THE COMPANY

David Lock Associates (Australia) is a specialist urban design and planning consultancy. We provide strategies, plans and advice to help realise development opportunities and improve urban conditions throughout Australasia. Our work encompasses ‘greenfield’ sites, urban infill sites and existing urban areas, ranging widely in scale and complexity.

Our urban design and planning capability is supported by in-house expertise in architecture, landscape architecture and graphic design. This, combined with our skill in leading and integrating the work of multi-disciplinary teams, enables us to produce successful, holistic proposals.

We work for both the public and private sectors, providing valuable insight into emerging planning directions and property market dynamics. Our senior staff also bring considerable international experience, reinforced by specialist input from our UK office. This unique combination of local knowledge and international best practice has resulted in a growing reputation for innovative yet implementable solutions to the most complex development and planning issues.

The consistent quality of our work has been recognised by regular national and state awards since our founding in 1998.

BACKGROUND

David Lock Associates was established in the UK in 1988. Invitations to work in Australia followed, leading to the establishment of a permanent Melbourne office in 1998.

The practice now employs over 70 professional staff in Melbourne, Sydney and Milton Keynes, England. Regular contact and staff exchanges between the two offices expand our shared knowledge and skill base, maintaining current international best practice. Senior members of the UK team continue to contribute to larger and more complex Australian projects.

EXPERTISE

Our principal consultants bring a high level of technical competence, commercial awareness and sensitivity to social and environmental issues founded on specific urban design training and over forty years’ combined Australian and international experience in the field. We also bring supporting in-house expertise in architecture, landscape architecture and graphic design. This breadth and depth of expertise and experience enables us to offer a comprehensive range of development and planning services.

We assist property owners and developers by identifying the optimum use of land parcels, facilitating planning approval, and designing and managing the preparation of detailed proposals for implementation.

We assist local and state planning agencies by identifying the key success factors for an area, undertaking effective consultation, developing clear strategies and designs that balance competing interests, and providing advice on implementation mechanisms.

This is supported by complementary expertise in:

• workshop facilitation,
• negotiation,
• writing and designing attractive and easy-to-read planning and consultation    documents; and
• giving expert evidence at planning hearings.

APPROACH

Our approach to urban design and planning is to seek imaginative and carefully tailored solutions to development and planning issues while also drawing lessons from successful precedents. This is underpinned by a commitment to the development of ecologically, socially and economically responsible environments. Our aims are to create successful urban places where people will want to live, work and visit, and to help our clients stay one step ahead in the formulation of their own plans and investment programs.

We maintain a high senior to junior staff ratio to ensure that all commissions are personally undertaken or supervised by principal consultants on a day-to-day basis, guaranteeing high quality outputs at all times.