SIMONE BLISS  / Bach. L, Arch (RMIT) (hons)

Simone Bliss is the creative director of SBLA Studio and panel member of the recently implemented City of Melbourne Design Review Panel.

Prior to establishing the SBLA , Simone worked as a senior landscape architect with Taylor Cullity Lethlean (TCL, Melbourne) and then Playstreet design studio in Hobart. She has eighteen years experience designing and project managing nationally and internationally award-winning projects.

Simone has a creative vision with the ability to materialise  colorful conceptual ideas into functional spaces. She is an active member in the discussion of green field development, high and mid density housing and Melbourne’s housing shortage. She has led a series of multi-residential housing projects that are undertaking alternative models to business as usual. She has worked closely with a number of developers and architects who are pushing the urban density and middle ground housing outcomes.

ESTHER HONYBUN / Bach.Larch (RMIT)

Esther’s interests stem from the relationships between people and place. She is curious about the complexities of the landscapes we form part of and is fundamentally interested in how our experience of landscape contributes to the way we understand, relate to and ultimately look after the land we live on.

Esther prioritizes strong relationships and rejoices in working together with diverse knowledge-holders and professionals. She believes that beautiful and ecologically rich public space starts with strong, trusting relationships between project team members, the local community, and key stakeholders.

MATT WAKELIN / B.Arch, M.L.Arch (Victoria University of Wellington)

Matt was drawn to the profession through his passion for plants and the overlap of gardening and art. This led to his keen interest in landscape architecture and urbanism due to its positive agency in creating places, spaces, and systems that tell our stories and offer meaningful ways to connect to our world. He is also drawn to the profession’s innovative nature - its ability to solve problems through design to takle some of our world’s most pressing issues. He reckons it’s the best profession in the world.

With skills in planting, ecological design, community engagement, and hand-drawing, Matt has played key roles in designing schools, neighbourhood centres, inner-city public spaces, streetscapes, expansive inter-suburban parks, playgrounds, ecologically informed infrastructural systems, and masterplanned communities.

All Matt’s projects engage a strong emphasis on understanding a site’s history and its unique natural systems towards successful placemaking initiatives and biodiversity enhancement. He is always looking for ways we can innovate our designs and design processes towards sustainable, resilient and socially just outcomes.

PHOEBE BAKER / B.Music (Box Hill), Grad Dip International Development (RMIT)

Studio Curator

Phoebe Baker is a composer and studio curator at SBLA Studio.

Phoebe is passionate about facilitating spaces and work places that nurture people’s well-being and sense of play. Her extensive experience in the music industry as a performer, teacher, and speaker has equipped Phoebe with a natural ability to collaborate and communicate well with teams. At SBLA, Phoebe facilitates and organises the everyday workings of a group of lovely landscape architects.

When not at SBLA, Phoebe is a performer, volunteer at commmunity radio, and marriage celebrant.

COLIN CHEN / Bach. DM (UNSW), M. L. Arch (UOM)

Colin is an experienced landscape architect， photographer, and graphic designer. He has a particular understanding of the constant dynamic nature of Landscape Architecture, exploring and revealing this through his design approach and methodologies.

He perceives landscape architecture as the agency to address ecological and social issues; seeking innovative ways to bring creativity and heterogeneity into the designed civic / public spaces. Colin’s previous experience in digital media is reflected in his work.

He is highly skilled in graphic representation and visualisations. As well as practing at SBLA, Colin tutors Landscape Studios, Constructed Ecologies and Site Tectonics at the University of Melbourne.

GEORGIA ALDOUS / Bach. LArch (RMIT)

Georgia believes in promoting positive social change through physical space. To her, landscapes hold richly layered histories and she gets enjoyment from collaborating across communities, disciplines and cultures to generate meaningful and site-sensitive outcomes.

To date, her experience spans across playspaces, residential, temporary installations, strategic planning, waterways and master planning. Growing up in regional Victoria, she is passionate about the responsible development of rural and regional areas, and how this may begin to address some of the economic, social and ecological problems associated with climate change. Moving to an inner city home, she is nurturing an ever growing productive garden.

Through her work on the Coastal Resiliency Strategy for East Boston in the United States, Georgia has experienced how landscape architecture can influence positive changes in the built environment at a larger and more enduring scale. She puts this into practice with an approach to creating spaces that builds on context, looking both beyond and into site.

BEDE BRENNAN / B.Envs (UOM), M L.Arch (UOM)

Bede is a Landscape Architect interested in how people perceive and engage with the nonhuman world. This curiosity underpins his design ethos of collaborating with creatures, ecologies and places.

His project experience spans roles at Pollen Studio, as an independent consultant, and as a university educator. For over six years, Bede has taught across both undergraduate and postgraduate programs in design and geography at the University of Melbourne.

Bede also likes to write. His writing has appeared in The Planthunter, Kerb Journal, LA+ Magazine, and Smith Journal, among others. He shares his ideas through public speaking, with presentations at the MPavilion (2021), the International Festival of Landscape Architecture (2019). His 2021 collaboration with architect Vishnu Hazel was exhibited in the Salon des Refusés as part of the LA+ Creature international design competition.

At home, Bede tends to a front yard full of unusual vegetables and a flock of chickens.