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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | REFLECTION
| THERE AND HERE |
Once again it has been a privilege to compile the coverage of the RAIA Gold
Medal – this year it was a pleasure to become more familiar with the elegant
and thoughtful work of Kerry Hill, and to catch glimpses of his recent projects
that are yet to be fully published. The awarding of the medal to Kerry Hill also
raises a range of interesting questions about Australian architecture and its
relationship with international architectural culture. As Philip Goad points out
in his essay celebrating Hill’s oeuvre in this issue, Australian architecture is not
bound by the geographical borders of this country. There is a substantial cohort
of architects and academics from this part of the world spread across the globe,
while architects based in Australia are now working internationally on an
unprecedented scale. So, in addition to enticing us to consider and enjoy Hill’s
significant body of work, this medal invites us to extend our idea of what
constitutes Australian architecture, of what “local” is and what “international” is, and how these interact. This is amplified by one of the characteristics of
Hill’s work, the exploration of the conjunction of “region” and architecture.
However, as Erwin Viray comments, Hill’s influence extends far beyond South-
East Asia, where much of his work is located, or Australia – his influence is on
architecture per se. But it is perhaps his close attention to the regions he finds
himself working in that has, in part, enabled him to participate extensively in
international architectural culture. And in turn, this has allowed an expansion
of the geographical locations of his work – there are now projects in Croatia,
Japan and Bhutan, among other places, and a recent competition win in Perth.
Relationships between architecture “here” and architecture “there” have
always been more intricate and more complex than is often allowed. Here in the
Antipodes we are not at the end of some slow stream of influence that trickles
out from metropolitan centres to the periphery. We are embedded in the give
and take of architectural ideas and in the production of architectural culture.
The work of Kerry Hill Architects, its many locations, and its reception both
here and there, makes this particularly clear.
Such complexity of engagement has long been the case. As David Saunders
outlines in a 1977 Architecture in Australia article “... So I Decided to Go
Overseas”, Antipodeans had quite some influence on British architecture early
last century. He suggests that in the year 1930, the English Modern Movement
was, “apparently, entirely represented by seven men, and only two of them were
Englishmen”. The others were Australian Raymond McGrath, New Zealanders
Amyas Connell and Basil Ward (who, in partnership with Englishman Colin
Lucas, formed Connell Ward and Lucas), Canadian Wells Coates, and Russian
Berthold Lubetkin. So, prior to the arrival of emigres from Europe in the mid
1930s, Modernism in England was driven by colonials. The entwined nature of
this particular historical situation, and others like it, are worth remembering as
we conceptualize our current environment.
The international networks that these architects of the 1920s and 30s worked
within were partly those of Empire. The networks that Hill, his expatriate
contemporaries, and architects in Australia operate in are more diverse, both
conceptually and geographically (as the recent launch of RAIA International in
Hong Kong also indicates). Both these situations allow us to reflect on the
complex interdependence of “here” and “there” and the role that architects
from this part of the world have played in the development of architecture as a
whole. In the work of Kerry Hill distinctions between “here” and “there” start to
break down, while the “here” of each project is also reinforced. Hill’s oeuvre
and mode of practice encourages us to develop new conceptual frameworks
through which we might think about “Australian” architecture.
JUSTINE CLARK
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