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Noting new books at Architext |
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| PETER STUTCHBURY
Philip Drew with Richard Leplastrier, Philip Goad and Neilson Warren. Photography by Patrick Bingham-Hall. Pesaro Architectural Monographs, $54.95.
Spread across the pages of the third Pesaro Architectural Monograph are beautiful images of Stutchbury and Pape’s elegant sheds, perched in the Australian bush. Philip Drew’s biographically driven text frames this work. It outlines Peter Stutchbury’s genealogy – both his builder ancestors, and his architectural lineage – and firmly establishes him in a mythological account of the true Australian architect. A double page photograph reinforces this – alone on a rocky outcrop, Stutchbury surveys a vast, uninhabited Australian landscape. Drew has surprisingly little to say about Stutchbury’s partner, landscape architect Phoebe Pape. Unraveling the description of her role – “like water on the beach she touches everything, yet remains transparent behind the wavy line” – would be a feminist field day. Drew argues that this architecture is Australian architecture, a direct and straightforward response to the Australian reality. Beyond style, it has no allegiance to theory. Of course, this rhetoric is very familiar (and not just in and about Australia). It is also very problematic: Which is the real Australia? How does this model fit the cities and suburbs where most Australians live? And so on. Fortunately, Philip Goad’s gentle critique points to many of these questions. Goad deftly situates the architecture of Stutchbury and Pape in much wider contexts. He demonstrates that these ideas are not outside style, nor devoid of theory. He also locates the work within a broader and varied Australian architectural culture. But the best thing about Goad’s essay is that he shows us a way of enjoying and appreciating the work without buying into the surrounding rhetoric. This architecture becomes so much more compelling, engaging and believable when one lifts from it the burden of representing the one true Australian architecture. Goad points out that Australia contains a whole archipelago of different architecture cultures. The Pesaro Monographs promise glimpses of many more islands in this complicated landscape
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| JAMES BARNET
Chris Johnson, Patrick Bingham-Hall and Peter Kohane. Introduction by Paul Keating. Pesaro Architectural Monographs, $54.95.
The first Pesaro Architectural Monograph to tackle a historic subject, this handsome volume charts the long and prolific career of James Barnet, Colonial Architect for New South Wales, 1862-1890. Barnet was responsible for many of Sydney’s memorable buildings and streetscapes, along with hundreds of public buildings in rural NSW. Patrick Bingham-Hall has documented Barnet’s impressive neoclassical edifices, “From Wollongong to Wilcannia”. His catalogue of crisp images arranges the buildings by type. Following the conventions of architectural photography, these are elegant black and white images with dramatic skies and few people. But they are at their most compelling when the messiness of everyday life intrudes: parking signs, Australia Post logos, blurred cars, and once – in the Supreme Court loggia – a crowd of people. In contrast, the images structuring the essay section are grainier, more dynamic,more ‘lived’ shots. Peter Kohane’s scholarly essay provides the reader with another new lens through which to view Sydney’s urban fabric. He opens with a guided tour along “Sydney’s finest pathway” – from Circular Quay to Martin Place. This, he argues, exemplifies an ideal of classical urban order. Unfortunately this virtual tour is not illustrated. The reader must constantly flick to the back plates to try to find the appropriate image and building. Kohane’s later sections add depth as they cogently outline Barnet’s influences – painterly, scenographic and architectural. Fortunately it is well illustrated. Barnet’s career is described by Chris Johnson, who also discusses the work in terms of an emerging regional expression. These buildings, he suggests, can be read as a physical manifestation of the universal / regional dichotomy. In his introduction to the book, Paul Keating argues for the ongoing importance of the structured city, and hopes the book will foster a greater awareness of the value of the architect’s professional knowledge. Lets hope it does
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| AUSTRALIAN ARCHITECTURE NOW
Davina Jackson and Chris Johnson, Thames & Hudson, $95.
‘Now’, it transpires, was the six years from 1994 to 1999, a period of intensive development and architectural production. Davina Jackson and Chris Johnson have undertaken a comprehensive survey of the buildings made in this environment. The complexity of the moment intrigues them, and 264 pages of colour photographs and drawings make it available to a broad public – both local and international. The authors conduct a threefold survey. ‘Tendencies’ gathers various projects together under five new styles: ‘Free Geometries’, ‘Matchstick Mannerism’, ‘Cubic Abstraction’, ‘Fragments, Layers and Collage’ and ‘Romantic Austerity’. The second section is organised by four general ‘Types’, while the final 100 pages show 22 ‘Exemplars’ in greater detail. Two essays provide wider contexts. Jackson outlines the political, social, economic and aesthetic environment that produced this work and Johnson locates the buildings in a wider frame of Australian architectural history. The newly-coined stylistic tendencies are bound to be questioned, but they do suggest different ways of understanding Australia’s building culture. The authors seek to unsettle the frequent dependence on the idea of genius loci, and to demonstrate the influence of social and cultural conditions. They aim to show that quite different designers deploy similar concepts, despite climatic and geographic differences. ‘Types’ also charts social and economic trends, noting for example the large number of buildings commissioned by higher education institutions in a bid to attract students. Sometimes though, it seems there are just too many new terms. Everything, even the exemplars, is given a catchy new title. Arrayed on the contents page, these offer little help to the reader who wants to dip in and out of the book. For the exemplarary buildings in particular, a more mundane list of architect and building names would also be helpful. The importance of this book is in the range of material gathered. This is, the authors believe, much wider than is often imagined – either by Australian architects, or by international audiences. There is much more to Australian architecture than the received image of sheds sprinkled through the landscape and the authors have set out to show us the variety that is Australian architecture now
Notices by Justine Clark.
Architext bookshops are at Tusculum, Sydney, ph 02 9356 2022 and 41 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, ph 03 9650 3474 |
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