Sean Godsell
Sean Godsell was born in Melbourne in 1960. He graduated with First Class Honours from the University of Melbourne in 1984. After traveling in Japan and Europe he worked in London from 1986 to 1988 for Sir Denys Lasdun, before returning to Melbourne in 1989 and joined The Hassell Group. In 1994 he formed Godsell Associates Pty Ltd Architects.
In July 2002 the influential English design magazine wallpaper listed him as one of ten people destined to ‘change the way we live’. He was the only Australian and the only architect in the group.
In July 2003 Sean received a citation from the President of the American Institute of Architects for his work for the homeless. His Future Shack prototype was exhibited from May to October 2004 at the Smithsonian Institute’s Cooper Hewitt Design Museum in New York.
Sean has received numerous local and international awards. In 2006 he received the Victorian Premier’s Design Award and the RAIA Robin Boyd Award and in 2007 he received the Capochin Residential Architecture Award in Italy and a Chicago Athenaeum Award in the USA – all for St Andrew’s Beach House. In 2008 he was a finalist in the wallpaper International Design Awards and a recipient of his second AIA Record Houses Award for Excellence in the USA for Glenburn House. In 2008, noted architectural historian and Professor of Architecture at Columbia University Kenneth Frampton nominated him for the inaugural BSI Swiss Architecture Award for architects under the age of 50 and his work was exhibited as part of the Milan Triennale and the Venice Biennale.
He is currently working on projects in China and Australia and his first major building, the RMIT University Design Hub, a post graduate research centre for design, is currently under construction in Melbourne.
The Design Hub will provide accommodation in one building for a diverse range of design research and postgraduate education. The Hub will provide a collegial research base where post graduates in fields such as fabric and fashion design will work alongside those involved in architecture, aeronautical engineering, industrial design, landscape architecture, and urban design.