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Geoffrey London remembers Jeffrey Howlett, founding partner of Howlett and Bailey and one of Western Australia's foremost Modernist architects.
Jeffrey Howlett AM died on 20 December
2005. The year before, he had been
honoured by the Western Australian
Government as a State Living Treasure for
his contribution to culture and the arts, the
first architect to receive such recognition.
Howlett spent the early part of his life in
Hyderabad, India, before accepting a
scholarship in 1945 to the Architectural
Association School of Architecture in
London. This experience, including the
exposure it enabled to key figures of
postwar Modernism, was pivotal in the
development of Howlett’s architectural
sensibilities. After completing the diploma
in 1950, Howlett worked for a year in the
London County Council under the direction
of Sir Leslie Martin before a return to India
and marriage to Kath, his lifelong love.
Because his family had shifted to Perth,
Western Australia, Howlett decided to
follow and test the waters for a year. While
in Perth he worked with several local
practices before relocating to Melbourne
and accepting a position as senior design
architect with Bates Smart and McCutcheon.
It was from Melbourne that he and Donald
Bailey won the Australia-wide competition
for the design of the new Perth City Council
administration buildings. This brought
Howlett back to Perth, where the firm of
Howlett and Bailey was established and
where he remained for the rest of his life.
Council House was opened by the Queen
during the 1962 Perth Empire Games. This
wonderful civic building became a point of
reference for modern optimistic Perth,
which was about to embark on the process
of rebuilding large parts of the city as the
result of a major mineral boom. Few of the
resulting buildings came anywhere near the
design quality of Council House. Howlett’s
old partner, Donald Bailey, described him
many years later as a particularly gifted and
inventive designer.
The Public Suite, the second component
of the competition won by Howlett and
Bailey, was to house a series of performance
halls. Its original site behind Council House
was subsequently abandoned and the
building redesigned by Howlett and Bailey.
The Perth Concert Hall was opened in 1973
on a site a little further to the east along
St Georges Terrace. This building, with its
solid opaque interior, giant projecting roof,
and use of white off-form concrete, forms a
counterpoint to the transparent filigree of
Council House.
The period between these two buildings
was an exceptionally fertile one for Howlett
and Bailey. The firm won the competition
for the Reserve Bank in Canberra in 1962.
The Beatty Park Pool kiosk and manager’s
house, now demolished, was designed for
the Empire Games. There was a series of
very fine Modernist houses, the Onslow
Street townhouses, St Columba College at
The University of Western Australia,
Century Batteries warehouse and Mt
Newman House.
During this period the practice was
at its most experimental, using materials
in an inventive manner and testing forms
in establishing an architectural approach.
The resulting architecture was ordered
and axial but modern, joining with other
Modernist architects who incorporated
an interest in classical principles. At the
same time Howlett was adapting this
work to the particular conditions of
Perth. He acknowledged the reality of
late-twentieth-century cities and, through
his architecture, suggested a way of making
sense of the disorder.
Howlett and Bailey won many design
awards and commendations from the Royal
Australian Institute of Architects and in
1978 Jeff Howlett was honoured by the
RAIA with Life Fellowship. In 1992 a
retrospective exhibition titled Howlett:
Architectural Projects was curated by
Michael Markham and Peter Brew and held
at the University of Western Australia,
coinciding with Howlett’s period there as
visiting professor at the School of
Architecture. In 2000 he was made a
Member of the Order of Australia for service
to architecture as a designer and educator.
Howlett survived a major stroke in 1993
but was unable to continue practising as an
architect. Nevertheless, he again attempted
to make sense of the disorder, this time
through the medium of oil pastel and paper.
For this, he had to learn to work with his
left hand on small tray-bound pieces of
paper which were later assembled into
larger sheets. He used oil pastel like paint,
with rich surfaces and often startling
colours. Like his architecture his forms
were bold and simple. Howlett’s desire to
express himself visually took on a new
urgency. It became, for him, a major form
of communication, a way of evoking
memories, of making visible his past and
his present, and a way of telling his stories.
He was always a great storyteller.
In 2002 an exhibition of his pastel work
was held at Perth Galleries. The drawing
used for the invitation showed Jeff Howlett
staring straight out, foursquare, strong and
forthright, his jaw thrusting forward in a
determined set. And behind him is the city
of Perth, the city he took on and made better
through his architecture. Howlett has his
back turned to the city, his previous life,
and he’s perched high like a space explorer,
his wheelchair strapped to his back, going
where very few go. Through the drawings in
the exhibition, he invited us to enter with
him his new life, in the process of being
explored and exposed.
Sadly, there was not to be another
exhibition. Jeff is survived by Kath, son
Greg and daughter Deborah.
GEOFFREY LONDON IS PROFESSOR OF
ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN
AUSTRALIA AND WA GOVERNMENT ARCHITECT.
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