Author // Georgina Auton, Place Graceville
John Simpson is a Chelmer-Graceville local who you may recognise from the Disgraceville Greys, the group of mostly-retired gentlemen who meet up on weekdays at Honour Espresso.
What you might not know about John is that he has had an extremely interesting career as an architect with multiple companies, including his own firm John Simpson Architects.
Humble and quiet, John’s not one to boast about his achievements, but we think they’re fascinating!
After studying Architecture in Glasgow, John worked in various places around the world, including Toronto and Sydney. Along the way, he gained a Masters in Architecture from Harvard University.
With two honorary doctorates up his sleeve from QUT and UQ, John has had the type of career many would aspire to.
He has worked on numerous notable projects across the world, but some that you may recognise by name would be the Queensland University of Technology’s sports grounds at Kelvin Grove and the University of Queensland’s Hawken Engineering building.
Another one of his famous projects is the South Bank development after Expo 88.
John says he was hired as the master architect to fix the problems in a design with the initial design and continue enhancing the public space.
There’s no doubt, John has had a very rich and rewarding career designing buildings to solve problems to ensure they fit with the local climate and vernacular.
Now, he lives in the local area and is mostly retired. We sat down with John to hear more about what he loves about this beautiful location.
How would you describe the Graceville-Chelmer area?
Graceville-Chelmer is a very attractive residential area. For example, Laurel avenue was awarded the title of the best street in Queensland on a couple of occasions.
The area itself has wonderful treescapes and attractive pedestrian environments.
The reason it’s attractive is mostly to do with the fact that it’s very conveniently located on the railway line - close to the university, to shopping... it benefits enormously from that.
It’s essentially a residential, single family house environment which is very attractive.
What do you love about this area?
I mean I’m very fortunate, I’m close to the river. It’s really quiet. It’s conveniently located.
It’s just a wonderful and quiet area.
It’s also on the edge of all these other civic amenities, as I mentioned before.
It’s just a very ideal spot.
And apart from say, Honour Avenue or Oxley Road, you don’t have people rushing through to get somewhere else like some of the other suburbs.
It’s more a destination.
It’s just a very attractive place to live and a very nice place to raise a family.