Contemporary Australian Architecture

Ross Harley

Australian architects are a lucky lot. Really. Unlike many of their
peers in other parts of the world, a good many professionals here
actually get to build their designs. No small thing.

In Europe for example, architects can make or break their careers
on blueprints for projects that have little chance of ever getting off
the ground. Besides small-scale work or (at the other end of the
spectrum) monumental urban redevelopments like Canary Wharf
in the UK or La Defense in Paris, opportunities to build are
comparatively rare.

Things are different here. Rather than sticking to the drawing
board, theories are constantly put to the test. Consequently, to
adapt an old Hollywood adage, architects are only as good as
their last building. Never mind the plans, models, and superstars.
Let’s look at the constructions.

The evidence is all around us: the high profile Parliament House
in Canberra by Mitchell/Giurgola & Thorp; Philip Cox’s Sydney
Football Stadium; the Yarra River Bridge by Cocks Carmichael
Whitford; Guy Maron’s Adelaide Botanic Gardens Tropical
Conservatory; or Forward Consultant’s Centre for the Arts in
Hobart. The new buildings that have grown up over the past 20
years are as familiar as our neighbours — and often just as alien.
Outside the architectural profession, most people have little idea
about where they’re coming from, what they’re on about, who built
them and how.

Enter “Contemporary Australian Architecture”, a handsomely
produced publication by Sydney architect Graham Jahn (G+B Arts
International, 1994, $95). Timed to coincide with the exhibition
“Faith Hope and Construction: Australian Building Since 1976″ at
the State Library of New South Wales (till 21 August) the book is
an impressive overview of recent architectural practice. Starting
with the buildings first, Jahn lays out the complex forces,
meanings and ideologies behind a range of contemporary styles
and forms that might ordinarily remain a mystery to many people.

Jahn’s selection of what he reckons are the most representative
examples of key ideas in Australian architecture since 1975 will
not please everybody. Such Top 40 projects (there are in fact 45
buildings featured) are bound to omit a few buildings some will
consider essential, putting more than a few noses out of joint in
the process I’m sure. But that’s beside the point. The importance
of this publication lies in its ability to show our recent built
environment as we’ve never seen it before, and to provide an
argument about the distinctive traits of Australian architecture
along the way.

Buildings, as Jahn points out, have two lives: the concrete forms
we experience in everyday life, and their mediation through
printed words and images. His publication is testimony to the
power of representation to transform architecture into ideas —
dare I say ‘discourse’.

Every building featured has been photographed by the keen eye
of New York photographer Scott Frances, who is well known for
his work with US architects Richard Meier, Helmut Jahn, and
Philip Johnson. His colour photos brilliantly capture the sense of
light, form and space so essential to the buildings he studies.
These formally magnificent images combine with the author’s
lucid running commentary, personal statements by the architects,
and informative captions and footnotes in the margins to guide the
reader through the different aspects of recent Australian
architecture.

Jahn’s argument is simple and convincing. The last twenty years
have seen an enormous change in the architectural landscape
that resembles those experienced in the rest of culture. As with
art, literature, music, film and theatre, architecture has been
transformed by the substantial political, intellectual and artistic
upheavals that commenced in the early 1970s. Perhaps
surprisingly, these challenges did not result in a single Australian
vernacular or even a commonality of style. Instead, a number of
very different approaches developed simultaneously.

Even a quick flick confirms the point. The originality and power of
the individual buildings featured has nothing to do with adherence
to a jargon of cultural nationalism, international modernism, or
even postmodern ‘deconstruction’. Pluralism reigns.

According to Jahn, there are three polemical extremes that form
something like a ‘triangle’ of conceptual extremes: “reassessing
the inherent values of the Australian landscape; identifying the
Australian persona in suburbia; and high art abstract
aestheticism”. The tips of the triangle are represented by Glenn
Murcutt (the influential Kempsey Local History Museum), Maggie
Edmond and Peter Corrigan (their utopian Athan House in
Victoria), and Harry Seidler (his uncompromising Riverside Office
Tower in Brisbane).

Between these vertices we find a multitude of other approaches.
This is the real subject of the book, which is divided into three
sections — public buildings, commercial projects and private
houses.

All in all, the publication manages to capture something of the vital
energy, purpose and enchantment that comes with all great
architecture. Buildings such as Gregory Burgess’s Brambuk Living
Cultural Centre in Halls Gap, Ashton Raggatt McDougall’s
Drummond Street Offices, Nonda Katsalidis’s Deutscher Fine Art
Gallery, and Roger Wood and Randal Marsh’s Krytsis house (all
in Melbourne) well illustrate the scope of language and diversity of
interest that characterises contemporary Australian architecture.

The 45 projects presented in this publication offer a view of local
architecture that remains “remarkably silent and still, patient,
forever willing to be glanced at, observed, judged, loved and
hated.” What more could we hope for?