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Noting new books at Architext |
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|  | BELL: THE LIFE WORK OF GUILFORD BELL, ARCHITECT 1912-1992
Edited by Leon van Schaik, compiled by Ronnen Goren, published by Bookman Transition, $125.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, Guilford Bell was an elegant, discriminating, imperious and witty taste provider to Melbourne’s firmament of privilege. As an architect, he was both a classical humanist and a humane modernist. He found his patrons through family, gay and arts networks, and his publicity, where clients allowed, mainly in Vogue. For this reason, most architecture fans are still vague about his oeuvre, which includes early fifties resort buildings on Hayman Island and the Hordern, Darling, Baillieu, Bardas, Drysdale, Myer, Fairfax, Rockman, McGrath, Livermore, Clemenger and Purves residences. His projects were ruthlessly ordered and often symmetrical in plan, with harmoniously proportioned, plainly finished rooms interrupted by formal arrangements of furniture. Interiors were often given outlooks through vertical windows (hang Corb’s horizontals, go Georgian), under hovering eaves or pergolas to broad landscapes or courtyards. This classy, 300-page monograph records contemporary readings of Bell’s concepts, values, vanities (the yellow Roller) and achievements. The dozen essays are consistently good (despite some misspellings of well-known names) and reveal meanings which probably were subconscious to the subject. Ironically, the photos show no books like this on Bell’s expansive coffee tables
|  | TOUCH THIS EARTH LIGHTLY: GLENN MURCUTT IN HIS OWN WORDS
By Philip Drew, Duffy & Snellgrove, $35.
This appealing paperback provides diverse insights into the mentality of Murcutt circa 1983, when his biographer, Philip Drew, was taping interviews for his best-seller, Leaves of Iron. Those tapes, now at the NSW State Library, were edited recently into snatches of opinion, ideas and reminiscence—all steeped with the syntax and passion which have transfixed Murcutt’s SRO-audiences. Complementing the words are sketches, plans and photos of key buildings, romantic images of Australian eucalypts, and vintage portraits of the architect and his parents, Arthur and Daphne. Arthur is depicted as an obsessive reader, philosopher, naturist and action-man; a relentlessly instructive Thoreau disciple who was also terrifyingly violent. Coming through in his son is both a pride and captive distaste about his upbringing; first at the Papua New Guinea goldfields, then on the family’s hillside at Seaforth, Sydney. But this background, iced with his post-university travels to Europe and Scandinavia (1962-3), galvanised Murcutt’s imagination and intensity.
In relation to his work, Chapters 3 to 7 offer many inspirational reflections on his design pursuits and principles. While his latest buildings refute his famous dictum of this book’s title, and there’s a questionable denial of style in his work, the vision remains consistent and convincing. Readers should know, though, that Drew announced during Sydney Writers Week that Murcutt forced significant changes to his manuscript—and his author’s dedication is to an “unknown New Guinean goldminer” who he says has been deleted. However, the book’s subtitle explicitly supports the idea of Murcutt choosing his words. It appears that there’s more scope for biographers and historians
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| INTERIOR CITIES
Edited by Ross McLeod, RMIT University School of Architecture and Design, $60.
Seven years of experiments by students and staff in RMIT’s interior design program are documented in this 250 page volume, which confirms the university’s status (after a long lapse of its sophisticated periodical, The Interior) as Australia’s premier hothouse for interior design scholarship. This book celebrates a range of intellectual explorations, creative productions and studio excursions during a memorable decade under the charismatic professorship of John Andrews from the AA in London. Interior Citieseditors Ross McLeod and Dan Austin (the latter seems to be missing a cover credit) have set high standards in content and graphics
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| COCKATOO ISLAND: SYDNEY’S HISTORIC DOCKYARD
By John Jeremy, UNSW Press, $45.
This illustrated history would have been valuable for entrants in the Cockatoo Island competition run by UNSW’s landscape school several years ago. It’s a thorough record of one of Sydney Harbour’s eight islands (named for cockatoos in the original forest of eucalypts) since its first European habitation as a convict work camp from 1839. Author Jeremy, a former naval officer, naturally concentrates on Cockatoo’s sustained role as a ship repair and building yard from the 1850s until recent closure
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| AVALON: LANDSCAPE AND HARMONY: WALTER BURLEY GRIFFIN, ALEXANDER STEWART JOLLY AND HARRY RUSKIN ROWE
Edited by Jan Roberts, cloth-bound edition, Ruskin Rowe Press, $40.
The organic architectural tradition and artistic life of Avalon, centre of Sydney’s northern peninsula, are warmly celebrated in this bespoke book from local publishers. Dr Jan Roberts begins with an intimate introduction to the neighbourhood (subdivided in the 1920s) and concludes with a valuable documentation of the thoughts of Richard Leplastrier (illustrated with a marvellous sketch by his friend Paul Pholeros on some environmental principles of building on steep Pittwater bush sites). Essays explain the local activities of three architects: Walter Burley Griffin (by Ian Stephenson), Alexander Stewart Jolly (by Maisy Stapleton) and Harry Ruskin Rowe (by Janine Formica and Caroline Kades). It’s a delightful read, even if you don’t know the northern beaches
|  | KEN WOOLLEY AND ANCHER MORTLOCK & WOOLLEY: SELECTED AND CURRENT WORKS
New volume in the Master Architect Series IV, introduction by Jennifer Taylor, Images Publishing, $98.
Ken Woolley ignited the office of Sydney Ancher, Bryce Mortlock and Stuart Murray when he joined in 1964, just before Ancher’s retirement. Within 18 months, the firm had grown from 8 to 60 staff—working on the Pettitt and Sevitt project houses (which Woolley had earlier begun), the tumbling penthouses (inspired by Italian hill towns) at Darling Point, and an environmental research lab in Canberra. Not a bad start to commercial practice for a 32-year-old emerging from a decade building civic landmarks as a precocious gun in Harry Rembert’s office at Public Works. Woolley’s early monuments (including the State Office Block recently felled for Renzo Piano’s Aurora Place towers) are well documented in this 256-page retrospective from the Master Architect series (which is compiled and largely financed by the subject architects to a high-quality format set by the publisher). In this edition’s essay, QUT Adjunct Professor Jennifer Taylor introduces AM&W by emphasising its commitment to architecture as an art—an observation which Woolley made in his 1994 Hook Address and demonstrates here with 18 pages of elegant pencil perspectives. These sketches display all the confidence and discernment which have defined most of his built projects— which are well worth re-examination in the book’s main section
|  | DEMOLISHED HOUSES OF SYDNEY
Edited by Joy Hughes, Historic Houses Trust of NSW, $40.
You don’t expect to see the catalogue for a historic houses exhibition packaged with bold modernist typography and a Harry Seidler exemplar on the cover. And you don’t anticipate dipping into an essay (by David Marr) which sums up two centuries of one city’s domestic architectural murders with cool pragmatism instead of hot tears in the hankie. Marr’s piece—which is refreshing Sydney’s heritage debate—dares the dangerous point that prosperous and vigorous cities are constantly devouring their pasts, and prosperous cities are exciting to live in. But Historic Houses Trust director Peter Watts claims that the balance between Sydney’s vitality and memory is wrong. And City of Sydney historian Shirley Fitzgerald writes of an “inescapable conclusion … that we have been too cavalier” in demolition. Curator and catalogue editor Joy Hughes, who worked with James Broadbent to compile a Bicentennial exhibition of demolished houses across NSW, has narrowed her focus to Sydney for the recent Hyde Park Barracks display, and has included lost modernist residences by Seidler and Woolley with the 19th and early 20th century works
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| TERRACE HOUSES IN AUSTRALIA
Trevor Howells and Colleen Morris with new photography by Georgie Cole, Landsdowne, $35.
Howells and Morris, respected heritage consultants in Sydney, have compiled this generously illustrated guide to the evolution of Australian terrace houses and cottages since 1820. Writing concisely for a general audience, they provide good summaries of the main styles and periods, with generous photographs and captions. For an idle afternoon, this book offers relaxing site excursions across the nation and back in time. It concludes with a surprising burst of modern renovations by the likes of Engelen Moore and Virginia Kerridge—architects who are not known for celebrating heritage. Regrettably absent are some ironic examples of the ‘authentic’ renovation strategies and colours which have sometimes been promoted as ‘heritage-sensitive’. One classic was the seventies penchant for ripping off the render and holding Chianti-fuelled dinner parties to commemorate nude sandstocks
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| MYLES AND MILO
By Peter Meredith, Allen & Unwin, $25.
A double biography of a father and son is uncommon, but Myles and Milo Dunphy were seen as consecutive halves of a continuum. Genetically similar, they both trained as architects but rarely practised. Instead, they forged careers as political warriors for the natural environment—and supplemented that passion with shared enthusiasms for strenuous bushwalks and patrician women who were not their wives. It’s impossible for uninitiated readers to know what’s missing from biographies of living and recently departed subjects—time is always needed to soothe sensitivities— but this book is to be admired for its obvious reliance on diverse sources of information, its detached observations of the subjects, diligent research of the girlfriends and even-handed treatment of all participants in the Dunphy saga
|  | MANUALS
Sydney: Kikukawa Professional Guide, Vol. 10/1999, Ian Perlman
Latest in a series of information-rich city architecture guides, written in Japanese with an introduction by Kezuyo Sejima, and densely illustrated with bright, legible maps and small photos of the buildings recommended. An English edition is being discussed but samples of the Japanese version are at Architext Tusculum
Greenprint for Sydney: An Environmental Strategy for the 21st Century, Total Environment Centre, $14.
Milo Dunphy’s successors at the Total Environment Centre have compiled this collection of 21 concise papers to identify the main problems and agendas for Sydney’s development, as seen by specialists in the environmental movement. A good set of checkpoints
| | Notices by Davina Jackson. Architext bookshops are at Tusculum, Sydney, ph 02 9356 2022 and 41 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, ph 03 9650 3474 |
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