Glenn Murcutt and Juhani Pallasmaa share a brotherly hug after their talk.
Glenn Murcutt, in discussion with Juhani Pallasmaa
In St. John’s Anglican Church in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, the third and final keynote address, by Glenn Murcutt, was presented in a question and answer format, in contrast with the earlier keynote lectures by Kenneth Frampton and Juhani Pallasmaa.
Conference participants were asked to suggest the questions, which were then selected by Robert McCarter and Brian MacKay-Lyons. Juhani Pallasmaa, Glenn’s “brother,” was invited to take part as interviewer.
The church was packed to the gunwales by conference participants and the public, who were treated to a lively conversation against a backdrop of projected images of Glenn’s work—a fitting conclusion to a historic event. Conference participants then wound down at the barn dance and bonfire before departing for home the morning after.
Juhani Pallasmaa: What made you decide to become an architect?
Glenn Murcutt: I grew up in a highly disciplined family in Papua New Guinea, where the value system was important. We got up at five o’clock in the summer—six o’clock in the winter—for a half mile run down to the swimming bath, a half mile swim before school, a half mile run back home. Then a shower, a jot of food, half an hour of music practice, and a two-kilometer walk to school. After school, Father would bring us down to swim another mile—followed by a hundred meters, and we had to break one minute. We’d go flat out and just get in under the minute, and he would say, “Do it again.” We’d say, “We did what you asked.” He’d say, “Do it again, and this time you’ve got to be faster.” We knew if we didn’t, we’d have to do it over and over. But he’d explain to us that in life you’re going to think you’ve done everything you have to do, and you’re going to be totally exhausted. But you’ve got to have staying power, the resilience to take you that much further.
Father was a joiner, a builder. He subscribed to all of these architectural magazines. In 1949 when I was thirteen years old, the Philip Johnson Glass House was published, and in 1952, Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House was published. My task was to read the article, after which I was questioned on every aspect. And if I didn’t understand the question, he’d say, “Read the article again until you do understand.” I’m telling you, I had no alternative—that’s why I became an architect. In me, my father saw somebody who loved to draw, loved to build things. During school holidays, from the age of twelve, my brother and I worked in the joiner’s shop where we built windows: box-frame windows, casement windows. We built staircases and cupboards, and even racing skiffs. By the time I was eighteen, I had built a skiff, rigged it, and made all the stainless steel fittings.
I was also raised to observe nature. My father always took me to places, showing me differences in natural form. He showed me how the Angophora costata, a most beautiful tree in Australia, grew into rock crevices; at a certain point, if there’s a drought that branch will die, the last portion of it, but not before the tree shoots out another branch. That tree had such a humanlike skin on it, a humanlike form, and it had the most beautiful pink colors. Landscape became a very integral part of my thinking, and nature was so important to all of us. We were very conscious of not killing snakes. We were very conscious of the funnel-webbed spider—a very dangerous spider. I think a level of danger is necessary to keep your head sharp.
All of this is why I came to study architecture.
P You are not known for rushing through your work. How do you decide that a design is finished?
M It’s finished when the client moves in! I’ve always been able to be self-critical without a lack of confidence—to stand back from the work and critique it. One of the greatest skills an architect can have is to know when the design is not good enough, and also to know when it’s good enough to risk starting to build it. For the last twenty years I haven’t made a single model, because I’ve trained myself to be able to visualize the work; I can understand the spaces, the light quality, the ventilation quality, the insect screen, and I understand the possibility of adjustments to all the systems. But there is no technique like being able to draw, to move that pencil across the paper and feel the insect screen going past on the rail, feel the thicker slatted screen, and then feel the glass move past. When you draw, you’re thinking three-dimensionally the whole time.
In the early years I made models. My uncle had given me, at the age of twelve, a book on the principles of flight, and I made many model gliders and sailboats—which prepared me later in life to make a judgment about a building so that I know if I’ve sited it correctly. I know where the wind would normally come over the top of the hill; if instead it comes around the house, it’s going to come around here and move back. So, I’d analyze the site. I’d use a clinometer to measure the trees. I’d have the ground tested to understand the soil content and the rock level, which can tell me a lot about the potential height of a tree. If I know what age the tree is approximately and to what dimensions it will grow, I can see how the house could be placed in relation to that tree. You look at the water table, the hydrology patterns. You look at the soil patterns. You look at the flora and the fauna. You’re looking at how flora impact the landscape, at how insects impact the flora. You look at the fauna in relation to the insects. You make sure you aren’t disturbing any insect life patterns. These are all things to be considered—I use a list of seventy things, in fact.
Remember, Australia ranges from 12 degrees south of the equator down to 47 degrees south of the equator. And we’re the width of the United States, the height of the United States, and possibly the area of the United States. So we’ve got monsoonal tropics, subtropics, warm temperate, temperate, cool temperate; we’ve got coastal, we’ve got mountains; we’ve got the snow, the arid, the hot arid—we’ve got so many climatic zones. If I’ve taken into account nearly all of the seventy things on my list, I know I’m pretty close to a finished design.
When we did the Arthur Boyd Centre in Riversdale, Australia, we did not do a single elevation of the project until the last week. Everything was worked on in section. When you do a section vertically and a section horizontally, you visualize what the space will be like. You visualize how you frame the view, how the louver blades also pick up the northeast and southeast winds from the coast. You know they pick up light in the winter morning, bouncing off one of the blades to the inside. The building was not designed from the point of view of elevation. It was designed in relation to the site: the site contours, the flood level, the runoff coming in from the back, water storage. All these sorts of things were taken into account.
P The problem of architecture is the problem of the house. Do you agree?
M Aldo van Eyck said, “The leaf is to the tree as the house is to the city.” The house is so much more complicated than a multistory office building. The built form of any city or any community is the manifestation of the values, the culture of the day. So it is the whole society that is responsible for the quality of the architecture. Now, the house is a really complicated issue, and it’s central to architecture. If you look at the work of Mies, of Le Corbusier, of any architect, you will find that some of their very best work came from the house. The house is where one understands the social relationships of the family—the parents to one another and to the children, the children to the parents, the neighbor to the neighbor, and the house to the street. These relationships are all embodied in the house. When I think of Alvar Aalto’s Säynätsalo Town Hall—which is one of his great buildings and complexes, and one of the greatest anywhere, anytime—it seems essentially domestic in nature; it comes from Aalto’s understanding of the house and is in many ways the house of the community.
I have a great love of the house, because I have a great love of the people for whom I design houses. It was such a joy to do a house for the Marika-Alderton family, who were Aboriginal clients. Culturally, the Aboriginal people have to be able to look out of a house and not be seen inside. The parents live at the western end of the house, and the children live to the east. This design was absolutely critical. At the end of the day, the sun is sinking, dying, and the parents are closer to death; the children are to the east because it’s the beginning of the day, it’s the future. The house can hold up to fourteen people from time to time, when the extended family comes from another part of the region, but they don’t just come knocking on the door. They sit outside the house, waiting to be welcomed. The screens are slats of 25 mm, with a 10 mm gap. In the sunlight, an absolutely amazing thing happens: the slats, instead of reading as 25 mm thick, read as 10 mm, and the 10 mm gap reads as 25 mm. The light is so intense that the darkness shrinks and the light expands. You can look up and see the horizon, which is very important, you can see the weather pattern changing, the animals going past, the whales, the seagulls—whatever is the natural pattern in this location in the Northern Territory. I think the Aboriginal people have survived not through being the fittest but through cooperation, and the house represents that.
The Marika-Alderton House is a way to think about a house in that part of the world. Now, in Sydney a house is a very different thing. The house is much more about, for example, arriving, entering, greeting, moving, receiving, then eating, discussing, preparing, cleaning, parting; the experience is much more transitory compared with the Aboriginal people. Every group has a cultural background that shapes how they think about a house.
P Can you speak about moments in your work when craft springs from culture?
M Today, about one in twenty-eight Australians has some Italian blood. Melbourne has the second largest Greek population in the world. So when we speak of Australian culture, we are very mixed. In Australia we also have some marvelous builders; I’ve worked for twenty-five years with builders who came from Finland, from a culture that values craft. And we have some beautiful timbers—five of the eight most durable timbers in the world, most of them native to the east and north coasts of Australia. In the south we have fine timber such as celery top pine and Huon pine—you look at that grain and you could eat it.
Craft is very important. I learned from Aalto that if you have a metal door handle that is in the sun, or in subzero temperatures, then you can burn your hand or your hand would stick to it in the cold; to wrap that door handle in leather, as Aalto does, is a beautiful thing. The crafting makes such a huge difference. A column in a room of Aalto’s, wrapped in cane, is a beautiful thing, because to lean up against cane is more beautiful than to lean up against metal. Where the materials are and how you use them: that makes beautiful crafting.
But crafting can only assist in the design; it can’t be a thing in itself. Design must come first: understanding the nature of the place, the nature of the materials, the climatic conditions. All those things make the hydrology, the morphology, the geology, water table, flora, fauna, history, aboriginal history, European history. Once you start understanding all those things, you start to get an idea about the place making.
My real interest is in very well built buildings. I get it well built by going to the site when the builders are there. You see some beautiful work being done, as well as some terrible stuff. The last thing you want to do is go to the terrible stuff and say to the tradesperson, “This is absolutely shocking, we have just got to fix it”—because then you demoralize that person. You are going to work from the beautiful stuff. You ask the builder, “Who’s the one who has done this? This is absolutely fantastic. If you keep that standard up on the job, it will just be wonderful,” and you say nothing more. It’s very important to understand the tradespeople who do the work, so they aren’t demoralized, so that they will give the best of themselves. There is nothing more meaningful for a tradesperson who does something well than to be recognized for it. On my jobs, I’ve had builders who drove three hours south from Sydney to do a building. They didn’t have to do it but they wanted to, and the builders would get their families to come down on weekends to have a look at what they were doing. That is how buildings get beautifully crafted.
P You describe the kind of relationship of mutual respect and friendship between an architect and a builder that is becoming rare today.
M One of the things I say to a new builder is that there is no such thing as a silly question.
P If you could make one change in the education of an architect, what would it be?
M Growing up, nature and conservation were very important to us. At the age of twelve, the boys in the family were each given a piece of timber and were shown how to square it up, using wire and sticks to turn this rough piece of timber into something beautiful. Our pocket money wasn’t a given; we earned it only when we did something we weren’t asked to do, or if we’d asked a very good question. We learned the importance of waste. If you left the light on in the house in a room you were not using, you were fined threepence each time. When we got a case of oranges from the markets, we’d have to sort through them: those will be eaten tomorrow, those the next day, those the day after that. Everything was about avoiding waste and ensuring that you’d have something left for tomorrow. So, when I began my architectural education, I knew the real principles behind conservation, to be able to use only that which is necessary and leave enough for tomorrow. If I taught building and construction full-time, I would assign the whole first year to a program related to nature in this sense.
When I was in school, a full one and a half terms were devoted to understanding continuity in nature. We had to discuss questions, such as: how does a branch of a tree join the tree, and how does it stay there? I don’t think that many people know how a branch joins a tree, but if you’re ever in an old pine forest that has already been cut and there are a few branches left, have a look. Those branches look as if somebody’s speared them into the trunk—right in the heart of it is the heartwood of the branch. It is the most beautiful thing. When a ficus tree grows tall and the branches get too heavy, it sends aerial roots down. In northern Australia they take bamboo, drill out the center, and put soil in it; they put this as a prop under a low tree branch and water it, and the aerial root grows through the bamboo in three months and gets into the ground. Within a year and a half that root is stabilizing the tree. In many ways it is how the Japanese might think about stabilizing a tree. What a beautiful construction!
How does the spider spin its web? How does it hold its weight? The spider sends down the first beautiful trail, then tightens it, and then drops down and does a couple of moves up and back until it gets the center point—and then it starts spinning on this center point, around and around and around. It is fantastic. The strength of a spider’s web is its elasticity.
You can learn about how foundations work, for example, by how tree root systems work. To understand composite construction is very important. The nature of timber is that it is very good with compression, not so good with tension. Steel, on the other hand, is very good with tension, not so good with compression. Make a flitch plate beam with steel inside timber, and you’ll get a beautiful beam out of it. It works like muscles and sinews on the body, the summation of two materials working beautifully together.
So the first thing I would do with young architects is keep them away from building altogether, and instead introduce architecture and construction through nature.
P What is your greatest hope for the future of architecture?
M My greatest hope for the future would be that architecture finds a sense of responsibility—an ethic in design, in the use of materials, and toward the population and the poorer peoples of the world—such as I have found in working with the Aboriginal people in Australia. Another hope of mine is that the computer will be used in the way it should be. Most computer-generated buildings, in my view, are megastructures that are supposed to do everything for everybody, and they are the most unethical things I have ever seen. I dislike them intensely. I love modern architecture, I love the structure of architecture, and I think the computer can be used in a way that assists the engineer. Here I think the computer is absolutely the most fantastic instrument. The setsquare and the T-square were marvelous instruments. But they were used as instruments, not as methods of design.
P What advice or guidance would you offer for young architects?
M Work with very good people. As my father used to say, it is not a case of what money you get when you work for an architect, it is a case of getting the best experience.
Find the architect you most admire, look at their work, see where they’re doing buildings, and see if you can get a job on a site. I believe in getting your hands dirty as an architect. To know the processes of construction, to know the building—this is our language. If you don’t understand how the materials are going to work, if you don’t understand the nature of the materials, then you don’t have an architect’s vocabulary. The language of architecture also has to include the nature of materials. Louis Kahn asked about a brick: What does it want to be? A brick doesn’t want to go into tension, it wants to go into compression—one brick laid upon another, on another, on another. You can put brick into an arch, or you can use it in combination with other materials, such as steel. But the nature of brick is that it is a compressive material, and if you understand that, it starts to become part of the vocabulary of your architecture. This vocabulary is extremely important.
My father once said to me, “Son, remember now that you are beginning your practice, you must start off the way you would like to finish. Further, for every compromise you make in your work, the result represents the quality of your next client.” This statement is not about arrogance. Compromise means doing something that you know you ought not to be doing. Most good clients will have a very good reason for not liking something, which gives you the opportunity of making it better.
I was raised on Henry David Thoreau, who said the mass of humanity lead lives of quiet desperation. Since most of us are going to be doing things in our lives, the most important thing is to do those things extraordinarily well. Don’t be in a rush to be an architect. Let it come. If you can travel, go and see the work—there is no better education. And traveling in another country allows you to see your own country more clearly. You see it afresh. You can get quite blinded by your own environment. Go away! When you come back, you shall understand your own place better.
P When does a building become architecture?
M When it becomes art. It is all about appropriateness. It is ethics, life quality, integrity, prospect, refuge. It is the ability to open up, close down, and work with the seasons. You have to capture the environment, as well as project it. In the house, if you see how the windows operate, the air can pass through the rooms. I can open up vents, so that the rain comes down and I get the smell of rain coming in—that beautiful, fresh smell of rain. To hear the sound of rain falling on the roof is just beautiful. To be able to sit at your desk and have the air caress you while you write, yet not disturb your papers. To be able to look beyond and see a prospect—the building starts at the frame, at the outlook, and shows you where you are in this environment, so that you understand the section of the building from the place where you’re sitting. That is really very beautiful.
The house is an instrument that is being played by nature, so that the people who live there can understand the time of the day, the weather, the season. It’s all part of the building as a frame for the way you live. The animals are part of your life. To see the most beautiful birds come through, the galahs and the sulphur-crested cockatoos, is very important. To allow nature to feed through this instrument with you as the audience. A house like this has a level of simplicity and a level of, if I may say, elegance, and it is very achievable, economically.
If you make sure that your first job is really well done, you will be surprised how quickly the next job comes along.
P What building in history would you have been most proud to have designed?
M In history? The pyramids seem quite good.
P Can you explain the origins and evolution of your architectural language?
M Having studied in my very early youth the work of Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House, I spent probably six years trying to get them out of my system. However, when visiting the Farnsworth House about four years ago, I went into the shower room and found that the whole of the mechanical services were on the other side of the shower—you had to walk through the shower to get to them—and I thought, my God, I would fail a student for such an offense! I learned from that. We’re plugged in to think these buildings are the ultimate, but they all have their faults; the things that haven’t worked in those buildings seem very significant to me.
On the other hand, I have to tell you about going to Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre in Paris in 1973. I was very interested in modernism. There was a logic about it. But the brilliance of the Maison de Verre, which was built for a doctor, for me was the release from modernism. It was a contraption. It had all these moving parts. When the doctor was saying goodbye to the women patients, who were often quite pregnant, he’d pull a handle from inside his office and make the door slide open without having to go out there and stand to the side as the patient walked past. It was a remarkable building, as modern when I saw it as it was in 1928. I still think it’s an incredibly modern building, a great piece of architecture that has the most amazing integrity in detail through the space. And yet my work isn’t the Maison de Verre. What that building did is help me understand for what reasons it was done. It’s of its day, and also before and beyond, and it’s going to continue to be relevant.
In California I spent time with Craig Ellwood, who said to me, “I am just one of the three blind Mies.” The United States led the world in technology, and there was this really fantastic glass and the gaskets were so great that no water came in. I asked Craig, how do you keep the climate control in this house? He looked at me and said, “By the air conditioning.” I felt so stupid. It turned me away entirely from air conditioning, which is the lazy way of living in a house.
Understanding how to have the wind come into the house the way you want is so important, so that when the wind is blowing in a certain direction and you want to direct it, you can open up the roof here and there, and create positive fresh air over here, negative fresh air there. I realized that there was no future for me in looking at such work, so I started taking on all those things I’d learned about nature: about place-making, materiality, colors, collection of water, waste management. I try to work within the cultural language of a built-up environment, so I work in typology, I work in materiality, I work with section, and I work with heart. I work with all these things.
P Do you think the desire to be closer to nature is expressed through the construction of highly detailed primitive huts?
M When Luis Barragán received the Pritzker Prize, there was quite an outcry about his rather small works. I remember that Arthur Drexler said in Barragán’s defense, “When you see the work, it hits you with a wallop.” You learn so much from what Barragán has done—his beauty, his simplicity. Barragán himself often said, “Any work of architecture that is designed without serenity in mind is in my view a mistake.” Works that have a level of freedom in them can influence a whole group of buildings.
All young architects: when you build your first house, no matter where it is, keep your eye on it if you like it, because you might get a chance to buy it. That way you can avoid having to design a house for yourself. The major problem with architects designing their own houses is that they’re trying to achieve everything. When you design for someone else, you know you can’t achieve everything; you have to identify a few very good ideas and reinforce those ideas right down to the last detail. To select a door handle or a lock, those sorts of things, the small things—they’re the details that carry the design through beautifully.
P Can you talk about your approach to designs set within the city?
M My approach is concerned with the same principles as any design. Where does the wind come from? Where does the rain come from, and when does it come? What is the water table, the typology, the morphology? What is the materiality, the scale, the proportions, and how do I work within this context, so that the building has a very, very established place in which to be? If done right, the air coming in is fresh and beautiful. The building has a roof that comes up and captures the breezes, and the house lets the air through, and the morning sunlight comes through. Design in the city has the same principles as any design, so what you have to do is ask: What are the principles? When you understand the principles and the place, and you ask the appropriate questions, then you’ll probably find a very good answer.