 | KERRY HILL - RAIA GOLD MEDALLIST RAIA GOLD MEDAL KERRY HILL
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Photograph Albert K. Lim
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Soi 53 Apartment,
Sukhumvit, Bangkok,
2002–2004.
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Jury Citation
In awarding the 2006 Gold Medal to Kerry Hill, the RAIA celebrates the work of
an exemplary architect who has consistently delivered the very highest quality
architecture. Kerry’s uncompromising search for, and commitment to, his own
architectural language (an abstract modernism overlaid with powerful yet
superbly sensitive local cultural references), his faultless and inspiring material
selection on each project, and the graphic and spatial quality of his planning are
to be applauded.
Over the past 37 years, Kerry has distinguished himself as an architect of
exceptional sensibility and expertise – encouraging a progressive and enquiring
regionally sensitive approach to the design and construction of buildings across
the Asia-Pacific region.
Kerry’s resort hotels are some of his most recognized and awarded work.
He is known internationally for developing an Asian resort architecture that is both
climate- and site-specific, drawing on indigenous forms of tropical building to
produce high quality hotels and resorts across the region in extraordinarily exotic
locations. These projects represent some of the most architecturally ambitious and
resolved hotel work to be found in South-East Asia, work which robustly resists the
developing universalism of the theme park found in many other resorts. Celebrated
examples include The Datai hotel in Langkawi, Malaysia, winner of the prestigious
international Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2001, and The Lalu hotel at Sun
Moon Lake in Taiwan.
The past ten years have been a defining period for Kerry, marked by
inspirational public and commercial projects such as the mixed-use Genesis
Building in Singapore, the Singapore Cricket Association’s new pavilion, and
the Entrance Plaza to the Singapore Zoological Gardens. Lauded private
projects include beautiful residences in Australia and Asia, among which are
the Ogilvie House at Sunshine Beach, joint winner of the 2003 RAIA Robin
Boyd Award for Residential Buildings, and the Ooi House at Margaret River in
Western Australia, recipient of a RAIA National Commendation for Residential
Buildings in 1998.
As an architect whose work has made a significant contribution to the quality
of the built environment across the world, and in particular in Asia, Kerry Hill is
a fitting recipient of the 2006 RAIA Gold Medal.
RAIA GOLD MEDAL JURY 2006: RAIA NATIONAL PRESIDENT BOB NATION, RAIA IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT WARREN KERR, RAIA 2005 GOLD MEDALLIST JAMES BIRRELL, ANNABELLE PEGRUM, AND IAN MCDOUGALL.
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| KERRY HILL, ARCHITECT |
“I’m an architect like a dog is a dog.” Kerry Hill
offered this observation on his lot in life during a
recent ABC Asia Pacific Focus television
programme. Hill was introduced as “the Australian
architect behind some of Asia’s most innovative
buildings,” and as an architect who “has specialized
in adapting traditional Asian design to his
decidedly modernist buildings.”
As director of the Singapore-based practice
Kerry Hill Architects, Hill has received an
impressive number of distinguished design awards
within the region, including the inaugural Kenneth
F. Brown Asia Pacific Culture and Architecture
Design Award in 1995 and the 2001 Aga Khan
Award for Architecture. He has also won the RAIA
International Award three times and was joint
winner in 2003 of the RAIA Robin Boyd Award for
Residential Buildings.
Hill, an erstwhile Aussie Rules footballer and
high jumper, is a fortunate man in that he found his
calling in architecture early on and has never
looked back. Since graduating from the University
of Western Australia in 1968 his career in
architecture has grown on an ever-steeper upward
curve and his architecture has evolved into a highly
refined species of pure breed.
After completing his degree, Kerry Hill’s first
architectural position was with Howlett and Bailey,
architects of one of the finest Modernist buildings in
Perth, Council House. He worked with them on the
new Perth Concert Hall and acknowledges Jeffrey
Howlett as an important mentor.
In 1971 Hill took up a position in Hong Kong
with Palmer and Turner, and his first project with
that firm was as resident site architect in Bali for the
Bali Hyatt hotel. What was originally intended to be
a short working stint in Asia to help replenish
depleted finances has now extended to 35 years.
In Bali, Hill found himself in a small community
of Australian expatriates that included the more
senior fellow architect Peter Muller and the painter
Donald Friend, old Asia hands. This period was
important in shaping an attitude to living and
working in Asia, to responding to the differences
between the known culture of Australia and the
mysteries of Asia. For Hill and his young family this
experience became a point of departure, a
watershed in their lives.
Hill began his own practice in 1979 with the
promise of a hotel commission in Bali, which never
eventuated. As it transpired, the first built project of
the practice was also a hotel, the first of a series that
was built and numerous others that were not. The
firm established its early reputation with these
elegant hotels in the most exotic of locations. Hill
recognized that he could build a large and
successful practice around this work, but baulked
at doing so for fear of being stamped as a “hotel
architect” and thereby restricting opportunities to
explore the architectural challenges of other
building types. As a result, he has limited the size
of the practice and been selective in the
commissions he has accepted. He has, nevertheless,
maintained an enduring and mutually rewarding
working relationship with Adrian Zecha, the
innovative director of Aman Resorts, who has acted
as client-patron and as a creative partner in the
evolution of the distinctive qualities of the Aman
hotels designed by Hill. These qualities have been
recognized by other hotel chains, but few have
succeeded in seducing Hill to design for them.
For a period, individual houses, small
distillations of the hotels, became a parallel focus
for the practice. The Genesis Building, a mixed
commercial and residential development in
Singapore, enabled the beginnings of a more
direct engagement with the city. More recently,
and satisfyingly for Hill, the practice has been
awarded commissions for public buildings.
Two international competitions were won within
months of each other: the master plan and initial
key buildings for the University of New South
Wales campus to be established in Singapore,
and Centrestage, the new performing arts venue
for Perth.
Hill’s work is rigorously ordered, with plan
resolution performing a central role. He values the
development of a simple but disciplined plan early
in the design process, allowing the focus then to
move on to other aspects. In this strategy Hill
responds to lessons learnt from Louis Kahn, with
his focus on the discipline of planning and his
capacity to develop an all-encompassing spatial
order through this. Hill also admires Kahn’s ability
to manipulate materials and light, to link the
modern with the archaic, and to distil complex
building programmes into strong, simple forms.
Kahn is the most constant and pervasive influence
for Hill, but others are also willingly
acknowledged: Le Corbusier for the strength of his
original ideas and fidelity to those ideas; Frank
Lloyd Wright for his planning with the focus on
clearly defined hierarchical axes and the layered,
overlapping massing. All three architects also share
with Hill a willingness to allow their work to be
enriched by understanding and embracing the
architectural traditions of the East. Hill’s early work
was influenced by his friendship with Geoffrey
Bawa, by Bawa’s inventive responses to the local
Sri Lankan setting through his modern buildings
and by his capacity to surprise. Mies van der Rohe’s
abstracted plans and his relentless pursuit of a
singular idea remain a point of reference while,
among current practitioners, Hill has a high regard
for Herzog and de Meuron’s sustained and intense
creativity. The traditional architecture of Japan,
where Hill also has projects, is a point of reference
for its capacity to generate a sense of wellbeing
through its clarity and calm. In Australia, Hill
acknowledges not only the work of Jeffrey Howlett,
but also that of Guilford Bell. Glenn Murcutt’s
architecture provides for Hill a model of discipline
and approach to climate.
Hill has reaped numerous awards, has won a
number of competitions and is the subject of regular
invitations for speaking engagements, and his firm’s
work has appeared in many architectural journals
and books. However, it’s perhaps a measure of the
presence of architecture on the world’s radar that,
when the words “Kerry Hill” are entered into
Google, we learn more about the Kerry Hill breed of
sheep, originating from Powys on the English/Welsh
borders, than we do about Kerry Hill the architect.
It has to be admitted that there are some parallels.
The Kerry Hill breed, we are advised, is well
balanced, sturdy, with ears set high and free from
wool. They are handsome sheep, good on their feet
and good in their teeth. For Kerry Hill, architect, we
could add patrician, authoritative, generous and
utterly committed to the discipline. This
commitment helps drive the practice and sustain a
mentoring role that he has performed for many past
and current employees. There is both tacit and open
acknowledgment among Singaporean architects of
the importance of Hill’s presence in that city in
assisting with the development of its local
architectural culture.
In support of this, what we do find on Google
about Kerry Hill the architect is that he is better
known and more widely celebrated in Asia than
in Australia. This well-deserved award will help
focus the attention of Australians on the work of
Kerry Hill Architects.
GEOFFREY LONDON IS PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA AND THE WA STATE
GOVERNMENT ARCHITECT.
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| BEYOND GEOGRAPHY – THE ARCHITECTURE OF KERRY HILL |
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Ogilvie House, Sunshine Beach,
Queensland, 1999–2002.
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The work of Australian architects is not limited by
geography and this year’s awarding of the RAIA
Gold Medal to Kerry Hill is an important
recognition of that fact. His is a truly significant
international practice. Unlike previous medallists
who have built in overseas locations from practices
based in Australia, Hill is part of a substantial
contingent of expatriate Australian-trained
architects and academics, who have practised or
been practising outside this country, often for
decades. They have been ambassadors for
Australian practice and, more often than not, they
have earned global stature independent of
citizenship. Thus, Kerry Hill rightly sits within the
stellar ranks of architects like Raymond McGrath,
John Andrews, Peter Wilson, Hank Koning and Julie
Eizenberg, and academics like Bill Mitchell and
Peter Rowe, all expatriate Australians who have
made significant contributions to the international
world of architecture.
For Kerry Hill, international acclaim has rested
mostly with the design of a series of serenely
planned and detailed resorts in paradisiacal tropical
locations. Hotels such as The Datai, Langkawi,
Malaysia (1990–1994); The Chedi, Bandung,
Indonesia (1992–1994); and Amanusa, Nusa Dua
(1990–1992) and The Serai, Manggis (1992–1994),
both in Bali, are acknowledged as important (and
theoretically controversial) bulwarks of
place-making and craft tradition in an increasingly
competitive culture of global capital. With the rise
of regionalism in architecture discourse in the
1980s, Hill’s architecture represented a poignant
moment in South-East Asia, and was seen as a
logical inheritance to the mantle of Geoffrey Bawa
and Peter Muller in Sri Lanka and Bali, respectively.
However, the difference between their work and
that of Hill lies in Hill’s tectonic and material rigour
in terms of form and type, and his rethinking of
tropical urbanity and concepts of urban
agglomeration. These urban ideas suggest broader
applications for Hill’s work, moving it beyond
images of place that suggest hegemonic cliché and
nostalgia or closure to questions of form. Hill’s more
recent hotel projects for Kolkata, Dubai, Croatia and
Taiwan indicate a further decisive move – a move
away from recasting recognizable typologies
towards a higher level of abstraction and refinement
of detail. This strategy reinforces the design
strengths that have long underpinned Hill’s
architecture: a rigorously orchestrated sequence of
arrival, reception and spatial release, based around
themes of axis, court and framed view.
This same careful rationalism, this recasting of
orthodox architectural forms and devices, also
marks Kerry Hill’s individual contribution to
Australian architecture. Hill can be placed within a
strong and ongoing tradition of place-making in
Australian architecture – one that includes Glenn
Murcutt, Troppo, Richard Leplastrier, Brit Andresen
and Peter O’Gorman. However, his architecture
suggests typological reinvention and sometimes its
inversion, always within the context of an ongoing
project of modernity. This idea is little discussed
within the context of Australian architectural
history, but it properly includes the work of Howlett
and Bailey, the spatial platforms and outdoor rooms
of the houses of McGlashan & Everist, the studied
informality of Neil Clerehan’s underplayed modern
villas, the typological and structural systems of
Joyce Nankivell, the monumental but never neutral
urbanity of Yuncken Freeman, and the improbable
(but often realized) planar compositions of Neville
Gruzman. This is not the pervasive and fashionable
currency of an uncritical and superficial
modernism. Instead this work exhibits an
unwavering commitment to rethinking models from
a typically modernist standpoint – from first
principles in plan, form and structure but always
mindful of light, tactility and context. Hill’s Ogilvie
House at Sunshine Beach, Queensland (2003), for
example, is unlike any other contemporary house in
subtropical Queensland. It doesn’t adopt the usual
local palette of corrugated iron, fly-away roof and
excited appendages of shading devices. Its pedigree
lies more with Hill’s recent shedding of iconic
vernacular moments and his emphasis on the
abstract, fundamental components of controlled
spatial sequence, the casting of deep shade through
emphatic horizontal roofs and timber screens at the
very edges of his forms, and the continuous
deployment of the courtyard as a self-shading
mechanism. It is this latter space – the courtyard –
for which Hill deserves particular celebration. Hill
uses the courtyard for psychological containment,
for borrowing shade from walls rather than obvious
roofs, for spatial extension to frame views or vertical
connection with the sky, for retreat from the relative
chaos of the city without, for the courtyard’s ability
to cross-ventilate between spaces, and for the
opportunity to use water or plants to provide visual
relief and contemplation. This deployment of the
courtyard as a key element of tropical design offers
an important lesson for Australian architects in its
potential application to the Australian context
across a range of climatic and urban contexts.
If there is a measure of orthodoxy present in the
work of Kerry Hill, it is in the conscious realization
of local capabilities in terms of construction
practice, climate and material longevity, and the
specific circumstances of urban and landscape
location. Hill’s work also falls within that category
of Australian architects committed to a modern
reading of urban morphology, where the historic
forms of the city are uncovered and not imitated but
abstracted and given fresh form. In Australia, Hill’s
work aligns with the formal but considered sobriety
of Guilford Bell, Espie Dods, Alex Tzannes and Alex
Popov. In this work questions of street, pathway and
spatial sequence as a considered orchestration of
experience are critical to understanding the city,
and to the potential for each building to encapsulate
the city in miniature. This is an architecture of
walls, framed views and, in Hill’s words, “the
intrinsic value of one material paying respect to
another”. Hill’s recent commission for Centrestage,
the new performing arts venue in his home city of
Perth, offers a unique opportunity for these ideas to
be explored on a grander public scale than the
secure bucolic settings of his Australian residential
projects. It is a worthy commission that coincides
with the receipt of his profession’s most prestigious
award, and is the logical next phase in the series of
distinguished urban projects from his office that
now dot the eastern half of the globe.
I first met Kerry Hill in his office, a converted
Chinese shophouse in Singapore. In person, Hill
is an unassuming figure, almost shy, a man of very
few, always well-chosen words. He has been a
conscientious mentor to some of the region’s
most vital young practitioners, yet he can be
simultaneously aloof when such a condition
allows freedom. Like his personal presence, his
architecture is an elegant backdrop for the largeness
and relevance of place.
DR PHILIP GOAD IS PROFESSOR OF ARCHITECTURE, BUILDING
AND PLANNING AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE.
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| RUMINATIONS ON A LIFE IN ARCHITECTURE |
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Genesis building,
Singapore, 1994–1997.
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I have been asked to reflect on the influence of
Kerry Hill in South-East Asian architecture.
I would reply, it is an influence that extends beyond
South-East Asian architecture; it is an influence on
architecture per se.
Influence? The dictionary defines this as
follows: the effect of something on a person, thing,
or event; the power that somebody has to affect
other people’s thinking or actions by means of
argument, example, or force of personality;
somebody or something able to affect the course
of events or somebody’s thinking or action.
If we consider the effect of Kerry Hill on
persons, events and things related to architecture,
we must say that he has a profound influence.
A school has evolved from Kerry Hill’s practice of
architecture, just as schools have developed from
the work of Rem Koolhaas of OMA, Jacques Herzog
and Pierre de Meuron of Herzog & de Meuron, and
Toyo Ito of Toyo Ito & Associates. Many former
members of Kerry Hill Architects have become
prominent and important practitioners – they have
also become influential. They have become people
whom people watch. They move and shift the way
architecture is being done; they move how
architecture is being seen. They achieve this
through their works, their writings, their presence.
They include WOHA, both Wong Mun Summ and
Richard Hassell; Cheong Yew Kuan; Ernesto Bedmar
of Bedmar and Shi; Richard Ho. All have at one
time worked or collaborated with Kerry Hill.
Influence? It could mean being watched for
explorations, the simple architectural moves that
determine waves of actions and strategies in
architecture. For example, Kerry Hill’s screen on the
Genesis building in Singapore (1994–1997) created
an explosion of work on the possibilities of wooden
screens around South-East Asia. This gesture of a
wooden screen on the facade of a building
catapulted a simple device that responds to wind,
breeze and sun, so necessary in the tropics, into
everyone’s consciousness.
Influence? I could mention Kerry Hill’s
influence on the exploration of space using a
modern idiom; on probing the vocabulary of
architecture; on ways of using the physicality of
architecture to create a space, to evoke an
atmosphere. Or the exploration of details and
material combinations, the handling of light and
shadow, the passage of a breeze. I could mention
the exploration of modern architecture, the pristine
beauty of forms and of correct proportions. Or the
investigation of making an architecture for a
particular context, the challenge of universal ideas,
and the particular emergence of forms. Or the
response to climate, to clients’ desires, to the
demands of regulations and guidelines.
Above all, Kerry Hill has a profound influence
in showing how one can explore patiently, with
perseverance, and in very subtle and simple ways.
His exploration is pursued with vigour and
resoluteness. It is also an excellent example in the
exercise of restraint – of knowing when enough
is enough.
The resort and hotel projects go beyond tropical
formal architectural qualities towards both
questioning and proposing the ideal experience
that might unfold in such places. They also explore
how an architecture which makes spaces through
incessant repetition and iteration might pursue a
search for that space that feels just right.
What of the influence on expanding the horizon
of exploration towards the future? Kerry Hill
demonstrates how the pursuit of ideas can expand
from one typology and scale to another. The shift
from hotels and resorts to academic environments
and an arts centre is valuable for showing how the
strength of conscious exploration of architecture can
promote renewal and regeneration. The effort to
break from a mould, to pursue possibilities of how
spaces of encounter can be orchestrated and crafted,
is shown in Kerry Hill’s recent competition-winning
schemes for the UNSW Asia Campus and
Centrestage.
And the influence on how one extends or
expands a legacy? We might learn from Hill’s
interaction with Geoffrey Bawa, his conversations
about an Asian Modern and the issue of tropicality;
his conversations with predecessors like
Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and Louis Kahn.
These show how one might move towards creating
one’s own language and expression, through the
inspiration and challenging of a predecessor. There
is also a consciousness of roots and beginnings in
architecture – Hill’s fond reminiscences of mentors
like Duncan Richards and Jeffrey Howlett; his
humorous recollections of personal traits that
influence architecture and an analytical assessment
of oeuvres and working methods. Kerry Hill has
extended our consciousness of those who built the
path that we tread and will explore. He shows us
how we can conceive a dialogue with the giants of
architecture while also conversing with colleagues
who are in pursuit of making architecture.
Kerry Hill’s oeuvre of the past twenty years
reveals a patient pursuit of “Architecture”. In many
ways, architecture can be very autobiographical.
We see Kerry Hill’s architecture as tranquil, quiet,
elegant and bold. Somehow these words also
express the character of Kerry Hill as a person:
a character that is tough, persevering, patient,
inquisitive, with a sense of humour and, most of all,
serene. Perhaps Kerry Hill’s influence is, above all,
in his example of how an architect can live a life in
architecture, life as architecture, architecture as life?
Kerry Hill shows us in his calm way how
architecture is life, how life is architecture.
ERWIN J. S. VIRAY, PHD, IS ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AT THE
NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE AND CO-EDITOR OF
A+U (ARCHITECTURE AND URBANISM) IN TOKYO.
Albert K. S. Lim Genesis, Soi 53 Apartment Jon Linkins, Reiner Blunk Oglivie House
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