John Wardle is curious

“I would say, if I have one truly distinguishing character, it’s that I’m totally curious about everything,” John Wardle tells me, as if this weren’t obvious from the moment you meet him. In the brief span of our conversation, Wardle mentions his interest in new technologies for timber fabrication; the spatial history of Sydney’s rail infrastructure; the work of Brazilian architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha and his tactic of designing buildings to be entered from below; the structural system of the Murtoa Stick Shed in regional Victoria; the ambiguous way the Sir John Soane’s Museum is both private and public; the founding of Australia’s terracotta industry by Italian migrants; the art of Fiona Hall, Olafur Eliasson