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Art of the Maker: Annie Paxton
The Melbourne-based architect pursues her own evolving practice that spans lighting, furniture and accessories, melding the formidable yet malleable tactility of metal, glass and silk.
Annie Paxton is a multidisciplinary designer with an insatiable mind – a disposition that means she is never quite content doing only one thing. Working as an architect at renowned firm Kennedy Nolan during the week, the Melbourne-based creative spends her weekends on her own practice, Annie Paxton Studio, which has quickly turned into something she never anticipated.
Paxton’s creative pursuits were born from a combination of play, hard work and serendipity. “I walked into university enrolled in a law degree, and on the first day I surprised myself by changing to architecture units,” she reflects. In some ways, she credits her decision as a means to fulfil her mind’s critical thinking, mathematical and artistic ways of reasoning. “I think architecture nicely meshes all the different parts of my brain that need to be satisfied.”
Completing a Master of Architecture from the University of Melbourne in 2020 – where she also now teaches two nights a week – Paxton was working on her thesis during lockdown, which turned out to be a fortuitous exercise. “I had a lot of time on my hands, so I started playing around with ideas, forms and materials,” she reflects. Bouncing off the skills of her partner, Torren Clifford, a furniture maker and metal fabricator who operates Old Four Legs, Paxton began turning these ideas into something tangible. “It started as model-making but then transformed into this art practice based around one-to-one-scale objects. It’s snowballed very quickly into an interesting way of investigating material, process and form.”
“I’ve always been interested in the poetry of space, particularly how the assemblage of domestic space can structure and impact the way you think and feel about the world and how it can influence your everyday perceptions and experience of life,” says the designer.
Paxton creates objects and furniture ranging from mirrors, lamps and stools that combine art and function. They are simultaneously robust and delicate – a contemplation on the poetics of space, a concept she became interested in after reading Gaston Bachelard’s seminal book. “I’ve always been interested in the poetry of space, particularly how the assemblage of domestic space can structure and impact the way you think and feel about the world and how it can influence your everyday perceptions and experience of life,” says the designer. And while architecture encourages movement in a sequence, furniture emphasises that experience more profoundly through physical mediations. “My designs are within the realm of three-dimensional, functional pieces, but they are ultimately furniture pieces that encourage you to move, feel and see in a different way.”
Working mainly with silk and metal, Paxton particularly loves the latter’s malleability and ability to patina: “What you can create out of metal is really robust as an object, but the actual material surface is always changing and showing the traces of time.” She specifically enjoys working with cast aluminium and stainless steel. Combined with the handmade effect you can get through processes like casting, Paxton also favours metal as a material that is forgiving, beautiful and highly meditative.
While no day in the studio looks the same, the creative’s process typically begins with spending time playing with the material she’s exploring. She then comes up with ideas and refines them through sketching and technical drawings informed by her architectural training. “I always get fascinated by a process or a material that’s tied to a process, and then the form and practical use follows.” Paxton’s designs are also dominated by a fairly limited palette: “It feels stronger, more considered, to focus on a singular idea and expression rather than play around with too many mediums. The clutter can dilute the idea.”
While her work as an architect and her creative practice coexist and feed off one another, at times they are quite distinct. The architectural work is structured and pragmatic, primarily focused on single residential dwellings with intricate interiors; Paxton’s creative practice is more of an outlet. “Both disciplines are inextricably linked to the human scale, but at alternate poles. I think a lot about how pieces will interact with the spaces they inhabit, and that kind of reciprocal nature of experience – how we construct space as space constructs us.”
With her designs recently appearing in ‘Aluminium’ presented by Craft Victoria and ‘Holder’ presented by TROVE – both exhibitions at this year’s Melbourne Design Week – Paxton is looking forward to more shows and possibly a residency. “I guess I would love to eventually have a multidisciplinary architecture, interior, furniture and theory-based practice where I can teach, make pieces and have the odd architecture and interior project on the side,” says the designer. For now, she is happy where she is. It’s clear that Paxton’s unwavering ambition and multifaceted approach to the spaces we inhabit will continue to serve both her creative paths in profound and, at times, unexpected ways.
