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Last Word: Tim Ross
Tim Ross’s devotion to meaningful design and its place in the Australian story is profound, permeating his view on contemporary culture and the history of this country. In the opening episode of his new series, Designing a Legacy, Ross visits the Ball-Eastaway House (1980-83), a home designed by Glenn Murcutt for artists Sydney Ball and Lynne Eastaway. This home, buried in bushland a short trip north of Sydney, was imagined and built to integrate with its environment while casting the ideal backdrop for the artistic lives of both Ball and Eastaway. Sullivan+Strumpf’s Communication Manager Claire Summers interviewed Tim Ross on his experience at the Ball-Eastaway house and the making of Designing a Legacy.
Claire Summers / Your encounter with the Ball-Eastaway house in your new program Designing a Legacy is steeped in an atmosphere of reverence. What was the most profound element of the property?
Tim Ross / It’s definitely the landscape and the way the house responds to the site. When you drive in and weave through the trees and then the house appears, seemingly floating in the bush, it has a profound affect on you.
CS / Glenn Murcutt designed The Ball-Eastaway house to cause the least interference with the landscape it exists in. How does the internal world of the house extend that ethos?
TR / Behind the hallway which was designed to exhibit large artworks is a balcony that basically puts you in the bush. It’s one of the most successful spaces I’ve ever been in. You sit up high in the landscape in what feels like an open air corrugated iron box and you are instantly connected. The lack of a balcony may worry some but for me it’s why the space works.
CS / What elements of your architectural interests were best embodied by the house?
TR / Beside the way the house responds to the landscape and “touches the earth lightly” what really is special about the home is how it represents the lives of the two artists and lives well collected.
To me the spirit of the home is linked to the warmth and hospitality of Lynne and how she’s embraced living in the house again after Syd died.
I love being in her studio and hearing about how being in the bush inspires and informs her work and the way she beams when she talks about art and her life.
CS / Designing a Legacy feels as if an exercise in storytelling through the built environment. What part of our national story do you feel is best told through architecture, as opposed to other cultural artefacts?
TR / There’s a permanence to what we build but they are also incredible fragile things that are subject to our greed and stupidity.
What we tear down tells us more about ourselves than what we build sometimes. We don’t celebrate our architecture enough, we view it as a commodity not part of our cultural history.
The best buildings are often initially hard for us to understand and they sprint ahead of us waiting for us to catch up.
The intersection of art and architecture touches us deeply, the symbiotic relationship between the two inspires us from a very young age. Those school excursions to galleries are formative in so many ways.
As we move forward it’s incredibly important for our buildings to tell a broader story of who we are and to acknowledge more than the last 200 or so years.
CS / Just as a home tells a story of both who designed it and who lives in it, so too does an artwork tell us a story of both the artist and the person who buys it; the object (house, artwork) becomes this intimate meeting point of multiple people’s stories. How does this resonate with your experience on Designing a Legacy?
TR / Our relationships with art and architecture can be incredibly deep if we let it and it evolves over time. We don’t renovate art but we can move it from room to room. A painting in a bedroom lets you reflect on it in a different way to that in a lounge room, hallway or dining room.
Both have the ability to lift our spirits. I think people have generally accepted that from art but haven’t always accepted that from architecture.
Both are snapshots of where our heads are at and where the architect of the artist is at.
Then it’s how we use them and how we add the layers of story and the moments that happen around them is where the magic is at.
Chromix Lumina 15, 2017-18, automitive enamel on aluminium, 276 x 210 cm
