Georgia Taylor-Berry

Georgia grew up in Australia in a family of designers where creativity and the importance of design was instilled in her at an early age. By the age of seven, she was drawing floor plans and making 3d scale models; her own version of a dolls house. She’d always imagine how the users moved in and around her self-made buildings as a way to inform her designs; form followed function.

Georgia pursued her undergraduate studies at the University of Western Australia in Perth. During her studies, she was very interested in incorporating social justice into architecture. During summer breaks she would travel, one such trip took her to India where she was struck by how people lived so publicly and communally. She wondered what could we learn from that? She, therefore, decided to pursue the final year of her bachelor's degree at The University of California, Berkeley. "American education is quite different from Australian. You live where you study and all the professors had a very specific specialization to the field, from global poverty to the social constructs of the chair", Georgia says. After her bachelor's, Georgia went back to Perth to complete her master's degree where she gained high distinction for her final design research project focussed on tackling urban sprawl in suburban Perth.

After her studies, Georgia worked in primarily residential architecture at Officer Woods Architects in Fremantle. During this time, she helped design an arts and culture facility in the desert for indigenous artists, where remote Indigenous artists could paint their stories while remaining on country.

After gaining a few years of experience, she then spent two years traveling across the world. Starting in northern Australia, she sailed to Indonesia then traveled overland through Myanmar, India, Japan, Mongolia, and Russia, among other places. During her trip, she and her boyfriend met many extraordinary architects who they’d interview while touring their buildings. This culminated in a research project called ‘Through Cities’, a publication that explored the diversity of 50 cities across 20 countries. In 2018, they decided to settle down in Amsterdam where Georgia eventually started working for Paul de Ruiter Architects.

"Paul de Ruiter trusts his colleagues completely. Everyone has and certain specialism, is treated well and therefore really enjoys working together towards the greater good", says Georgia.

Georgia enjoys working on sustainable public projects where solutions need to be found for social issues, her work focuses on the spatial intersection of society with its physical, environmental, and cultural environment. "The PDR team wants to make a positive impact on the world. They are aware of the impact construction has on the environment and put sustainability at the heart of the design process."