Translating Site to a Regional Architecture Study on the works of Peter Muller and Glenn Murcutt
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Introduction Since the late 1800’s, the issues of nationalism and regionalism in Australian architecture have been topic of much discourse. From early Queen Anne buildings to the works of the Sydney School architects in the 1960s and onward, the responses to nationalism and regionalism have been varied over time. International influences, notably from America, coupled with Australia’s then emerging traditional history, have formed, and sometimes confused, these responses. In his essay “Regional Identity”, Rory Spence identifies that a regional architecture needs to be: “… a conscious, personal response”1 and that Australia’s lack of established traditions and architectural confidence had led to a confused appropriation of international influences creating an unclear Australian regional identity. Focusing on the Australian landscape and climatic conditions, the Architectural works of Peter Muller and Glenn Murcutt have been recognised for their contribution to a regional response. This essay will summarise a selection of their architectural works and how they achieved regional designs through the use of international influences. 2
Peter Muller The architects of the Sydney School were recognised as having designed a “distinct style”2 of regional architecture around Sydney3 in the 1950s and 60s. Milo Dunphy branded Peter Muller as a member of this School in his article “The Growth of an Australian Architecture” in 19624. Muller’s use of organic geometries and natural materials such as wood and stone5 link him with the School, although the architect himself denies the existence of the School. 6 Professor Stanislaus Fung also cautions the School’s existence in his article “The ‘Sydney School’?”, 7 whilst architects and historians such as Robin Boyd and Jennifer Taylor write of its presence. Taylor even identified Peter Muller as one of the earliest influences of the School when she began her chapter on “Organic Architecture” in An Australian Identity, noting the designs of the Audette House of 1953 and Wale Beach House of 19558 as key examples of a regional architecture. Noted influences on Muller’s work include Frank Lloyd Wright and Japanese architecture. These influences are also common to numerous Architects identified by the Sydney School9. It is the philosophical studies of these international sources that influenced Muller, not their pragmatic relationships10, 11. Adrian Snodgrass introduced Muller to Wrights philosophies12, and, as Taylor identifies: “It was the compatibility of Wright’s theories on building with his own already developed ideas that attracted Muller.”13 Wright’s appreciation of nature, the relationship between a site and architecture, and the simplicity of his material palette, resonated with Muller14. Philip Drew also supports that Wright’s philosophies influenced Muller, and that Muller’s own developing thoughts and principles allowed him to create a regional response, as opposed to a neo-Wrightien imitation. 15 Wrights influence on Muller is evident in the Audette House at Castlecrag, where affinities are drawn to Wright’s Taliesin West and Falling Water projects.16 When describing the Audette House, Taylor and Drew write of: “Sweeping horizontals and inter-penetrating volumes”17, and “exposed timber frames”,18evoking imagery indicative of Wrightien form. Drew also notes the formal influence of the use of untreated and natural materiality with “Falling Water”, whose palette allowed it to harmoniously sit within its landscape19. Taylor comments that “the exterior hardwood was left unpainted [and]… sympathetic weathering qualities and rugged nature of stone were … desirable.”20 Drew also writes on Muller’s more successful attempt at an integrated architecture with the landscape in his own “Whale Beach House”. Here the planar and material influences from Wright are met with Muller’s understanding of Japanese philosophy and Asian doctrines.21 The result is a “complementary balance of shelter and site”22; an architecture
1. The “sweeping horizontals” of the Peter Muller’s Audette House as described by Jennifer Taylor. 2. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West. The light weight roof hovering over the stone wall accentuates the horizontal planes of the Architecture. It is this horizontality that Muller tried to achieve in the Audette house, but, as Jennifer Taylor writes in An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney 1953-63, economic restraints prevented Muller’s use of stone for construction. Substitute brickwork was used.
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that speaks to the materiality of the site, through the use dark timbers and reflective roofs, bringing the nature of the site into the architecture.23 The appropriation of Asian and Writghtien philosophies, along with his own ideas, have guided his approach on architecture. His natural and organic approach is fundamental in the discussion of regionalism within Sydney and Australia. Even though Muller disagrees of his branding as a member of the Sydney School, it does suggest that Muller generated a fluid and conscious regional Architecture.
Glenn Murcutt Awarded the Pritzkar Prize award in 2002 for his site sensitive, climatically responsive and materialistically modest approach to architecture24, Glenn Murcutt’s works have been notable in current discourse on regionalism in Australia. A statement by Thomas J. Pritzker summarises succinctly Murcutt’s architecture and international influences: Glenn Murcutt is a stark contrast to most of the highly visible architects of the day— his works are not large scale, the materials he works with, such as corrugated iron, are quite ordinary, certainly not luxurious; and he works alone. He acknowledges that his modernist inspiration has its roots in the work of Mies van der Rohe, but the Nordic tradition of Aalto, the Australian wool shed, and many other architects and designers such as Chareau, have been important to him as well.25 `Most of the aforementioned influences were introduced to Murcutt through his father, Sydney Arthur Murcutt26, and his travels around Europe in the 1960s. 27 Philip Drew notes Mies van der Rohe’s formal influence on Murcutt, drawing similarities between the Farnsworth House and Murcutt’s Wunda Road alteration of 1969.28 He notes that the outdoor decks used in the design were “equivalent to the outdoor terrace of the Farnsworth house.”29 On this project, Murcutt commented: “What I felt, Mies or no Mies, was that that was a way to connect the house via descending platforms … to look out at established trees.”30 Here, even in the suburban context, through the aid of international architectural vernacular, Murcutt’s focus towards the Australian landscape can be noted.
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Francoise Fromonot, in his book Glenn Murcutt: Buildings + Projects, claims that Murcutt’s direct interpretation of Mies’s house becomes “increasingly infrequent” through the progression of his works31. He identifies the tectonic influence of Mies’s work on the “short flight of open-tread steel steps” in the Magney house of 1986, noting references to the Farnsworth house here as “oblique or isolated quotations”32. Fromonot also alleges that Murcutt deviated from the Farnsworth houses principles for an architectural response that had a “logic underlying landscape”.33 Philip Drew criticises the Farnsworth house for its need of mechanical ventilation, commending Murcutt on his ability to work with the site and use it instead of mechanical solutions34. The site specific, tectonic responses in the Magney house: a communal north facing veranda, insulated masonry walls that act as wind buffers, retractable aluminium blinds and the open plan wind braced by galvanised steel struts,35 reinforces Murcutt’s use of the landscape to inform his architecture.
3. Interior of Peter Muller’s Whale Beach House. Influence of international precedents inspired Muller to bring the outdoors to the interior of the space, blurring the line between the built and natural form.
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5 4.Murcutt’s Wunda Road alteration of 1969. The stepped progression into the courtyard shows influence from Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth house. 5. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth house. Platforms that step a user progressively into its interior distinguish between the inside and the outside, in the otherwise open plan glass pavilion.
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Like his formal influences from Mies, part of Murcutt’s appreciation of the landscape is credited to Alvar Aalto by Drew in Leaves of Iron.36 Drew discerns that, upon viewing Alvar Aalto’s works within the Finnish landscape, Murcutt realised the importance of the landscape in creating a site specific Architecture.37 “… the extent to which Finnish nature informed and ordered Aalto’s buildings lay in its suggestion that Australian nature should be allowed to contribute in a similar fashion to the definition of Australian form.”38 Murcutt’s interpretations of how nature contributed to the Australian form can be seen in his formal responses to the landscape.
celebrates the contrast between the built and natural landscape. Formal influences from Mies van der Rohe and Aalto shaped Murcutt’s responses to an Architecture situated within the Australian landscape.
Drew identifies: “The man-made and the natural are conceived as separate entities ... In those contexts where nature has been affected by man, the house is allowed to sink into the garden. But in the Australian bush, the house is lifted above the ground in order to establish a greater distance between the dwelling and nature.”39 The former can be seen in Murcutt’s Wunda Road alteration40, whereas the later is evident in most notable works such as the Marika-Alderton House in the Northern Territory.41
Conclusion Architectural devices that constitute a regional or national identity through architecture remain contentious today. The works of Peter Muller and Glenn Murcutt, through their resolve of the relationship between landscape and architecture, have been recognised as Architects who deliver a regionalist vernacular specific to Australia. Although both Architects’ works’ have been categorised and interpreted outside their original intents, their influence on Australia’s Architectural face locally and internationally have been significant.
Endnotes 1. Rory Spence, “ Regional Identity, Sensual Sydney and Melbourne: city of the mind”, The Architectural Review 178, no. 1066 (December 1985): 24. 2. Neil Clerehan, as quoted in Michael Bogle, “The Sydney School.” Architect Bulletin (Autumn 2015), http:// architecturebulletin.com.au/autumn-2015/the-sydney-school/. 3. Bogle, “The Sydney School.” 4. Milo Dunphy, as quoted in ibid. 5. Bogle, “The Sydney School.” 6. Stanislaus Fung, “The ‘Sydney School’?,” Transition (July 1985): 38 7. Ibid. 8. Jennifer Taylor, An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney, 1953-63 (Sydney: Department of Architecture, University of Sydney, 1972), 25. 9. Jacqueline Urford, “Sydney School,” in The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, ed. Philip Goad and Julie Willis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 675. 10. Fung, “The ‘Sydney School’?,” 38. 11. Philip Drew, “Profile of Peter Muller.” http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/pnmuller/drew1.html. 12. Urford, “Peter Muller” in The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, 475. 13. Taylor, An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney, 1953-63, 25. 14. Karen McCartney, 50/60/70: Iconic Australian Houses: Three Decades of Domestic Architecture (Sydney: Murdoch Books, 2007), 39. 15. Drew, “Profile of Peter Muller.” 16. Ibid. 17. Taylor, An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney, 1953-63, 25. 18. Drew, “Profile of Peter of Muller.” 19. Jim Postell and Nancy Gesimond, Materiality and Interior Construction (Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley, 2011), 36. 20. Taylor, An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney, 1953-63, 26. 21. Ibid., 28. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. “Australian Architect Becomes the 2002 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize,” http://www. pritzkerprize.com/2002/announcement 25. Thomas J. Pritzker cited in “Australian Architect Becomes the 2002 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.” 26. Francoise Fromonot, Glenn Murcutt: Buildings + Projects 1962-2003 (London: Thames & Hudson, 2003), 25. 27. Philip Drew, Touch this earth lightly : Glenn Murcutt in his own words (Potts Points, N.S.W. : Duffy & Snellgrove, 1991), 31. 28. Philip Drew, Leaves of Iron (Sydney : Law Book Co., 1985), 26. 29. Drew, Leaves of Iron, 27. 30. Drew, Touch this earth lightly : Glenn Murcutt in his own words , 68. 31. Fromonot, Glenn Murcutt: Buildings + Projects 1962-2003, 25. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Drew, Leaves of Iron, 32-33. 35. Ibid., 148. 36. Ibid., 20. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 26. 40. Ibid. 41. “Australian Architect Becomes the 2002 Laureate of the Pritzker Architecture Prize.” 42. Taylor, An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney, 1953-63, 28. Image Credits 1. The Audette House, http://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/stories/audette-house. 2. Green Architecture Before its Time, http://www.travelingwithmj.com/2010/01/green-architecture-beforeits-time-frank-lloyd-wright-taliesin-west/. 3. Peter Muller, http://www.petermuller.org. 4. Philip Drew, Leaves of Iron (Sydney : Law Book Co., 1985), 28. 5. Farnsworth House, http://ilmarz.com/?page_id=343. 6. A Nordic Architecture Adventure, http://www.barkdesign.com.au/news/nordic-architecture-adventure. 7. Marika Alderton House, http://archrecord.construction.com/features/aiaawards/09goldmedal/10.asp.
Unlike the works of Muller and the Sydney School Architects, who attempt to merge Architecture and landscape through formal and material means42, Murcutt’s work 6. Alvar Aalto’s Experimental House in Finland. It is noted in Philip Drew’s work that Murcutt was inspired by the way the Finnish landscape complimented the architecture 7. Marika-Alderton House in the Northern Territory. As is mentioned by Drew, the house steps off the ground, establishing a distance between the built and natural surrounding. Just as how Aalto placed his Experimental House within the Finnish landscape as a comment to the site, Murcutt does the same by elevating the house. The contrast in responses to the site can also be seen between Muller and Murcutt’s work here, where Murcutt separates the built form from the natural form, and Muller invites it inside.
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