Maurie Novak is founder and principal of Obsessive Architecture, a Melbourne-based practice he leads from his St Kilda home and studio. A registered architect with a Master of Architecture from RMIT, he is a designer and maker who refuses the usual trade-off between how a building performs and how it feels, pursuing rigorous technical performance and a rich, crafted, sensory architecture as one single goal. Central to this is his belief that an architect who can design, fabricate, and build is best placed to deliver it.

Working as client, architect, builder, and maker on the same project has given Novak an unusually grounded understanding of construction—of buildability, sequencing, and what it takes on site to realise a design. It is a perspective many studio-based architects lack, informing how he details and documents every project.

Photography: Peter Bennetts