ABOUT LUCY

Words by Stephen Crafti

SEPTEMBER 2026

Those looking to engage a corporate architect with a large ‘C’ would be advised not to seek out Lucy Architecture – although the practice is use to taking on challenging projects on a number of scales. However, for director, Lucy Tibbits and her team, interior designer, Lauren Beadle and graduate architect, Vidhi Patel, the focus is on delivering a tailored and more personalised approach. Founded in 2017, Lucy Architecture is a welcoming and engaging studio, one that’s based in a former fire station, in Richmond.

A broader perspective is something that defines Lucy Architecture – a quality that stems from her father, George Tibbits, an architect by training but also an eminent architectural historian. He was also a composer. Hence childhood memories of the family home in Carlton are of her parents’ friends, historians, composers and also scientists, since her mother was a microbiologist. So, while Lucy was keen to follow a career in architecture, she could easily have become an artist – her late partner was the highly regarded artist, Bruce Armstrong. So, for Lucy, art, fashion design and theatre (initially she was drawn to theatre design at RMIT University), formed part of her focus, graduating with a double degree in architecture.

Her trajectory in architecture included working with well-respected heritage architect, Roger Beeston (RBA) in Melbourne – together with taking a gap year between degrees, with architect Martin Rajis in Prague – an architect who was awarded the keys of the city. And while Martin couldn’t understand Lucy’s accent, he greatly appreciated her broader artistic outlook – recalling that he gave her the position as long as she didn’t speak!

Having a career that combined family life with a profession such as architecture, isn’t often the right combination for most. So, from the outset, post-children, Lucy preferred to work with smaller practices that offered flexibility – something she adheres to with her own practice. When she isn’t working on architecture, she can spend time at her piano or pick up a paint brush and work on an oil painting. While some might not see the connection between painting and architecture, for Lucy, both artistic streams celebrate colour and form, as well as the strokes of the brush allowing valuable down time that comes with heading an architectural practice. Focusing on portraiture as well as still life also helps her to get into the minds of her clients – be they requesting a new house or predominantly, renovations. The painting, along with the piano, also provides an important discipline, a sense of structure and importantly, an understanding of materials, whether it’s paint or bricks and mortar. For Lucy Architecture, each painting, like a home, tells a story of the people who live there and their aspirations.

Like Lucy’s work on canvas, there’s a certain softness with the designs of the homes created for clients, along with a calmness that can be detected both with the subjects painted and the spaces within a home. There are also moments within the home that add a sense of drama and a sense of discovery. One of the colour palettes used by Lucy Architecture is aubergine and warm brown tones – akin to the sepia ground used to create depth in a classical portrait painting. There’s also the exemplary detail that extends across both disciplines, be this produced by paint or the careful selection of finishes and fittings that make a house a treasured vessel.

Designing a house also comes with its own parameters and challenges that is often instigated by a site and whether or not it’s located in a heritage precinct. For every project, there’s always a flurry of ideas that need to be tempered – responding to the client’s brief rather than simply ticking boxes.

These ideas are now, via technology, presented in a manner that is legible for those who can’t read plans – through rendered  visualisations. And while technology has made architecture more accessible, it also provides for greater options. The last decade has also seen a shift in the way people view their homes, from simply commodities to be traded in the market, to homes that come with meaning and are designed for the owners and the way they choose to live.

Lucy’s studio is filled with paintings and sculpture many of either bears or birds, richly patinaed and obviously precious to their owner. The same could easily be said of Lucy Architecture’s designs, like a glove tailor made for the owner’s hand, one that will also develop a rich patina in time.

Words by Stephen Crafti