REALMstudios welcomes new staff members to the team

REALMstudios are excited to introduce our recent new starters Serena, Holly, Emma and Chris to the team.

Serena joins the Sydney team as a landscape and urban designer with experience working in France, Singapore, and the Netherlands. Educated as an architect and later as an urban designer, she has developed a passion for public spaces and landscape design throughout her early career. In her later experience she has learnt the importance of biodiversity and ecology and the importance of integrating the natural environment within the city. In an ever-changing world she believes that design professionals must help cities and communities mitigate and adapt to the disrupting effects of climate change, by combining resilient design with nature-based solutions.

Holly, based in our Sydney team is a landscape architect with a strong graphic and technical skillset. She is committed to forming a deep understanding of place and respecting Country as a means of creating meaningful public spaces. While undertaking her Bachelor of Landscape Architecture (Hons) at the University of Technology Sydney, Holly focused on integrating more than human systems with the urban realm. Holly's design philosophy draws upon care as maintenance, reciprocity between ecological and cultural systems and soil regeneration. Holly carries these interests into her practice, expressing them across a range of scales from master planning, public domain plans, planning and policy, strategic planning and open space design. 

Emma joins as a recent graduate in the Perth studio, currently completing her Master of Landscape Architecture at UWA. Her interests lie with the integration of environmental design and accessible public spaces and is eager to dive into projects that enhance this. In late 2023 she completed her dissertation by design with a focus area of Autism Positive Landscape Architecture, focusing on creating frameworks to make spaces more inclusive for the neurodiverse community. Emma believes that cities and landscapes can be reimagined with new ideas for accessibility and inclusiveness, while grounding her practice with ecological lead thinking to support natural systems. Emma also leads REALMstudios national marketing and communications, having previous experience in a marketing career prior to re-training within landscape architecture.

Chris is currently completing his Master of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne. He is a motivated and forward-thinking individual who draws from his prior academic background: Bachelor of Liberal Studies in Political Economy from The University of Sydney and a Master of Marketing from RMIT. Chris’ earlier study provides a nuanced understanding of the complex socio-economic forces shaping our urban environments. Consequently, Chris’ studies focus on enhancing the resilience and character of civic spaces in an urban future of greater density and a changing climate. They have included research in Sweden and Japan, the latter as the 2024 recipient of the prestigious Steve Calhoun Scholarship. In Japan, Chris studied historic food markets, helping him develop key strategies for his thesis project which examines the unique contributions of landscape architecture to the resilience and evolution of Melbourne’s cultural civic spaces.

Together Serena, Holly, Emma and Chris create an exciting opportunity for REALMstudios as we celebrate an investment in the future of leadership in industry. We look forward to the valuable contribution they will provide.