| Now a Professor of Research and Innovation in the Faculty of Architecture at RMIT, Leon Van Schaik has been teaching and practicing architecture and design since 1971, in everything from self-help and conventional housing to educational buildings, art galleries and factories. In recent years, he has led design on the RMIT ecologically-responsible initiative in Vietnam and the RMIT Technology Estate. In 2005 he was Commissioner for Australia in the 7th International Exhibition of Architecture at the Venice Biennale and received the inaugural Royal Australian Institute of Architects Neville Quarry Award. On Australia Day, 2006, Leon was awarded the Order of Australia Officer (AO) for services to architecture and the community as an academic, practitioner and educator. In 2005 he authored Mastering Architecture: Becoming a Creative Innovator in Practice. His latest book, Design City Melbourne, was published in 2006.
What was the first project you worked on?
A Gallery for concrete poet Ian Hamilton Findlay - known as Scotland's foremost living artist - at Dunsyre, completed in partnership with Kate Heron, now Head of Architecture at the University of Westminster. It is a converted barn set in an amazing garden filled with his works, including bird tables in the form of Aircraft Carriers. Every thing is a pun. What is your most treasured possession?
A small collection of contemporary Australian art, featuring works by Stephen Bram, Louise Forthuin and Jenny Watson amongst others. What books do you have on your bedside table?
At the moment, Campo Santo by WG Sebald and Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. The "I do this, I do that" poems of Frank O'Hara are always at hand, as are nowadays the poems of Peter Rose. Who would you like to design something for?
Cath Stutterheim, landscape architect, because she has a sensibility about place and design that I admire. Strangest architectural experience?
Leaving Hagia Sophia, and seeing above the bright daylight streaming in through the doors in a space that should have been pitch black, the shining mosaic of a Byzantine depiction of Mary and Child, that on closer inspection turned out to be a huge mirror reflecting what the light from outside was illuminating behind my head... Where do you like to work on your designs?
At my desk at home in St Kilda with a view out over the city, and with views of the great southern skies. I wish however that I was able to do this in the domed room on top of the old Railways Head Quarters in Spencer Street that has a window looking all the way up Flinders Lane to Princes Street, a tiny slice of New York tightness. I think domes promote thought! Your greatest extravagance?
Visits to the Anna Schwartz Gallery, or to ARC One Gallery, both in Flinders Lane. Your greatest achievement?
The book "Design City Melbourne," as an account of what I love about a city; the post graduate program that invites practitioners to reflect upon their work and consider future directions for their practice - what Norman Day has termed 'being curator of Melbourne's architecture," and in education in general, what Peter Downton has described as taking care of people. What is the best moment of the day?
Breakfast time on my terrace overlooking the city, with a glimpse of the bay. An upcoming international architectural project that excites you is?
The suite of Di Stasio virtual pavilions that Tom Kovac is designing for the Biennales of the world, wonderful architectural barnacles that will house the best that Melbourne has to offer at every Biennale. Best vista?
From Eagle's Nest above Zennor in Cornwall, the view from the green rectangle of the croquet lawn over the Stone Age field system below to the Atlantic. Here on a perfect summer's day with no haze you see the green flash on the horizon at the precise moment that the orange globe of the sun sinks out of sight. But only some years. Worst blight?
Diesel particulates in Hong Kong, petrol fumes over Los Angeles, air that is difficult to breathe from Calcutta to Beijing. If you could meet one person alive?
Frank O'Hara, for lunch, in New York when he was a curator at MOMA, and to be in one of his lunch poems. One artwork that inspires you is?
Richard Hamilton's painting "Hers is a Lush Situation", a pair of lips above a Maidenform bra, seated in a Buick Electra with wrap around windshield and with the United nations reflected in the windscreen. I imagine Bryan Ferry's early Roxy Music being played. It's about what we can do now. Or it was then! Straight line or curved?
The line of beauty is a curve, as Hogarth said. As Alan Hollingsworth continues in his novel of that title ... What building do you wish you had designed?
Melnikov's House in Moscow. Not only is it a wonderful concept, two cylinders intersecting, it is also the best studio house ever designed, and miraculously it survived as a family home throughout the purges of Stalinism. May it survive!! What was your favourite toy as a child?
A Standard Vanguard Dinky Toy that was the same colour as my father's car. The greatest hero from the history of architecture?
John Soane, because he explored his vision that architecture expresses our understanding of the universe in every project he did, even though the vast majority of them were alterations and additions. Perfect happiness is . . .
Completing a task, a job, from a building or a book down to squeezing the last toothpaste out of the tube! Any advice for the young?
Do it your way. | 
