Australian Vernacular

In the vernacular of Glenn Murcutt, one of Australia’s most celebrated
architects, our cities are a “whole gaggle of junk and rubbish” . For those
inclined to such a view, the present state of our urban centres is largely the
fault of kitsch developers for whom greed is the driving force. Hard not to
agree really.

It’s no surprise then that people like Murcutt have shunned the idea of working
through all the constraints and compromises associated with urban design.
Though hardly in the majority, such architects prefer to put their energies into
designing highly individual rural and suburban projects instead.

Two publications recently drove this home for me. One focuses on three
Murcutt houses in New South Wales, while the other chronicles the work of
Melbourne-based architects Maggie Edmond and Peter Corrigan. Together
they put a new spin on that most perennial of debates about place and
identity. How can we be global and modern, yet still retain our regional
uniqueness?

It’s an unwinnable debate really, but these two “case-studies” certainly throw
in more than their two cents worth. They’re also great introductions to the
work of these renowned architects and the general state of architecture in
and beyond the burbs. Mixing descriptive photos with well-researched critical
texts, they demonstrate the complex interplay of vernacular and international
architectural styles that currently compete in contemporary Australian
architecture.

Although both architectural practices have gained considerable local and
international reputations on the strength of small-scale buildings they have
created outside of metropolitan centres, that’s where most of the similarities
end.

Conrad Hamann’s meticulous critical account of the Edmond and Corrigan
partnership unravels their sustained attempt to “represent society in
buildings”. Regardless of what that ultimately means in terms of their design
practice, Hamann manages to analyse many of the complex influences and
ideas that inform Edmond and Corrigan’s sometimes controversial work.

On some projects they played with aspects of Federation style while other
architects were still hankering after Georgian conservatism. On other
occasions their lively designs have challenged the moral superiority of
snobbish architects who deigned to bring the message of modernity to the
suburbs.

Hamann: “It seems the pro-Georgien Rule of Good Taste, at the core of
Australian architectural attitudes since the 1920s, had a consistent hold on
architects’ thinking. If the values of symmetry, plainness, simplification, fine
materials, or uniform emotional repose were sought, the[ir] … buildings were
unlikely to satisfy.”

I’m not so sure how much things have changed since the 1920s. Edmond and
Corrigan are.

Rather than patronisingly trying to “save the suburbs”, they show how much
we can learn from them. The so-called great Australian ugliness (made so
popular by architectural critic Robin Boyd in the 1960s) actually contains
riches of patterns, character and form. Even a cursory glance at Edmond and
Corrigan’s regional churches, schools, halls and recreational centres reveals
an aesthetic that derives directly from what is often considered vulgar,
transient, popular and culturally debased.

Like the American architectural iconoclasts Robert Venturi and Denise Scott
Brown— who taught us how to learn from Las Vegas, and with whom
Corrigan had some association during his years in America — Edmond and
Corrigan have invented new ways to work with vernacular forms. Striped brick
patterns, gazebos, rotundas and bay windows are not exactly popular
amongst ideologues of modern design, yet their successful incorporation in
Edmond and Corrigan’s highly praised RMIT building on Melbourne’s
Swanston Street has done much to challenge preconceptions of modern
taste, style and architectural expression.

Elizabeth Farrelly’s monograph is also concerned with testing popular myths
about architectural commonplaces. What are we to make of Murcutt’s
seductively rational and regional, some might even say rural, buildings? Often
looking like futuristic shearing sheds landed from outerspace, Murcutt’s
distinctive corrugated iron curves fit the regionalist bill while remaining
unabashedly modern.

Yet as Farrelly has it, this fusion of simple modern form with a populist bush
vernacular shouldn’t be taken at face value. What she calls the rustic theory
“quickly loses plausibility in the face of the uncompromising plan discipline,
refined steel detailing, and remarkable formal consistency” of these buildings.
Murcutt’s houses don’t blend in with the landscape — they confront it.

Against all this the city remains a monumental testimony to short-sighted bids
for concrete demonstrations of power. For Murcutt, it is domestic-scale work
that offers the “chance to challenge the ordinances. It permits me to
conceptualise and build many more ideas than is possible in one large
project. The design of individual houses represents, therefore, a platform for
exploring solutions to specific problems… In the countryside I am able to draw
more fully on the special character of the land.”

Maybe our suburban and rural areas aren’t the piles of junk and rubbish some
architects have imagined them to be after all.

E. M. Farrelly, Three Houses: Glenn Murcutt, Phaidon, 1993.

Conrad Hamann, Cities of Hope: Australian Architecture and Design by Edmond and Corrigan, Oxford University Press, 1993.

photos: Ball-Eastaway house, p 59 (Property section has book)
RMIT facade at end of colour plate section (I have a copy if you don’t)

Next Week: Gordon Andrews; Australian Design Legend