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Talking Heads - Glenn Murcutt

ABC1 Monday 6:30pm

Transcripts
Glenn Murcutt
Screened: 02/06/2008

Glenn Murcutt is the closest thing to a truly Australian architect. In 2002 he became the first Australian to win the Pritzker Prize, the worlds most prestigious architectural award. Murcutt is best known for his simple but complex houses, built from timber, corrugated iron, and louvred glass, tailored to respond to their unique position in an environmentally sound way. On Talking Heads Glenn Murcutt discusses a childhood in Papua New Guinea contributed to an architectural philosophy, based on observation of the environment. GLENN MURCUTT What are the three most important things in life? The first one's simplicity. Second one, simplicity. And, of course, the third one's simplicity. PETER THOMPSON Here we are in the Adelaide Hills and this house seems to be a simple, even modest home in the Australian bush. But it contains some of the radical ideas that have made Glenn Murcutt the closest thing to a truly Australian architect. Glenn Murcutt is this week's Talking Head. Glenn Murcutt, welcome to Talking Heads. GLENN MURCUTT Pleasure. PETER THOMPSON Now, here we are, sitting just outside your brother's house in
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the Adelaide Hills and it's just gone though this record heatwave, so how did it stand up? GLENN MURCUTT Well, the University of Adelaide have shown that when the temperature's 42 outside, the temperature inside is 25 degrees. And you can open up the whole house at night time, let it cool down, and during the day time, close down. And we have dark walls, but we've shaded them at this time of the year, so the sunlight is keeping off the walls, whereas in wintertime, the sunlight hits those walls and radiates the warmth, so it's not that complicated. PETER THOMPSON I might be tempted to call this a style, but you'd object to that, wouldn't you? GLENN MURCUTT Well, a style doesn't have any depth of principles behind it. A style, you can do this or do that or do something else. This is nothing to do with that. This is understanding where the orientation is, it's understanding where the cooling winds come from, it understands that you produce the bedroom at the eastern end because by the time the sun's gone to the western end, it's heating up enormously, the bedroom cools down. And you get verandas on the south, you get verandas on the north and so you design it so that you've got your winter sun penetration and exclusion of your summer sun to the house. And you work this house and you work most of my buildings like you sail a yacht. You have to work them so that you understand how to get the best out of the climate without having to aircondition. PETER THOMPSON Now, I can see that style wasn't quite the word I should have used. If you agreed to take me on as your client, would I need millions of bucks? GLENN MURCUTT No, first of all, I'd be taking you and then your partner or any associated person with you. PETER THOMPSON The whole family? GLENN MURCUTT The whole family would need to be understood here. So it's not just you. PETER THOMPSON I suppose... but you're a famous architect. I'd be working with your underlings, wouldn't I? GLENN MURCUTT No, I have no underlings. I'm a sole practitioner. PETER THOMPSON Well, I'd at least be talking to your secretary, wouldn't I? GLENN MURCUTT No secretary. No secretary, no staff. PETER THOMPSON Well, what's your mobile phone number?
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GLENN MURCUTT I don't have one. So I'm sorry, I... I'm difficult to get hold of. I know I'm very difficult to get hold of. But those who are really serious about wanting to get hold of me, whether they be here in Adelaide or Sydney or New York, they eventually know how to get hold of me. They're the people you need to know. PETER THOMPSON Let's find out where this odyssey of Glenn Murcutt began. GLENN MURCUTT We grew up in the highlands of New Guinea on the Upper Watut River. The lower end of the highlands, a very wild place with huge grasslands of kuni grass, huge rainforests. We were the only family within about 15km where we lived as Europeans. The rest of the people were Papua New Guineans and they cared for us, they played with us, they taught us pidgin. So Pidgin English was my first language. And a gypsy moth would fly only, probably, 30 metres above the ground and throw out our mail and food, as well. Christmas cakes, the lot, came by air. In those forests live the Kuka Kuka people. And the Kuka Kukas were just below 1.5 metres in height. The kuni grass was 1.5 metres and, of course, you'd see them... see this little snakelike thing coming down through the grasses and you knew that was trouble ahead. Terribly frightening time. And it gave me a sense of fear, all my childhood, the evening, the darkness was when it would strike. And that fear lasted a long time. During 1942, we had to get out of New Guinea very fast. And the Japanese had arrived. When I arrived in Sydney, of course, totally different environment. We came from lush environment, racing water, all black people to this monoculture of white people... where the postman came not by air, but by foot... with a bag over his shoulder, blowing a whistle. My parents thought that they wouldn't send me to school until I could speak English. So I started school when I was about eight. I grew up in a family of five siblings. We had seven pianos in the house and in the mornings and evenings, the noise was terrible. And to concentrate was very hard. I found silence by leaving the house and I had set up in the bush a place where I could sit and draw and think quietly. That was my real reclusive place. From about the age of 13, my father took me on the hillside of Clontarf and examined the Angophora costatas. At the top of the hill, we could see the nutrients were far less, the trees were smaller, the leaf structure was smaller. As we went down the hillside, the structure was greater, trees were larger, nutrients were higher. And it's been with me for the rest of my life, understanding of place and it guided me in the design of my architecture. I set about designing my own aeroplanes. I learnt how air moved and why a wing gave lift. We built a boat together, a racing skiff. It was a great experience, because sailing teaches you about wind, it teaches you about water and how you can capitalise on tides, how you can capitalise on wind pressure increases, all
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those things. So the junction of flight and boats has stood with me all my life. As my father was bringing in 'Architectural Forum's, he insisted that I read the principles underlying the designs of many works. And from the time I was 15 onwards, I decided I wanted to become an architect. PETER THOMPSON Your dad seems to be quite a character. GLENN MURCUTT Indeed. He was an amazing man in most ways. Very determined, he was the driving force in the family. He was very, very instructive all the time. Could never get away from him. Silence was so, so beautiful when one got it. PETER THOMPSON Well, part of this personality was to be a bit of a tyrant as well in terms of the expectations on you and your siblings. GLENN MURCUTT He was a tyrant. His expectations of himself and the level of survival he had to undertake to survive in Papua New Guinea was so great that he saw life for any child in Australia was absolutely living on the cushion. PETER THOMPSON These people you lived among had a very evocative name. GLENN MURCUTT Yeah. We lived amongst the Kuka Kuka people, now known as the Manyamia people. Um... at that time, fearsome people. And they actually attacked - now, at the time, we thought this was just terrible - and they killed... they killed a local German man by the name of Boem up there. They... they ate him and put his head on the airfield in Surprise Creek... PETER THOMPSON You saw that? GLENN MURCUTT We were told about this as children. And we'd be very careful. You've got to be very, very careful what you're doing, keep your eye open. You've got to observe, you've got to smell. Look, hear, smell. So the senses were very, very acutely developed for... almost like the way an animal's senses are developed for survival. PETER THOMPSON Well, that's what's marked out your architecture, years and years later, that acute sense of... the senses. GLENN MURCUTT It has had a huge impact. Observation has been my big learning tool. To observe what the sunlight is like, where it's coming from, where it's going to, what angle is it at, what shadow pattern is coming? Look at the trees, look at the way the light separates the elements in the landscape. PETER THOMPSON You somehow decide by the age of 15 that the path you're going to take is architecture. What made that clear to you?
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GLENN MURCUTT Um... my father made it very clear to me. He brought in 'Architectural Record' and 'Architectural Forum', both American journals. And he would find a very interesting article or a very interesting building and he'd give it to me and say, "Son, read this." And you'd say, "Oh, jeez, you know, I'd rather be playing outside than reading this." And I'd have to read it. And then he'd sit down and challenge me about it and say, "What about this? This question, why is it off the ground? Why is this building all glass?" You knew unless you got that answer, you would have to read the article again. And so it all of a sudden brought an interest about the underlying principles of buildings, of all sorts of buildings. And that I then began to find fascinating. But he knew I could deal with the ideas that he was articulating, what were in the journals and he could see that I might do well in architecture. PETER THOMPSON Glenn, failures are often more telling than successes and at university you failed a big subject, Sunshine and Shade. GLENN MURCUTT It's the only subject I had to repeat. I did a couple of posts, but I think I might be one of the few people that might have learnt something about sunshine and shade. It became a very, very integral part of my thinking. PETER THOMPSON Well, soon after you married Helen, you went overseas to Europe to experience a whole new world of architecture. GLENN MURCUTT In 1962, I travelled to Europe, worked in London, lived, finally, in the Greek Islands for six months altogether. I realised that the limitation of materials and the use of form and light were absolutely critical to understanding architecture. I also learnt what it was to be in a courtyard, to be with a group of people and to be in this courtyard surrounded entirely by walls with this beautiful light, beautiful food. I said, "This is life. This is architecture." I went up to the whole Nordic region. I experienced the work of some Swedish architects, Danish architects, the work of Utzon. And then on to see Aalto's work, which was just, for me, an opening up of the possibilities. He was an architect, a man who actually worked with the land and not against it. I love living in Europe. I decided I was going to live in England and, tragically, a member of my wife's family was killed, our first son was born, Nicholas, and we said, "OK, let's pack up and go back to Australia," much before I was ready to come back. I felt very down about it. On the other hand, I worked in a very good office, Ancher, Mortlock, Murray and Woolley's. But, in a way, I realise I became unemployable because I had a different thing going inside me and I realised that I had to do it myself. In 1969, I realised it was time for me to enter practice. Nine months after I was in practice, my brother realised that I didn't have much work on and he came to me and he said, "It would be really nice if you would design a house for us." That house was followed immediately by a house for Laurie Short. Both these buildings
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received recognition. And then, doing the mother's house, Marie Short. The house at Crescent Head, Kempsey area, was a turning point in my career. Marie said that she was going to possibly move the house to another site with the same orientation. So I had to design that it could be disassembled. What I realised in an area like Kempsey, where tank bending was a norm, I was able to actually roll the roof. And because I was able to roll it, I was able to get that, in a sense, airfoil section like that of an aircraft wing that gives the lift. So that roof, in fact, is lifting, pulling the air out. I don't know of any roof that was like that up to that time. PETER THOMPSON In a short-hand way, some people might say your architecture's environmental architecture, but it's not... not quite the expression you'd use to describe it, is it? GLENN MURCUTT It is about environment. But it's taking into account where materials come from, the true costs, to understand that timber is a very marvellous material. It's a renewable resource. It takes only five megajoules of energy to process a kilogram of timber. It's just marvellous. A kilogram of aluminium, for example, takes 143 megajoules of energy. Hugely different. So it allows you to proportion the use of materials in a building, put things together in a way you can pull apart and reuse them. That's a... that's a really important area, so we don't have the loss of materials. I've been thinking about that for a long time. PETER THOMPSON You had a trade-off to make and you made it pretty early on in your career and that was would you work with others as part of a team and a partnership - and you did that for a few years - or would you go your own way? And the way you took would have been very difficult for you to actually be yourself in a partnership. GLENN MURCUTT I'm headstrong. And yet, a lot of people don't realise that. They see a more gentle side, often and don't quite realise that when I'm determined, I am very determined. And if I think something is not reasonable, I'm not prepared to do that. If a council refuses my design that I think is reasonable, has a complete logic to it, I will negotiate as far as I can go. But then it's sudden death. Straight... straight to the Land and Environment Court. I won't take any more mucking around because I don't... I can't take the mucking around. It just drives me mad that I'm dealing with people that simply don't understand. So, I don't call myself an environmental architect. But I'm certainly interested in the environment. PETER THOMPSON What did your dad say about you going alone in architecture? GLENN MURCUTT Yes, um... it was in his last year of life. And it was very lucky for me that he was still alive at the time. Um... he said to me, "Son, now that you're entering your practice, you must remember to start off the way you would like to finish. "And for every compromise you make in your work, and you knowingly make in your work, you must remember the result represents the quality of your
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next client." Which was very significant pieces of advice. My career has been beleaguered by councils and, in particular, the planning department. I remember, in one case, where it was argued that the house didn't harmonise with the buildings in the area. Well, if you think of the word 'harmony,' harmony is disparate sounds when placed together make a pleasing whole. Are they asking me for harmony or are they, in fact, asking me for monotony? We like to put a building in the middle of the site and have all this ground all the way around it. We are much better off if we can open up so that we can get rooms on the southern part of a site, for example, that get a northern light through a courtyard. And in summer time, you can bring shade devices over this. This is entirely logical. But to get this through council requires incredible effort. These obstacles all the way. And the only way that one gets out of these is to go to the farm, where I get silence. Walking in the forests of the farm, going for a swim at Smokey Cape. To walk in the landscape is great peaceful time. It's wonderful. And just to be in my own head designing, even though it's frustrating at times and anxious-making, it is nevertheless the silence that I really need. I designed a house for Jenny Kee in Blackheath. And Bunduk Marika had become a friend of Jenny's. "Oh," she said, "I love Jenny's house." She said, "It is a healthy building. Would you consider designing a house for me one day?" PETER THOMPSON It'll probably feel more at home having to be exposed to that environmental connection. GLENN MURCUTT I went three or four times - sometimes up to about eight days where we went out bush. I learnt to live on bush tucker. It was an extraordinary experience for me. To teach students internationally is wonderful, with receptive minds, questioning minds. There are no restrictions on you except your own perception. Teaching makes one a better architect, in my view. One has to articulate one's ideas and be clear about it. ..concentrated program over the next four days. I've been teaching in Yale and UCLA and Seattle and Dublin and Sydney. And I've also been teaching in Papua New Guinea several times. And speaking a little pidgin, again, gave me a very distinct connection back with the people. And it really did feel like I belonged. PETER THOMPSON Going back to PNG also resolved a few other things for you, like your lifelong fear of the dark. GLENN MURCUTT I... here I was, all my life, 'til I was 50 years of age, a fear of the dark. Remember, I did my course at night time and I had to walk 1.5 km from Seaforth down to Clontarf Beach through the bush in very dimly lit path and I was terrified, absolutely terrified. And it wasn't until I went back to New Guinea I realised what it was and I was able to handle that. And now I've got no difficulty at all. But it was Papua New Guinea that gave it to me and it also taught me what it was and I was able to deal with it after that. PETER THOMPSON It also explains why you spend most of the night working, of
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course. GLENN MURCUTT (Laughs) Maybe. PETER THOMPSON You won the big Oscar, the big Nobel Prize for architecture, the Pritzker Prize. How did you feel when... when you picked up the phone and were told that? GLENN MURCUTT Oh, I... I didn't believe it. I said, "Look, some of my friends would do this to me. How would I know? You're just... somebody on the end of the phone, could ring up and say, 'You're the recipient of this year's Pritzker Prize'." And so I said, "There's no way I can take you seriously on this." He said, "Well, look, I don't know how to convince you. You've got to take me seriously." And all of a sudden, I go into a cold sweat and I thought, "This guy might be right." PETER THOMPSON Why was it such a shock? GLENN MURCUTT Well, look, I've been practicing for a long time by myself very quietly, in a sense, in backwater in a way that's remote. I mean, nobody more surprised than me, I'm sure, and probably many architects pretty surprised, too. That's alright. PETER THOMPSON There's another architect, a Spanish architect, Jose Antonio Coderch who was really quite important for you. GLENN MURCUTT The Spaniards say he was a very tough man. To me, he was just so gentle. And he said... we got into conversation about all sorts of areas - of religion, of, of what was happening in music today and architecture was significant discussion, of course. And he said to me, he said, "I must tell you, I am 62 and with every new building, I am still very nervous. I am very anxious." That was, to me, a total release of my innermost fears that I saw, all around me, all my peers, with the greatest of confidence designing this work and I think, "Jesus, I'm so nervous about it all." He also said to me, "I tell my students you must put into your work, first, effort, secondly, love and finally - and I must say, very Catholic Spanish suffering." I feel very comfortable practising the way I do. I feel very comfortable about not having staff. I find it very difficult to say, "I don't think it's good enough. Do it better," and I tend to get angry and I don't like that side of me. So I decided a long time ago that if I'm going to expand at all, I will take on an equal collaboration with those for whom I have enormous respect. Over the years, Wendy Lewin, also an architect, had collaborated on a number of projects with me. It wasn't until the late '90s that we came together, we married and we continue to run our practices separately. Today, I don't make any models. It's all done through eye, hand, thinking and drawing. When I am thinking and I'm
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drawing by hand, I've arrived at where I was going before I've realised I've arrived. That's not the same with a stencil or a computer. It's entirely different. Of course, the Pritzker Prize has had an immense impact on me, personally, my life and the people around me. Just how fortunate can one be? In the first year, of course, you are subjected to literally hundreds and hundreds of phone calls from various agencies wanting to do something. It meant that I couldn't get my work done. I'm, all the time, in anxiety. I mean, my life is one of anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I don't know how to control that, so the Pritzker's made it worse, in that sense. But, at another level, what a wonderful thing to have happened in one's life. PETER THOMPSON Glenn, in all those years of practice, what's given you most satisfaction? GLENN MURCUTT Well, 39 years of practice, I've met so many clients and all of them, without exception - maybe one or two exceptions - I can say it'd be wonderful to see them again and to be able to know that our friendships have been developed through my being their architect in that process. PETER THOMPSON Thanks for taking us through the contours of your life. It's been great. GLENN MURCUTT Thank you, Peter, very much.
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