Letters: Architecture Australia, July 1996

Temperature Check of Graduates

Like most statistics, the recently much-publicised Graduate Career Council of Australia’s 1995 Course Experience Questionaire (CEQ) results should not be taken at face value. Architecture schools do not have the country’s worst teaching.

On a recent Internet bulletin board, Paul Ramsden (Griffith Institute for Higher Education) wrote, as “the designer of the CEQ”, that it “focuses on more traditional university teaching methods” and “does not work so well for courses using flexible learning, entirely problem-based learning or for some teaching methods (eg. studio teaching)…”. Rasmden believes “it oculd be adapted to these courses/methods, but the development work has not been done (my italics)”.

Which courses ranked highest? History, then literary studies and political science. And which rank low? Visual and performing arts, building and architecture. Notice a correlation between rank and ‘more traditional’ university courses?

At Adelaide, we are proud of our “flexible learning”, “problem-based learning” and “studio teaching”. We welcome their examination by a process “adapted to these courses/methods”. Other measure of performance (graduate employment, internal teaching reviews, external peer review) produce very different results from the CEQ. The RAIA and universities should be encouraged. —Antony Radford, Professor of Architecture, University of Adelaide

Don’t be Stupefacient

I must comment of your descriptive literature in the AA Prize article (AA March/April 96) re Richard Black, Ben Hewett and others.

In times when it is increasingly difficult to earn a living from the practice of architecture and the practice of putting ourselves above the intellectual level of ‘ordinary’ people, surely you are doing discredit to all those architects who produce excellent work which if published could be understood by the masses. I feel that your descriptive comments and that of the jury members imitates association with those of a higher social rank and is overbearing to others and in fact stupefacient.

Please help improve the image of architects (which is already tarnished by similar writings over the years) by conveying to the people articles which are straightforward, in plain English which can be understood. PS: Pray excuse a pardonable asperity of diction.

—Alan Banfield, Benowa, Queensland
AA is not primarily directed to “the masses”—we’re a journal for practitioners. But we take the point and enjoy the irony. For those without a dictionary handy, ‘stupefacient’ suggests we were promoting a state of stupor; ‘asperity’ infers sharpness of temper and ‘diction’ relates to a style of writing (as well as speaking)—Ed.

Outward Concern Exists

I hear you Lindsay Webb, and empathise with your letter (AA March/April 96). However, look a little further, and the motivations and convictions of Australian architects will surprise you. Outward concern exists, and some manage to channel this energy effectively into their work.

There is an architect who is attempting to quantify the ecological impact of specifying different materials and products. Another is developing more appropriate and effective ways of providing housing to outback Aboriginals.

I have seen an architect unwittingly overcome by emotion when discussing the nursing homes he designs. The searching humanitarian insights of another, applied consistently over 20 years, are beginning to inform a renaissance in urban planning.

In any walk of life, we have the potential to enrich others’ lives with our skills. It is sad to see the beautiful and poetic wasted on internal redundant theory and aesthetic pretension.

—Peter Eaton, Toowong, Queensland

Harry Seidler’s Golden Wisdom

As Harry S. was awarded the Gold Medal of the RIBA this year maybe this article in Architecture Form Functions Edition 1967 Suisse could be printed in recognition. It was 30 years ago…and it gives perspective to today’s dialogues. (He deserves it…the old fellow can be difficult—but we shouldn’t be.)

—From John Dalton, Brisbane
Space and copyright restrictions prevent us from publishing Harry Seidler’s entire essay on ‘The Need for Clarity of Design’. But his conclusion reads: “Opposition will give life to environment. Not all transparency and not all solidity, not all soft and not all hard, but a skilled visual interplay between opposites. Planes opposing each other in space, verticals against horizontals, solid against void, cold colour against warm, curve against straight line and, above all in Australia’s climate, sunlight against shade.
“It can only be through understanding, through education, that the true ethic of architecture will be recognised. Only by sincere and humble understanding can an end be put to the truly unruly, ill-mannered building excess of today so that our buildings will have integrity and will truly be part of our time and place.”—Ed.

Guide to Newcastle’s Architecture

The Department of Architecture at the University of Newcastle is involved in a project which will help celebrate the Bicentenary of Newcastle in 1997. The project involves the development of a database of architecture built in the city and environs between 1797 and 1997 and the publication, in 1997, of a Guide to Newcastle Architecture, which will illustrate approximately 200 buildings. The project team would like to hear from architects outside Newcastle who have completed commissions here. Information may be directed to team members Barry Maitland (dean), David Straford (senior lecturer) or Linda Smith (research assistant) at the Department of Architecture, University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308; email arlls@cc.newcastle.edu.au; fax (049) 216 913 or phone (049) 215 771.

—From Barry Maitland, University of Newcastle

Fax the Olympics Committee

I refer to James Weirick’s article (AA March/April 96) entitled ‘Sydney’s Olympics, A Non Event?’ It is very good, but isn’t it time to stop discussing it amongst ourselves? Perhaps every architect can fax it to the Olympic organising committee.

—Troy Uleman, student councillor, NSW RAIA, Sydney

Come Back Peter

Your assertion (AA January/February 96) that Peter Ward’s Saturday column was “ditched” from The Australian‘s Weekend Property section is incorrect.

Peter Ward, who is as highly regarded by Weekend Property as he is by Architecture Australia, wrote to my predecessor saying he did not wish to write for the section under its revised format, for the time being.

I hope he will change his mind and write for Weekend Property again soon.

—From Sharon Hill, Property Editor, The Australian

That Royal Issue

The image of architecture and architects in Australia remains today a little ambivalent and confused—the probability of direct contact, either working or social, with an architect for a member of the public would be the lowest of all the professions.

(Who hasn’t been surprised by apparently urbane and informed people posing the question: “What do architects actually do?”)

This lack of knowledge and/or interest in the profession is I feel picked up by those in the media, who decide what is run, and hence very little about the discipline, or the Institute, is given much exposure.

Therefore, the role or the responsibility of the Institute, it can reasonably be argued, should be greater in the bridging of gaps than any other professional representative body. In this it needs to become more accessible, appear to be less remote/removed, and more relevant and contemporary (in the true sense of the word).

Consequently, one thing it can ill afford given the knowledge vacuum, is the appearance of ultra conservatism (aloofness, et al).

In Australia, in these pre-republic days, if an organisation already little known chooses to adhere to an anachronistic and now frankly irrelevant term as the first word in its title, it is not just inviting but encouraging a perception of all that architecture, the activity and the profession, does not need.

The image the Institute and architects surely want is one of dynamism, commitment to and relevance to the future, approachability, towards becoming an essential component of modern society and how it functions. ‘Royal’ really, with all that it connotes, cannot be conducive or helpful to such aspirations. It is perforce, of the past.

And it is quite reactionary to say “what’s in a name—it’s what we do that counts”. Try bouncing that off the image-makers because, for better or for worse, these days, those that get to do are those that are very conscious of the effect of the first impression.

A change of name, and with it an explanation along the lines of the above aims as to why such was thought appropriate, will just in itself attract press, good and much needed. And clearly very little downside. Unlikely would be recent graduates declining to join because the organisation had lost (her) majesty—much more likely, and probably happening, the converse.

But also, it really is a sham—what does it mean, this term? It has no function and for architecture, of all the professions, everything to do with the way it presents should be pertinent and incisive, as indeed the desirable presumption of the activity.

Royal is now quaint and, as Kenneth Clarke had it, “that which is both irrelevant and unnecessary”.

—John Peck, Brogo, NSW

Heroic Melbourne

Thank you for publishing Philip Goad’s review of Heroic Melbourne. Obviously Dr Goad has read the book in the spirit with which it was written—as a primer—an introductory pamphlet which, as I wrote in the book, “…will startle others into deeper analysis of this heroic architecture”.

As to Dr Goad’s specific ‘corrections’ made in his review, I need to respond, for the record.

The book does have its technical shortcomings. By way of explanation, but not an apology, I should point out that hte whole task of publication was undertaken by RMIT students of architecture: they provided the layouts, the word processing, illustrations, CD Rom production, designs and finished artwork. They organised the filmmaking and printing. Not bad for year three architecture students who worked on the project in addition to their normal studies.

The book is available from RMIT at a cost of $15 (not the $50 claimed in the review). Boyd’s Richardson house (1954-55) was based on the same concept as Craig Ellwood’s truss/ridge which spanned a valley or water easment (Boyd told me so). In the book, I was making the point that the two concepts emanate from the same model, that of a war-time engineer’s rapidily built bridge.

I am aware that Hamann and Callister have prepared scholarly research on this subject and, as Dr Goad makes the point, he himself may be the specialist on this period of architecture. What irked me into producing this colourful little primer was the lack of accessible, readable, available texts on the subject, despite the welter of scholarly research. I look forward to reading the publications of these esteemed writers just as soon as they are available.

—From Norman Day, Adjunct Professor, RMIT, Melbourne

Architecture’s Death as an Art

In refusing to contribute to an Australian exhibition at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, the Australia Council and federal government have officially written off architecture as an art.

The profession is now defined as business-based, and mature enough to finance its cultural promotions. That is a challenge we must solve.

—From Andrew Black, Sydney

Credit Fix

Keys Young and Tempe Macgowan designed the setting for the Corvette Memorial by Richard Goodwin (Radar, AA March/April 96) at Garden Island, Sydney—Ed.

We welcome your concise views on issues of interest to architects. Please provide fax and phone numbers—we may need to edit. Only letters to the editor, not copies of letters to others, will be published. The RAIA’s chief executive officer has right of reply to criticism of the Institute. Address to 4 Princes Street, Port Melbourne 3207. Fax (03) 9646 4918.