area 107 | glenn murcutt

applefield, Bilpin, New South Wales - photo by Simone Corda

This interview is an edited version of our conversations during seven meetings which have been held over a year, since August 2008. In the different locations where they have been held a harmony has always been created between the richness of the sensations created by his linear descriptions and the spaces themselves; in fact, the tranquillity of his residence has been alternated with the noise of cafes in Paddington, the soft light of the houses designed by him, the aroma of a restaurant in Dublin. The difficulty of recomposing certain thoughts of Glenn Murcutt in a single dialogue has been partially offset by the clear way in which he communicates his message on the construction of a space capable of being a synthesis of the themes of contemporary architecture. Unlike many experiences of the last few years, which have interpreted the instability of reality by proposing objects and urban aggregates that pay more attention to figuratively representing this complexity than to really understanding the underlying problems, Murcutt’s architecture proposes a vision of living where the need for flexibility is combined with a respect for the environment.

11889-6.A4
Reynolds House, Woollahra, Sydney - photo by Max Dupain

Simone Corda: What is changed in your life and in your work after winning an important award as the Pritzker Prize?
Glenn Murcutt: Since 2001 I have been teaching in Yale, in Seattle, and in Dublin. I have been teaching in Australia and I have devoted much of my time also travelling, sitting in International juries, giving lectures, in U.S., China, Japan and Argentina. I have been spending eight months a year outside Australia, so the amount of design work is not a lot since 2000, the Boyd Centre was finished in 2000, the Walsh House was finished in 2003, there are two houses since then, the Walsh house and that one up in the Blue Mountains, including a house which is just finished last week (September 2008),a building in Holbrook, ready for construction, a house in Mosman, whose drawings for the construction will start in 2 months. I have designed a house in the Northern Beaches, after the drawings of that, I have designed a house in Queensland, I have designed with another architect a Mosque, in Victoria. My wife (Wendy Lewin) and I are doing some alterations in a house in Paddington, that I design in 1978, which was known as Reynolds, it will be much better than it is now, I was much younger then and it is an opportunity to make one of my buildings better.
S.C.: Many of your works are houses and you said that you are not interested in designing big buildings for the lack of architectural control that you could have on them. Is only this the reason or is there also a cultural importance in dealing with housing?
G.M.: All our work is architecture, whether we are designing a table or a multi-storey building…
S.C.: But many of your colleagues, on the contrary of the masters of the modernism, are more focused on other kinds of projects…
G.M.: That is something due to the ego, or to arrogance, when you look at Le Corbusier look at his houses, if you look at Mies Van Der Rohe you look at his houses, when you look at Sverre Fehn look at his houses, that was where they did their best work.
S.C.: You work as sole practitioner, don’t you feel sometimes the necessity of a dialogue with another architect?
G.M.: No, I don’t need comparison, I can make judgments all the time, the greatest ability that architects can have is sustaining their own work and to be very critical, so I said that for an architect it is vital to have the ability to know when it (the project) is not good enough.
S.C.: Your production seems to be a slight variation of common themes, previous projects were used as basis of other ones, it is usual in the career of an architect, what is in your opinion the fact that generates this bent?
G.M.: When I was interviewing José Coderch in Barcelona in 1973 I thought his work was just beautiful, he is one I admire, I said that to him and he responded: “I’ve done nothing, and if I’ve done anything is to add one very thin layer to hundreds of years before me”. I thought how incredible it was, he was just adding layers, and also my work is about layering, so one builds upon the other, one upon the other, one upon the other.
S.C.: Your buildings have some qualities as linearity and a clear relationship with borders, is the understanding of architecture one of your values or is it the only way to get what you called the “serenity”?
G.M.: It’s not any way, it’s the way I find there is a responsibility I feel comfortable with. For example, there is north up there, I think how much beautiful sunlight there will be, and how much nicer, it will be to bounce light up there. The sun in Australia is in the northern sky. My work is about understanding where the light comes from, and so the linearity of it, and it is so much about prevailing winds, light, control of sunlight, these are the reasons for the linearity, it is not just a whim.
S.C.: In the documentation of your works there are letters between you and your clients, between you and different city councils, what is their contribute to the design?
G.M.: Many of my clients are my friends now built up over many years of working together. Now that their houses are widely published I have got to be careful with the bringing people on visits, it’s a very important issue. These houses I design are for private use, they are not public work. The big problem with City Councils is that they take too long to consider a project. Then they suddenly they come along saying “We want something from yesterday, that looks like something from the past. This is not possible, I don’t work in that way. City Councils are like developers, they are no better than many developers.
S.C.: Is it a problem of communication?
G.M.: No, different values, a developer has different values, he works to make money: (he says) “The building has to be realized with the minimum amount of money”, that’s fine , he continues “you take a minimum amount for the building, no money for solar control, for ventilation, you need to have air conditioning”. I say “No”, he says “Things are changed”, I say “I’m not the right architect for you”. So I don’t work for people for who I am not I am not the right architect.
S.C.: In Australia you had to face the Aboriginal heritage, which means, in my opinion, not only different values generally, but a deep dissimilar way of thinking life. Has this experience changed your beliefs, or did it improved them?
G.M.: The Aboriginal culture changes those of us who are listening, also there are also many other architects in this country listening. I was raised by black people in Papua New Guinea and I had a very easy relationship with them. It’s been very important to have a connection with and learn from Aboriginal people. For example, they taught me about building on access. If you look classical public buildings around the world, they are symmetrical with a window here and window here, with a central door. Aboriginal culture taught me to enter the house on the edge, never in the middle, you can see this in the Simpson-Lee House.
S.C.: Do you think your Marika-Alderton House may have been a manifesto of your architecture, also for its political value?
G.M.: It is just a house the way it is, it is just designed for Aboriginal people. They’ve got privacy when they sleep, the parents stay at the western end, the children always on the east of the parents, the children stay on the east because east is the beginning of the day, it’s the future, the west is the end of the day, so it’s the past, the parents are part of the past, the children are part of the future. Every time you look out the window, you’re looking at the view, so you can see who’s coming, who’s going. It’s a very Aboriginal house… in the tropics.
S.C.: The environmental matter is changing in some aspects the western growth model but it seems not sufficient, in which way do you believe we must rethink our way to settle down?
G.M.: I’ve been working on environmental issues since I started to practice. For my very first job, I was looking for orientation, for ventilation, no air conditioning. I always looked at prospect and refuge, and the integration between the space with the environment. I’ve been working on those themes for forty years in my practice. Most people here would recognise what I’ve been doing, what people are talking about now, I don’t want to sound arrogant about it, but this is what all we always should be doing. What I’ve seen in China is a total waste and what’s going on in Beijing at the moment is all about materialism, it’s nothing to do with the environment and it’s a very great shame, but I don’t want to discuss it, it is crazy.
S.C.: Is it a problem related to the scale of the projects?
G.M.: The agenda for the profession is different, it’s more about image. Architecture has to come through as a consequence of many other issues, brought together. We can sit down and do a fancy building and lots of fancy buildings have been done, they absolutely rely on air conditioning, they rely on heating and cooling and huge consumption of energy. My work doesn’t have anything to do with that, I’ve got to minimize the energy, I’ve got to minimize the consumption, I’ve got to respond to the local climate. Go to the tropics and you will see all my buildings are off the ground, if you go to a hot arid area they get closer and closer to the ground. For example, my wife and I are doing a building which is almost entirely underground (the Australian Opal Centre), because it gets too hot in summer and too cold in winter, it goes from 48°C in summer and it goes to -10 C° in winter. And when you are in that sort of environment the ground is 21° during the year and below two metres under the ground you use the ground as an asset.
S.C.: In your houses you relate the environmental aspects with the possibility for people to change the configuration of the spaces, so your houses are flexible in several ways, is it something you try to achieve since the beginning?
G.M.: What I’ve been interested in is a building you can operate like a yacht, or adjust the way you dress. When you sail a yacht, you do certain things to it to make it go better, in my buildings you do something to let them perform better, there is something that is naturally working and something you manipulate. Things like ventilators, sliding doors, screens, partitions, those sort of things you can use to open up or close down a building, you can get more ventilation or less ventilation, you can have more sun or less sun, depending on where you drop blinds, you pull screens across, where there are insects you put a screen across, where it’s cold you can put the glass screen across. When it’s a very hot day, and you want to reduce the glare, you bring the screen across and the sliding screen across, so you get reduced light, but you still get the ventilation, you have insect screens on ventilators. Simplicity is the other face of complexity, when you understand what complexity is, when you design a building, the closer you get to it, basic planning structure strategy, material strategy, performance strategy, you get the simplest solution. It means complexity is still within it, it is another face of complexity, it looks simple but it is in fact complex. I might have said to you before, in making a very good stock in the kitchen, from all the food you’ve been cooking you reduce it and you reduce it, until you end up with half a cup, ¾ of a cup of the most extraordinary stock and that makes the base for some other meal. In it is embodied extreme complexity in a very small amount. Or you can have a fraction of six over twelve, but you can bring this to one over two, I’m interested in getting it to one over two, not in leaving it twenty-four over forty-eight. It has been said by many people, you can change to formality of one of my houses by the way you dress. If you come dressed in a dinner suit the house has a sufficient formality to be able to sit down around a table, with candles on the table for the evening, and have an absolutely formal dinner. Or you can come in shorts and bare feet, the house will be informal and you feel still comfortable.
S.C.: Your talking about comfort, but we can say there is more about this because it seems to be that the users are able to rearrange the spaces in several ways during the time-life of the building. Is it due also to the dimensions of the rooms?
G.M.: There are certain dimension that are often fixed, that is the sleeping space, but again I push out from the sleeping space to provide a little bay, bed bay, the pushing out is out of the building, so I’m trying keep the dimension as minimum as possible now, and when I increase I just put that out. For example the Walsh House has a quite small dimension, and I pushed out from that the kitchen, I pushed out from that the bed sleeping base, I pushed out from that a writing desk, they are all pushed beyond the envelop. Or, go to the Boyd Centre, which has a very narrow plan, but all the beds are pushed out from the building and so you keep the minimum structure and then you push out from that. In the living-dining-kitchen space very often you need to change the dining and sitting area, that’s absolutely possible, in the farmhouse in Kempsey I can change around and make all the room dining area or all the room sitting area. I generally like to make the sitting area near the outside space, because the scale of the sitting is lower and from the dining you can look over the sitting to the outside space, this is here (pointing at the table on where we were sitting), that way you’re looking at the armchairs, there you are in a lower space.
S.C.: Which are the possibilities and the problems about working again on the same building?
G.M.: For example, both Mount Irvine Houses, Nicholas and Carruthers Houses, have both been reworked, one is the extension of what was there, the other one is an addition of another wing, or another two wings, so I’m able to, for example, to put a veranda wing on, that allows the winter sun light to come in, but excludes the summer sun.
S.C.: Is it also related to the materials you used?
G.M.: The materials I use are very flexible, for example, if I used bolted construction I can unbolt and put it in a new area. For example, the Marie Short House at Kempsey has had added three new bays. The original bay was an external tallowwood verandah, tallowwood is one wonderful royal timber of Australia, one of the world’s five most durable timbers we have. I unbolted part of the house, rolled it on drums, then bolted it into a new position. So I took the gable end, took it off, put it in the new position, the doors are back there, rolled up and put in a new position, because it was the right timber for the outside and so I can add the timber inside. So I am very conscious of not loosing material, so when you make alterations you can re-use everything.
S.C.: Do you think about these possibilities when you design?
G.M.: I thought about that possibility when I designed that house in Kempsey in 1974, and I thought about it because I knew at some stage that there would be alterations made, and I knew that alterations would be made on the houses at Mount Irvine. I didn’t know that there would be an alteration made to the Fredericks House at Jamberoo, because I thought Fredericks might be living in that for a long time, but they had to sell, new people came, alterations were made. When we looked at the possibilities we looked at adding another wing for a verandah, or we looked at adding to its length, to make it a better building. So the additions have in fact made them better buildings, I added in a way that is compatible with the previous buildings, but in a way using new techniques that I know about now. I introduced, for example in the Fredericks House, framing and steelwork in openings, that I didn’t use when I had designed the house. What I know about the use of other materials and how to combine them with the original materials defines the new. It is totally compatible with the old, so it adds another layer and so there is a lot of flexibility.
S.C.: We’ve seen lots of experiments when architects were adding parts to building in a odd way...
G.M.: These (projects) are all designed so that you would not know that other parts have been added, you will see there is a hand that understands the original work, that allows the new work to be associated with the original work. I am doing a house in Paddington (Sydney), that used to be known as Reynolds. A man has bought the house I did in 1978, and it’s a good little house and I’m making some major alterations that are much more about what I’m doing today. It was a new house within a historical area, it had a cottage next to it, and the council made me relate to it.
Today that cottage is demolished and I have got two storey buildings on both sides and I am a single storey building in the middle. But I am not changing the single storey, I am leaving it, because it is very quiet, it is very gentle in the street, it is not standing there, being aggressive, I like that. But I am doing certain things like bringing roof lights up out of it, to look into the sky and trees and grabbing more light into the rooms, things like that, so I am adding another layer. What is very nice today for me is that I am actually adding layers to things I did many years ago, and people are coming back to me, even new owners, recognising the importance of coming back to the original architect to do the work, which is very nice.
S.C.: Do you really think the architecture has the power to change the world?
G.M.: No, only people, architecture is only a consequence of people, with every good building Mies Van der Rohe said there was a very good client, so if the world has very good clients, that would change the world. The buildings do not necessarily change the people, the people are the people, and they will always be the people, good clients have the potential of having very good work done, that’s the reality to me. And so is the client’s brief, which includes their budget and their ability to afford to do what they are doing. I am not talking about a multi-million budget, I am talking about comparably small budgets, because buildings I do are not high budget buildings, they are medium budget building, I know I’m still building for 5000 (Australian) dollars per square metre and many people are building here for 9000 dollars per square metre. I am at the lower end of the scale, just below mid-range to produce works that are affordable, because the right rate per square metre is reasonable, and the buildings are smaller than the big mansions that are going up.
By keeping them smaller and their per square metre rate is reasonable I can meet their budget. Every client I seem to have in these days has very fine aspirations, when the aspirations are good then the potential for the project is worthwhile, so the role of the architect is to match client, brief, financial budget, site, in the most rational, logical way with the aim of getting it to a refinement and economy of means and with potential for change and variation. I want it to have a clarity that defines its beauty, with the aim of making the work poetic.

Australian Opal Centre
sketch of the Australian Opal Centre, Lightning Ridge, New South Wales, 2005