Glenn Murcutt, Australian Architect: Context of Architecture in Space and Time in Ph.D.-Thesis by Juri Czabanowski/post research UrchiTecton

Short biography of Glenn Murcutt, Australian Architect Context of Architecture in Space and Time (addition to video) https://www.uitzendinggemist.net/aflevering/420490/Close_Up.html

 by Dr. Juri Czabanowski, postdoc research UrchiTecton

 Introduction

Australian architect Glenn Murcutt (*London 1936) created an own relation as many emigrants, who came to settle down in a merely empty continent with concentrated urban spots on the coastal lines in all wind directions. Pioneers experimented with the pioneering, optimal ‘sheds' to life in and dito watertanks of metal. A reference to postmodern architect and writer Robert Venturi is near: “Building a shed to live in”.[i] The residential house for his mother Vanna Venturi as first order of praxis was far more than a shed, a noble one at least builded 1964-‘66! [Tietz 1998][ii];

Venturi quoted in addition to Louis Sullivan’s master(one)liner: “Form ever follows function” transformed into postmodern optimism: “Form follows fun” and Mies van der Rohe’s classical quotation; “Less is more”, the funny addition “Less is abore”, a postmodern attitude to illustrate the boring buildings of monotony, especialy of the postwar age, of rigid blocks of a rational stupidity only to get the so called functional effort of rigid effectiveness. Deep social and ethics totally neglected!

Angry Youngmen: Counter-Culture Movement/Gegenkultur  

That’s why the ‘angry youngmen’ all over the world came in protest to claim and shame their ‘masters’ of dogmatism. Aldo van Eyck called the endless rowhouses and uniformed flats ‘architectuur voor stamvee-boekhouderij’, a mentality of architecture according of boring clerkmen and massive cattle-holders!

Empathic Worldcitizens as Commons/Umweltburger

The author as image-poet and activist is against the mass- and mega-production and -consumption in architecture, agriculture with mega-stables (megastallen) and culture like mass-tourism in general. It is not to forbidden fellowers to travel and discover our globe but the way how the massive ‘invasion’ has an deep impact on the existing citizens like the Venetians who leaving their homes by high-rised house-prices. Estimated 50,000 residents have to deal with 20 millions tourists each year, it is a ridiculous situation; like the insane cruiseships which enter the Canale Grande likewise the horse in Troyan Times of Greek Antiquity, master story-teller Homer.

Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn created two harms with two hands uprising out of the Canale Grande of the Biennale of Art 2017 called ‘Support’. Many palaces and houses in Venice will disappear by climate change and the pressure of massa-tourism, an correlated co-incident and co-incedental correlation.  That’s why the author calls this engaged piece of art with human and ecological impact an example of Futourism 21. He himself created two poems related to the modernistic (world)view of urbanism and architecture and beyond the postmodern (world)view towards his quoted futouristic supervision of lifestyle and worldview. Who will support the Canal Houses of Amsterdam, worldwide heritage as well of Unesco?

Green(er) Cities and Architecture: Nijmegen Green Capital of Europe 2018

A. Gaudi Casa Battlo 1906 - A.Loos Villa SteineoVienna 1910- L. M. van der Rohe Seagram Building 1958

(Re)greening the urban area worldwide by planting trees, covering roofs with sedum, grass and al kinds of flora to revitalize the urban life with Nature, urban citizens be(com)ing again comfronted with animals and plants, fauna and flora. Futourism is a co-existential way of life to create resilient and integral sustainable or sustianstable*[iii] cities and green architecture that breath, with permeable walls and roofs, instead of isolated capsules and bunkers being resistence against the nuclear bombs of the cold war with an architecture of brutalism, hard, iron concrete construction without any sympathy for life, tombs and sarcophagus, for the ‘living deaths’. Critic and cynism who was posted by the Dutch poet Gerrit Komrij as well: "Architecture of so-called Functionalism, whose buildings are more loosing than the ones of Loos" (translation by author: meant is the modernistic functionalist austrian architect Adolf Loos).

Interesting fact is that women as architects and engineers brought a delight in this brutalism by more feminine design and much more cosyness, edged corners become curved again. Feminism and homo-activism broke the dogma’s of white christian hardliners being and playing for God allmighty themselves, in spite of course of the good and tolerant ones with human empathy.       

Learning from past

In despite of the boring tax-collectors, only being interested by their own profit, and of their rich stake-holder (big steak holder!). Being a flat, copying impression of an arrogant expression by followers, who were not at all of the caliber of their spiritual fathers Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Alvar Aalto, J.J.P. Oud in mind; a selection of whom easily could be multituded. The position and innovation of Bruno Taut as fighter for improvement of housing the social working-class is still underestimated. He quoted color as being an essential part in architecture: “Farbe ist ein Bau-Material, ist Architektur.” The ralization of his beautiful social claass settlements Berlin-Britz and Onkel Tom’s Hutte in sub-urban ereas are examples of german garden city-movement in the Interbellum of the Weimar Republic (1918-1933) being visited with friends during excursion in 1997.

The author’s 2nd promoter Prof.em. Dr. Manfred Speidel dedicated a lot of his life-timed study to put the importance of Taut alive in his Buro Speidel next tot he library of History of Art of the RWTH A, Technical University of Aachen, Germany, and in the correct picture-frame, next to Speidel’s admiration to the traditional Japanese culture and architecture and earth-building in general [Speidel, Bruno Taut, 1998][iv]. A special article will be dedicated to this remarkable architect and to honor the lessons and of being the author’s 2nd promotor Professor emeritus Speidel as tutor of Theory of Architecture and Art at the RWTH Aachen in Germany.         

Venturi as bestselling book Learning from Las Vegas[v] is a typical of the ‘civilised’ branche of the counterculture movement, with experimental visions and views to break down the modernistic principles that became dogma’s, killing freedom of free and open mind to hold on functional systems at first, calling nature functional green.

Environmental Communications

The author met two founders of Environmental Communications in the Californian zone of the postmodern end 1960s, David Greenberg and Mona Webster at the Stedelijk Museum Den Bosch on 18th of March 2018. Their lecture was evident showing slides over the World being involved by registration the phenomenal events as time-bandits. The after-meeting with both and curator Fredric Baas even was more specific to exchange ideas and historical architectural and artistic events in their context (ill. Czabanowski 2018). Environmental communications became more and more involved in the ecological importance as essential power and energy related to city building and architecture. They brought their meetings with the Professor of Berkeley University, California, Richard Register in mind, who proclaimed the Eco-City since the 1970s![vi]    

Photo: Juri Czabanowski: After-meeting/lecture with Mona Webster, Fredric Baas, David Greenberg, Stedelijk Museum Den Bosch NL, 16-18.30 h, 18 March 2018

Back to Australia, Mr. Murcutt. These optical remarkable housings of Murcutt in Australia became a visual expression of civilisation by industrial produced materials, not natural grown and eternal renewable building material, like in the agricultural society!

Machines of metal produced and reproduced products made by metals and later chemical processed plastics, polymeres etc. 

In a new developing continent next to the existing tribal Aboriginals being connected with the genius loci of mother earth and the holy cave of the origin of mankind representing the Dream-World with carvings and drawings at the Holy Ayers rock, one of the most remarkable monoliths on Earth, a Stonehenge of human Mankind with cultural heritage of the origin of our ancestors; one natural phenomenal block as the Spiritual Spot of the Aboriginal community and tribe: carvings of the origin of the creation of the cosmos and world.

Murcutt shows his respect for the environment as well, but uses ‘present’ materials, reflecting and representing composed dwellings and buildings; perfectly jointed connections, with units made by machines as industrial artefact.

Summary of Ph.D-thesis Czabanowski, Human-Ecologically Minded Housing actualized/updated!

https://pure.tue.nl/ws/files/1994587/200612003.pdf

Ph.D.-Thesis, Chapter 3 (1945-1972) and 4 (1973-2000)

An architectural history (1945-2000) with addition in reversed version of architect Glenn Murcutt.

In chapter 4, dedicated to architects who are concerned about environmental and energetic issues in period 1973-2000, Glenn Murcutt is mentioned [Czabanowski 2006, 143-145].

Translation by the author: “Murcutt renovated hundreds of houses in the nearly limitless spread areas of the suburbans of Sydney. Since the beginning of his activities in 1970 he works alone in Sydney, without a real office. He wants to concept and design all himself, to control the supervision according the process of building, each decision what has to be made by his own. It is a fundamental choice"; Murcutt followed from his David Thoreau, who lived in solitude for years in Walden. Thoreau wrote about a book about this experience Walden, Life in the Woods.[vii] Thoreau became the inspiration of the deep ecology founded by philosopher Arne Naess. It of a view and style of life believing in the power of an individual person and a fundamental link to the pioneering mentality of rough ideology in Australia. Later he designed minimal houses of metal and wood in accordance of this way of life down Under. They are situated free in the virgin landscape and fit into their surrounding environment. Murcutt can and should be seen as represent of an ecological functionalism [Czabanowski 2006, Chapter 4.2.2, 139]. 

Writer Francoise Fromonot analysized the work of Murcutt in her article in Archis 5 in 1995. In her option architects in the region of Sydney are longing to link a correlation between the architecture and the environmental location and the climate, stimulated by the discovery of F.L. Wright and his modernistic colleagues in California. In Czabanowski's optical vision and intension the work of Rudolf Schindler of minimal architectural design in relation to the traditional Japanese house and Richard Neutra, both architects are Americans of Austrian origin and some of Wright’s students, like Paolo Soleri, Bruce Goff, Herb Green and followers, could be mentioned [Czabanowski 2006, Chapter 3.2.2., 78-79]. 

The coastal and desert climate are compatible between great parts of Californian and Australian regions. Fromonot refers in her article: “The houses of Murcutt and Richard Leplastrier realized in the early years of the 1970s are a heritage of houses from this era."[viii] 

Murcutt is searching to get an answer on the omnipresent questions: does an architecture exist that is be able to connect the emergence towards modernity and its regional aspirations, between the universal and the specific, between ecology and technique, between the respect for the landscape and the urgency of building? Murcutt refused the label of being a pioneer of the Australian architecture. He speaks with more convinced persuasion and personal attitude as designer and builder of a rational architecture, that is rsponsible and above all, related to the spot, being in with the genius loci [Norberg-Schulz 1975].[ix]

Murcutt is inspired by the agricultural offices in the midlands of Australia. These are utilitarian, functional buildings; the existing material is used on a rational and practical pragmatically way. 

Natural ventilation and sun-shutters are simply and fitted to the climate of the region; a example of comtemporary critical regionalism and prototypes of resilient climate change adaptations. If it is situated in a city or in the bush, each house is concepted to interact between the inhabitant and the ritual of the natural cycles: the sun and the moon, day and night, rain, wind and the seasons.

The analysis of each location is a fundamental instrument for every project. The characteristic forms are an integral part of his program: “Form follows the condition”, more specific: “Form follows the climate-adaption and condition" [Czabanowski 2018].

Murcutt’s architecture increased attention and attraction for ecology can be viewed in his work; the urgency to and regional natural inspiration and aspiration of Modernism, between the universal and the specific, ecology and technique, respect of landscape and the need to build. Murcutt speaks of the functional rational architecture, being responsible and related to the spot. In this case a of the Anglo-Swedish architect Ralph Erskine can be made. This extra-ordinary architect will be mentioned in another article 'dio volente'.

Next to the longitudinal shape his buildings possess always narrow groundplans: the chambers are clustered and interlinked to each other; from the openness to closeness, in the heart of an linear capsule/cocon as a developed shape. The facades are traded following their orientation: closed and intransparent on the (hot) south; open and transparent and regulated to the north. 

The northern facade is the most sunny part in this part of the Earth, being Down Under in the southern hemisphere. A verandah or an atrium has been added in the parcours, a outer-space which forms a transition between the intimacy of the interior and the landscape. 

Murcutt’s increased attention for ecology is expresseed even ore in his following pieces of architecture: his buildings are characteristic changing as little as possible to their environment, using as less as posssible material, especially if these are not renewable. His concept is to remove or to add the existing house without leaving scarves in the lndscape, reducing irreversible damage.

Since 1985 Murcutt studied from nearby the traditional culture of the Aboriginals. He interpreted his discovery of the pragmatic and in the same time dedicated relation, the way they are concerned about the earth and their lightness of architecture composed of leight and provisorical sheds and huts made of barks of trees. It is a confirmation, an gentleman’s agreement of the way of his principles; architecture being adaptable for the ‘genius' of the location, the genius loci [Norberg Schulz 1979]. He concludes he only has rediscovered what already has been found and practicized by the original members of the tribes of the Aboriginal since 40.000 years on the Australian continent.

The use of (aluminum) corrugated sheets be Murcutt’s architecture are a reference to the self-made construction or shelters of the first wave of Australian pioneers in the desolate regions of this wide-spreaded country. Murcutt’s sober and elegant architecture was been honored with the Alvar Aalto medal in 1995 and the international Pritzker-price, the Oscar for Architecture, in 2002. Finally soberness and minimals in a good manner got respect!

Sources and endnotes

[i] Architect Robert Venturi is born in Philadelphia (USA) 1925. He works together with his wife Denise Scott Brown born in Nkaka Zambia 1931.

[ii] Jürgen Tietz, Geschiedenis van de architectuur in de 20e eeuw, Keulen 1998, p. 84.

[iii] Neologism ‘Sustainstability’ is quoted by Juri Czabanowski in 2011: Sustainstability is the intgrql pproqch of deep and high sustainablility becoming integral sustainability to stabilize the broken chains of systems mostly by profit and greed.

[iv] [Speidel 1998]; Manfred Speidel , Bruno Taut, Houses and People of Japan, 1998; the history of achitecture and art, as cultural identity of Japanese tradition registrated during the exile period of Taut from nazi-Germany. 

[v] [Venturi , 1972]; Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas, 1972; classical review and report of the use and misuse of decortion(s) ad urban planning.

[vi] [Register 1987]; Richard Register, Ecocity Berkely, California 1987.

[vii] [Thoreau 1856], David Thoreau, Walden, The Life in the Woods, 1856.

[viii] Francoise Fromonot, Rationele architectuur in oude landschap, het werk van Glenn Murcutt, in Archis 5, Rotterdam 1995, 38-50.

[ix] [Norberg Schulz 1979]; Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci. Landschaft, lebensraum, Baukunst, Milaan 1979.