Review: Architecture Australia, Mar 1996

Eliel Saarinen’s second prize scheme for Canberra, 1912.

An Ideal City?

Exhibition of entries from the 1912 competition to design Canberra. At the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney, October 22-December 17, 1995; previously at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, June 16-October 8, 1995.

Review by John Lewis

It is now folklore that Eero Saarinen pulled the Utzon scheme out of the reject pile and fought for acceptance of the Sydney Opera House as we now know it. Anyone seeing the alternative schemes reels with disbelief that they could ever have been considered. Yet Eero’s father Eliel’s scheme for Canberra did end up in the reject pile and stayed there. Looking at his drawings in this exhibition against those magnificent watercolours of Marion Mahoney, one can see why the judges made their decision, even if the built Canberra bears little resemblance. It was worth making the effort to go to this well put-together exhibition just to see Marion’s dazzling originals. The published reproductions are pallid by comparison.

Eliel’s drawings are finely crafted too, but portray an architecture where formalism verges too close to the fascist to ever appeal to the Australian ethos. The drawings of the other finalists look almost amateurish against those of Saarinen and Mahoney. Seeing them all together, though, is useful in revealing how much the Griffin/Mahoney plan owed to the fashion of the time and how much was innovation. There is evidence of the Beaux Arts influence in all. Every one has curving street patterns and axial spines, but only the Griffin/Mahoney plan makes a serious attempt to relate this to the landscape. The Saarinen scheme, for example, places the major edifices on a flood plain that Griffin/Mahoney made into the lake.

Amazingly, this is the first time the competition finalists have been publicly displayed. Also included is the material that the competitors were given on which to base their designs. The crude contour model displayed here was, in fact, the closest most entrants ever came to the physical reality of the site.

This exhibition goes beyond the original competition to include the history of the concepts that have formed Canberra since; up to and including the Central National Area Study currently underway. Clearly the hope of the organisers is that, while looking back at what might have been, viewers will come to the realisation that Canberra’s future is still in the process of being determined. Despite a national lecture tour, the current design study has roused pitifully little debatewithin the profession.

Go, see, be inspired and then demand some vision.

People + Place: The Contemporary Architecture of Brisbane 1995

Review by Stephanie Smith

In a challenge to the typical architectural photograph presenting stark image rather than realistic explanation, People + Place aimed to describe a selection of contemporary Brisbane buildings as they are experienced in everyday life. In an attempt to avoid depicting architecture as object—like masterpieces in a gallery—this direction in architectural representation records the buildings as the interactive installations they really are.

Achieving a balance between a journalistic approach to the recording of buildings and the pure art of making images, some of the works were striking in their use of context to complement the built forms. Ben Parker’s study of the new Brisbane International Airport terminal, for example, made bold use of the aerodynamic forms and blood red of the Qantas jets to draw the viewer’s focus into the scene. Similarly, Stephen Cameron’s depiction of the new spectators’ stand at the Gabba—in its urban location and without disguise—used features within the cacophony of the street to direct the eye into the image. Other photographs such as Garth Hollindale’s image of the Garden City bus depot, where people were absent but the buses themselves flooded the frame, also managed to clearly present the building shell as the working environment it was intended to be.

In the process of photographing buildings as social artefacts, the intrusion of the camera can influence the behaviour of people depicted in the scene. In a number of the works, despite the success of the image-making, the action and interaction were too obviously contrived. Such deliberate settings contrasted with less orc h e s t rated studies such as Yu-Sheng Jeffrey Huang’s view of the Riverside Centre, where the signature curvilinear beam suspended in space and framing the panorama was mimicked by a row of people casually sitting and standing along its snaking shadow.

The aim of the 13-week QUT program co-ordinated by Adrian Boddy has been to facilitate students’ appreciation of architecture through the photographic medium. As a result of the limited time frame, most of the works exhibited were the result of a teacher/student collaboration. The accompanying catalogue included Boddy’s theoretical paper Australian Architectural Photography: People and Place, Ambiguity and Abstraction and student critiques of the selected buildings. The work will also be made available on CD-ROM.

Stephanie Smith is a director of Innovarchi (formerly International Design Studio), currently based in Brisbane

Mid-Century Modernity

One-day seminar/bus tour of post-war modernist Melbourne houses; co-ordinated by Stephen Crafti, October 22, 1995.

Review by Roger Wyatt

This tour and seminar provided a thought-provoking opportunity for architects, designers and others interested in the design legacy of the mid-20th century to visit several houses of the era and gain a valuable insight into some of the factors which influenced the design of the period.

A brief bus tour allowed external inspections of several fifties and sixties houses and highlighted the degree to which the original strong architectural lines and vibrant colours have in many cases been softened to accord with increasingly conservative public taste. However, one house in Studley Park has been sensitively restored by Fink and Goad Architects to the original colour scheme and now provides a very positive and playful contribution to the street character.

Through the generosity of owners, internal inspections of several interesting properties were also possible. These included a 1954 house in Kew by Geoffrey Danne, with a dramatic, double-height sitting room and a gridded facade once painted in two shades of grey to give a chequerboard effect; a 1960 concrete and glass house in Eaglemont by Dellbridge Brothers, with full-height glazed walls between thin floor and roof slabs floating on slender columns above parking and service zones; and a Kew house designed by John and Phyllis Murphy in 1955 (now owned by architect Keith Streames)—an early example of in-situ concrete for walls and roof.

Dellbridge house, Melbourne (1960), as it appears now; photo by Philip Goad.

Stephen Crafti’s own house in North Balwyn, designed by Montgomery King and Trengrove in 1954, was the venue for an informal lunch and presentations by Neil Clerehan (who described the 1950s as a period of optimism), Phyllis Murphy (who spoke of the creativity dictated by post-war financial restrictions), Philip Goad (who discussed the architectural magazines of the time) and vintage furniture specialist Bill Luke (who discussed fifties furnishings).

While the event was valuable as an introduction for those unfamiliar with the architecture of the period, and provided an opportunity to meet key practitioners, the real benefit was to see interiors not normally open to the public. For that reason, I look forward to similar events emphasising intact interiors.

On a sad note, Stephen Crafti explained that the architect for his own home, Neil Montgomery, had died only a couple of weeks before this tour. However, if the event served to awaken a new generation to interest in the period, then I’m sure Neil would have thought this an appropriate legacy.

Roger Wyatt is an architect and landscape architect in private practice in Melbourne.

Visions for Sydney Towards The Year 2000

Debate between planner/lawyer John Mant and architects Andrew Andersons and Philip Cox, chaired by government planner Sue Holliday, about Sydney’s future, at the Museum of Sydney, December 6, 1995.

Review by Frank Stanisic

The end versus the means: how do we maintain a shared vision which is capable of becoming a political reality? The de-vision between conception and implementation, highlighted in a question put by Andrew Andersons, was the main spoke of this wide-wheeling discussion about “planning visions for Sydney”.

As expected, much familiar ground was churned up in three brief, but appropriately dense, urban position statements from the star chamber at this surprisingly orderly and tame discussion, where house rules reigned. No shouts or threats (as with Sydney’s last debate on this topic)—and hopefully, this time, no poison-pen letters.

John Mant focused on mechanisms for change. Most of Sydney has never been designed. Sydney has come about by the application of separate formulae without reference to place or orientation. Who is responsible for the way Sydney looks? No-one is responsible! That’s the problem. We need agreement on the fundamentals.

To an incredulous audience, Mant claimed that the NSW Department of Planning had the right vision and policy all these years but their delivery had been spoilt by captainless 28-member teams— and, we should add, poor fielding and some dodgy self-umpiring.

Philip Cox returned to the well-worn ‘vision thing’, asserting that Sydney lacked visual legibility and needed a discernible structure. Like other visionaries before him, such as Horbury Hunt, he thought that the Cumberland Plain could contain the most exquisite city of the 21st century—but first something needed to be done about the feral shopping centre developers and myopic surveyors. The good professor Dennis Winston got it right with the Cumberland Plan—you could see the green belt on the drawing. The majority of people want to live in the suburbs, not the CBD. The answer is not to change the suburb to an urb.

Andrew Andersons painted an optimistic and expansive future for Sydney: the transport network becomes an armature of development; the green network, a legacy of the Olympics, permeates watercourses, and our culinary boulevards, cultural and sporting venues are the envy of the Pacific.

Coup-d’etat or act of God! Andrew Andersons ended by answering his own question about the implementation of the vision by suggesting this unusual choice. He urged citizens of Sydney to become a city-state and secede from Australia. This was greeted with predictable applause—Melbourne could become a servant state.

It was left to Jim Colman, speaking from the floor on behalf of disenfranchised citizens—most of the audience—to ask the prickly question: when will a citizen be able to walk into Macquarie Street and ask ‘who’s the boss around here and get a straight answer?’

The event was hastily summed up by chair Sue Holliday who claimed, quite mistakenly, that we had witnessed three visions with many common themes (I counted only one vision).

Frank Stanisic is a Sydney architect working with the NSW Department of Housing on the restructuring–officially termed “de-Raburnisation”–of Radburn-inspired housing estates.