That gap between design and delivery is one of the things Gurney finds frustrating about conventional architecture. He is careful not to pretend that renovating an apartment presents the same challenges as designing a large house on a difficult site, and acknowledges that his work often gives him more control over the variables. Still, he believes architects can become invested in details that might improve a project by a tiny amount while creating a disproportionate amount of difficulty for the builder.

“They’re doing things that are going to improve the project by a micron,” he said, “but in real-world building terms, it’s so difficult for the builder.”

The tension between architects and trades has become so familiar that it is almost treated as inevitable. The architect believes the design intent has been compromised; the builder wonders why a detail has been drawn in a way that is expensive, slow or unnecessarily difficult to construct. Gurney says he has largely avoided that relationship by making delivery part of the design from the beginning.

He told me about a recently completed project he was due to visit later that day. He had never met the client in person, had not been to the site since it was around halfway through construction and trusted the builder to deliver it almost entirely as intended. The client had not needed to pay for him to remain on site overseeing every decision because the important ones had already been resolved.

“My focus is so much on the delivery that that usurps and comes before the look and feel of the design,” he said. “My job is to deliver this project.”

That does not mean the finished work is visually indifferent. Gurney’s projects are precise, often built around carefully resolved joinery, restrained materials and a very efficient use of space. But appearance is never separated from how something will be made. A detail that cannot be constructed within the available budget is not a successful detail, no matter how convincing it looked in a drawing or rendering.

“The design is kind of the easy bit,” he said.

Coming from someone outside architecture, it could sound provocative, but Gurney does not seem especially interested in provoking architects. He is simply explaining why he works differently. The industrial-design mindset is still there: the idea is only one part of the job, and there is little value in producing something beautiful if the path between concept and finished object has not been properly considered.

That same practicality explains why he remains comfortable describing himself as a designer rather than an architect, despite having completed around half a dozen houses and other projects he considers architectural in scope. He will take on a complete building when he believes he is the right person for it, but has no interest in pursuing the title for its own sake.

“Doing more with less is kind of my interest,” he said.

For much of his career, that interest was built into the name XS S M L, a moniker that reflected the extra-small and small projects on which he established his reputation. It suited the compact apartments he became known for, but grew less representative as the work broadened and construction costs made the smallest commissions increasingly difficult to deliver.

The projects have not necessarily become larger. They have become more personal, increasingly shaped around clients who intend to live in them rather than investors searching for the most efficient return. Many are repeat clients, and the trust built across several projects means Gurney no longer has to spend the beginning of each job arguing for every decision.

“I’ve found my people,” he said. “And my people aren’t expanding in size.”

He has also moved away from XS S M L and returned to his own name, although even that is presented casually. On his website, the introduction reads: “Nick or Nicholas, either is fine.”

It feels consistent with the person sitting across from me. The work is exacting, but Gurney has little interest in performing the distance or seriousness sometimes attached to architecture. He compares designing for a client to making a tailored jacket: they might receive 80 per cent of him, but never the full and uncompromised version he might build for himself, because doing so would mean putting his own preferences ahead of theirs.

In his own home, Gurney is happy for things to remain rough around the edges, improvised or unfinished. A client should not be expected to share the same tolerance simply because it fits the designer’s personal philosophy. His job is to understand the person, the space, the construction process and the money, then find the point where all four can agree.

The difficulty is that common sense does not always align with the way Australian housing is financed, valued or sold. For all the interest in passive design, better materials and smaller homes, Gurney believes the market still rewards the familiar equation that more floor area means more value. A smaller house may be better planned, more comfortable and cheaper to run, but if it sits beside a larger one at a similar price, many buyers will struggle to see past the missing square metres.

“We value size over quality,” he said.

It is a blunt assessment, but a difficult one to dismiss when driving through almost any new subdivision. Houses have grown while blocks have contracted around them. Bedrooms, media rooms and secondary living spaces are easy to count and advertise, while orientation, proportion and material quality are much harder to explain in a property listing.

Gurney does not believe architects are unaware of the problem. Most, he says, have at some point wanted to design a better house for ordinary people, one that could bring good planning and better materials into the mainstream rather than reserving them for clients with waterfront sites and open-ended budgets. Australia has even produced successful versions of the idea before. He points to Merchant Builders and Pettit & Sevitt, whose homes from the 1960s and ’70s combined architectural thinking with a degree of repetition and affordability, and are now prized for many of the same qualities that once made them an alternative to conventional project housing.