassembly and deconstruction, bringing circular design and a holistic process to private, institutional and community-based projects alike.

We take pride in our resourcefulness, finding creative, often unexpected ways to bring the most out of a project with the resources already at hand. The result is architecture that gives back more than it takes: climate-positive, socially sustainable, and built to be resilient. Each project is grounded in context-rich knowledge, local materials and local suppliers.

Contact

office@practice-matters.design

Services

Architecture and Landscape
We design buildings and landscapes as a single system, not separate disciplines, integrating built form with the site's climate, materials and ecology from the outset. Whether working with a tricky block or a modest budget, we find the design that makes the most of what's already there.

Furniture and Design
From individual pieces to full-scale fitouts, we design furniture and interiors with disassembly in mind, built to be repaired, adapted and eventually taken apart rather than thrown away.

Materials and Research
We undertake independent and commissioned research into material reuse, circular economies and bioregional design practice, helping clients, communities and institutions make evidence-based decisions about how they build. In the pre-design stage, we assess a site's materials for reuse potential, identifying what can be salvaged, repurposed or diverted from landfill. We help clients identify, source and specify reclaimed and reused materials, reducing embodied carbon and cost while adding character and history to a project.

Permaculture design
We bring permaculture principles into our design process, designing gardens, food systems and outdoor spaces that work with natural cycles rather than against them, for homes, communities and institutions alike.

Who we are

Charlotte May (ARBV #801621) is an architect who has spent the last decade developing her materials-based practice through making, testing, and direct engagement with craft. She completed her Masters degree at the University of Western Australia in Perth, before developing her design skills over five years at MORQ, the experience of which ultimately led to her registration with the Architects Registration Board of Victoria.

Alongside her architectural work, Charlotte has always maintained an object design practice, through personal furniture making and her work at a timber workshop designing and fabricating Japanese-style cedar baths. This hands-on, materials-first approach continues to inform how she practices architecture today.

Charlotte believes the most sustainable material is the one already in front of us, whether in a building, a landscape, or a discarded object waiting to be seen differently. Her work explores the overlaps and tensions between the discipline of architecture and a broader design practice, focusing on the responsibilities of designers as we move towards building beyond extraction. This thinking extends beyond buildings to soil, food and community systems, shaped by her training in Permaculture design.

Mark Sawyer is a multidisciplinary designer who specialises in design-for-disassembly and design-for-deconstruction. He holds a PhD in Architecture and Design and has developed and delivered research and education programs in architecture and design across Australian universities, at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Mark's practice is shaped by resourcefulness, which means doing a lot with a little, and treating underutilised materials not as waste but as unrealised value. Design for deconstruction and ecological principles run through his work: thinking about the end state of a building or product as carefully as its beginning, so materials can be recovered and reused rather than landfilled.

He takes a bioregionalist approach, starting each project by asking what is already unique about a place—its materials, its skills, its people—and drawing that uniqueness out rather than importing a solution from elsewhere. This means working closely with local makers and partners, and listening carefully to communities so that what gets built reflects what actually matters to the people who use it.

We acknowledge and pay our respects to the Traditional Owners and ongoing custodians throughout Australia,

their culture, knowledge and wisdom.