Column

20-10-2022

GLENN MURCUTT – TO TOUCH THE EARTH LIGHTLY

Fredericks-White house by Glenn Murcutt

“A bottle of brandy came out, and friends drifted in. It was about two in the morning. Most of the arrivals were students. Vincenzo was an architecture student living in the Vucciria. He talked eagerly about the work of Glenn Murcutt. He said that he would have given anything to work with Murcutt in Australia. I told him quite gently Murcutt had no assistants, that he always worked alone.” [1]

“Moving inland into the hills of Sicily, where the villas are bigger, more costly, and solid, the new houses look more and more like dreadful fortified bunkers. As they are. There is no grimmer or more palpable expression of social ethos in Sicily…[The houses] are the ultimate expression of fear and mistrust of your neighbours. Thinking this now… I saw the amazing appeal the Australian houses of Glenn Murcutt must have had for the student Vincenzo, sitting so airily and lightly and modestly on the earth, minimal, essential, and open to the world around them. From Sicily, such houses seem models or dreams of another world, another way of living, and seeing this, I realised as I hadn’t earlier the politics of Vincenzo’s enthusiasm.”

I stumbled across this paragraph of text many years ago when reading Peter Robb’s book, Midnight in Sicily. Glenn Murcutt is arguably Australia’s most decorated architect, being the only designer in the southern hemisphere to win the Pritzker, architecture’s version of the Nobel Prize.

Murcutt is now in his mid-eighties. It is rumoured that he has a client waiting list that spans seven-plus years. This begs the question as to whether his patient patrons will in fact receive their creation before the inevitable occurs.

Murcutt is old-school. His choice of design tool is still hand drawing, versus current forms of digital drafting software. He often quotes Juhani Pallasmaa’s text, ‘The Thinking Hand’ stating, ‘the hand arrives at a solution before the mind realises it has arrived’.

In thinking about Glenn’s work, I too, feel a sense of what Peter Robb depicts above. To experience a Murcutt building is to get a lesson in designing for location. i.e., analysing the topography, understanding the weather patterns and how they affect space. His approach forces the architecture to point to sensory elements rather than draw attention to itself.

If you ever get the chance to walk a Murcutt house or building, make sure you give yourself ample time. The more you look at it, the more interesting it will become.

Like Glenn himself, the work is not flashy or bold but rather the opposite. The buildings blend into the environment simply because the space and form are birthed from the environment.

I want to leave you with a quote from the man himself:
“The problem with 21st-century architecture is that it strives to be desperately interesting. Desperately interesting architecture will not last, it will not become timeless.” – Glenn Murcutt
[1] Peter Robb, Midnight in Sicily (Duffy & Snellgrove, 1996), pp. 84, 227-8.

Anthony Rigg
Bleuscape Design