2021 National Prizes: Neville Quarry Architectural Education Prize

Award | 2021 National Prizes Jury

6 May 2021

Joint winners: John Macarthur and Conrad Hamann

John Macarthur

Jury citation

The 2021 Neville Quarry Architectural Education Prize is jointly awarded to John Macarthur and Conrad Hamann.

Macarthur’s educational contributions through research, mentorship and intellectual leadership reflect more than 30 years of championing new architectural insights. His publications (over 170) bridge the academic and wider culture of architectural practice through heritage, criticism and design. His masterful analysis of historical and philosophical ideas about visual perception, aesthetics, beauty and the picturesque defines both professional and popular views of architecture.

In 1990, Macarthur established The University of Queensland’s Centre for Architecture, Theory, Criticism and History (ATCH), ensuring rigorous recording and study of Queensland architecture, including its climatic and regional character. The research project Hot Modernism, on which he was lead investigator, won the 2017 National Trust John Herbert Memorial Award.

Macarthur’s leadership, teaching and PhD supervision have influenced a generation of Australian students, practitioners and researchers. As dean and head of the UQ Architecture School (2009–13), he received an Award for Excellence in Research Higher Degree Supervision (2011) and a Commendation for Teaching Excellence (1999).

Broad community involvements attest to Macarthur’s public and professional influence. He is a fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as a member of Research Evaluation Committees for the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) process and of the Australian Research Council College of Experts. He is also a past president and life fellow of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ).

An insightful storyteller, Macarthur connects ideas across centuries and disciplines, drawing unique and insightful analogies between art, philosophy, history and architecture. He generously, eloquently and masterfully presents complex scholarly revelations with good humour, humility and a munificent sharing of knowledge.

Hamann has changed the way we understand Australian architecture, challenging the romantic and sometimes condescending view of our colonial forebears to reveal the unruly, disobedient and sometimes parochial thinking foundational to a local culture of architecture for and of this place.

Hamann has been awarded numerous Australian Research Council grants, including the ARC Large Research Grant for An Unfinished Experiment in Living: Australian Houses 1950–65. As a professor of architectural history at RMIT University, he is a mentor for both staff and students, as well as a source of support for emerging architects and historians. His work at Lovell Chen testifies to his profound contribution to Australian built heritage.

Hamann was co-creative director for the Australian pavilion at the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale and co-editor of Issue magazine. He served on the editorial boards of Transition magazine, Fabrications journal, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians . He has been an advocate for design on radio and in numerous public forums.

Through his writings, lectures and teaching, Hamann renders Australian architecture in all its glorious specificity and differences. After attending his lectures, it is impossible to unhear his tone, pause and mode of delivery; each sentence is a gem, and each apparent detour essential to understanding the bigger contention. He illuminates the idiosyncratic and the aberrant in our various cities, especially his hometown of Melbourne.