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RADAR
FEATURES
COMMENT
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| | RADARBOOKS READING
PLEASURES
| GLENN MURCUTT,
ARCHITECT |
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With essays by Kenneth Frampton,
Juhani Pallasmaa, David Malouf and
Phil Harris. 01 Editions, 2007. $1,600.
This is not so much a book as an object
in the tradition of the folio. Beautifully
designed, with high reproduction
values, it is a collector’s item for those
captivated both by Murcutt’s work and
by the pleasures of the object itself.
A grey, cloth-bound Solander box
houses a hardback volume of
generously illustrated essays and eight
folders – each devoted to a particular
project, presented through a bound
series of photographs and a set of
loose-leaf drawings. In the book,
three short thematic essays by
Juhani Pallasmaa, David Malouf and
Phil Harris complement Kenneth
Frampton’s longer, detailed, mostly
chronological account of Murcutt’s
output and influences. The aim of this
arrangement, the publisher tells us, is
to allow the reader to engage with the
work in a nonlinear, non-sequential
manner, with simultaneous access
to images, photographs and text.
And given the space, such an approach
to reading is certainly rewarding.
The folio is an exquisite object,
the texts erudite and the photographs
sumptuous (although some are already
very widely known), but for me the
real treasure is the facsimile drawings.
Many of Murcutt’s drawings have
been widely published elsewhere,
but usually cleaned up and reduced
to fit the pages of various books and
magazines. Here they are reproduced
1:1, complete with smudges, scrawls
and precise annotation, on a grey
background that is presumably
intended to evoke the materiality
of butterpaper and other drawing
grounds. Presented in this manner,
the drawings invite an intimate
engagement with the means of
production and process. Such
immediacy is rare and, in Murcutt’s
case, can only otherwise be achieved
in the archives of the Mitchell Library.
On each folder Frampton discusses
the project through the drawings,
offering a different approach to that
in his main essay. Another real gem
is the documentation of Murcutt’s
relationship with clients the Simpson-
Lees, articulated through facsimiles of
their extraordinary correspondence and
an interview with Sheila Simpson-Lee.
So what might this folio tell us
about Murcutt’s work? In Australia,
responses to his oeuvre have become
polarized into either hagiography or
scepticism. Neither of these positions
is very useful, and both do a disservice
to the work. This volume could be
seen as part of the hagiography, but,
in presenting the work in a range of
ways, and through a variety of media, it
also opens up opportunities to engage
with the oeuvre in new ways. The
question it leaves for me is, what might
younger critics and architects make of
the work, especially the later projects?
What might they contribute to our
understanding of this significant and
still developing body of work?
Justine Clark
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| EVOLUTIONARY
MODERNISM: DARYL
JACKSON 65/05 |
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By Daryl Jackson. Melbourne
University Publishing, 2006. $49.95.
Daryl Jackson has been a towering
figure casting a long but illuminating
shadow over architecture in this
country for more than forty years and
this lavish new monograph records
that remarkable achievement. Written
largely by Jackson himself, the book
is a chronicle of a sustained and
evolutionary journey, and a critical
self-reflection on his work and the
cultural, social and political forces
that shaped it.
The book begins with an insightful
foreword by Patrick McCaughey, in
which he charts Jackson’s progression
from his early metaphors of the
body through his environmentally
responsive buildings of the 70s and
80s to his large-scale commissions
which engage with the city – all
underpinned by Jackson’s humanist
ideals and his expansion of the
modernist vocabulary. Jackson’s own
introduction establishes his early
influences – Corbusier, Aalto, Rudolph
(with whom he worked), Wright,
the West Coasters and the work of
the cubist painters. These provided
the platform from which the young
Australian jumped to establish his
own “reactive and expressive” form
of modernism. The book is structured
loosely into eight overlapping eras –
each introduced by Jackson, outlining
his influences and interests, followed
by a selected portfolio of work from
the period.
The first two essays are
compelling and it is here that we
find some of Jackson’s best and most
influential work – the Lauriston
Girls School Building (1970), Harold
Holt Memorial Swimming Pool
(1969, with Kevin Borland), and the
Canberra School of Music (1977, with
Evan Walker). Jackson’s response to
the ecological debates of this period
and into the 80s produced the State
Bank College, Woodleigh School and
Jackson’s own house at Shoreham set
into a wooded hillside setting. As the
book moves through to the present
the essays become less polemical
– perhaps a result of the challenges
that come with an expanding and
increasingly international practice.
Aspects of the book’s design
frustrate the reader’s efforts in
bringing together the threads of
Jackson’s argument. None of the
projects in the portfolios are dated and
the heavy, black-and-white, “inked” axonometric drawings – de rigueur
in the 1980s – make it difficult to
read the spatial and compositional
qualities of the buildings.
Despite these limitations,
this is a book which rightly
celebrates and documents
the contribution of Jackson
and his collaborators to
our national culture and
architectural thinking.
What comes through
the texts and the work
is Jackson’s sustained and articulate
advocacy for design as an exploratory
proposition. That we are able to hear
this story directly from one of our
most prolific and critically acclaimed
practitioners is a rare thing indeed.
Corbett Lyon
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