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May is a perfect time of year to be in Rome. An added incentive this year would be to schedule a trip to coincide with the Pritzker Prize ceremony on May 29th. Guests from around the world will assemble atop Michelangelo’s Campidoglio to honor the 25th Pritzker Laureate, Australian architect Glenn Murcutt.

 

Who???

 

“There is nothing ordinary about Mr. Murcutt's work. He has had the kind of focused career many architecture students dream about, before getting lost in the commercial thicket and ending up designing strip shopping centers.” – David Dillon, Dallas Morning News (full article)

 

He is considered one of Australia’s best-kept secrets and, at the same time, one of the world’s most influential architects. According to reports, no one is more surprised about receiving the Pritzker Prize than Murcutt. "It’s beyond anything I could have possibly imagined. It’s such an honor and such a privilege to join those before me," Murcutt told Architectural Record. "It means that at one level in my country, which is a fairly conservative country, this will raise the bar." (full article)

 

"Getting the prize was a terrible shock," the Sydney-based Murcutt said during an interview with Nicolai Ouroussoff of the Los Angeles Times. "What is amazing is that it has gone to someone of my stature. I work with no staff, no secretary, and no computer-aided design. I don't even have a cellular phone. It is a small operation--just me." (full article)

 

That, in a nutshell, explains his relatively low profile, in terms of main-stream press, In fact, this is the first time since its inauguration in 1979 that the Pritzker has been awarded to a sole practitioner. Adding to the “who?” factor is that in his 40-something years of practice, 66-year-old Murcutt has not designed anything outside of Australia, and most of his work has been residential.

 

Pritzker Prize jury chairman, J. Carter Brown, commented, “Glenn Murcutt occupies a unique place in today’s architectural firmament. In an age obsessed with celebrity, the glitz of our ‘starchitects,’ backed by large staffs and copious public relations support, dominate the headlines. As a total contrast, our laureate works in a one-person office on the other side of the world from much of the architectural attention, yet has a waiting list of clients, so intent is he to give each project his personal best. He is an innovative architectural technician who is capable of turning his sensitivity to the environment and to locality into forthright, totally honest, non-showy works of art.”

 

Actually, Murcutt is hardly a "secret" since he travels the world teaching and lecturing at universities (including Yale University School of Architecture; Washington University, St. Louis; University of Pennsylvania; the state universities of Texas, Arizona, Kansas, and Hawaii). He has also been the subject of numerous books and international magazine articles. One of the first definitive works was “Glenn Murcutt: Buildings and Projects” by Françoise Fromonot, first published in 1995 (now out of print – but perhaps not for long). In that book, she describes Murcutt as the "first Australian architect whose work has attracted international attention." (books by and about Glenn Murcutt)

 

An element of that attention is his approach to architecture (often a stark contrast to his contemporaries) that includes an unabashed opposition to the people who exercise much control over what and how things should be built, and perhaps offers a glimmer as to why he has so few public projects under his belt: "I have had to fight for my architecture. I have fought for it right from the outset because councils have clearly found the work a threat. For many designs I put to council, we either had to resort to a court for the outcome or better, negotiate a satisfactory result, always trying to avoid a compromise. I have had the greatest trouble with planning, building, and health department staff, many of whom have backgrounds unrelated to architecture, but offer very conservative judgments in taste and aesthetics.

 

"I am not interested in designing large scale projects. Doing many smaller works provides me with many more opportunities for experimentation. Our building regulations are supposed to prevent the worst; they in fact fail to stop the worst, and at best frustrate the best — they certainly sponsor mediocrity. I’m trying to produce what I call minimal buildings, but buildings that respond to their environment.”

 

His primary clients are residential, who want houses that are not only environmentally sensitive, but provide privacy and security in structures that please all the senses.

 

The Aboriginal people in Western Australia have a saying, "to touch this earth lightly," which is a plea for man not to disturb nature any more than necessary. Murcutt’s architecture conveys that thought with his houses that float above the land on stilts a full story high, or footings that disturb the land minimally. In many, there are places for nature’s creatures (frogs, snakes, etc.) to escape flooding without disturbing human habitants. In other projects, otherwise intrusive swimming pools and water features are more than design features – they are integral fire-fighting elements for protecting the environment (including creatures) from all-too-frequent wildfires. (It is also interesting to note that very few of Murcutt’s homes/environments require air-conditioning.)

 

Ouroussoff of the LA Times said: “Murcutt is best known for designing small, rural houses that combine a Modernist aesthetic with a deep sensitivity to the environment. Over a 40-year career, he has built a body of work whose central theme is the desire to heighten our awareness of the natural landscape – its sounds, smells and climate. His best designs rest on the landscape with an almost reverential delicacy.”

 

Thomas J. Pritzker, president of The Hyatt Foundation which sponsors the prize, said, “Glenn Murcutt is a stark contrast to most of the highly visible architects of the day — his works are not large scale, the materials he works with, such as corrugated iron, are quite ordinary, certainly not luxurious; and he works alone.

 

The headline by Geraldine O'Brien, Architecture Writer for the Sydney Morning Herald declared “For just a lucky few, masterly Murcutt is a household name.” She continued: “Murcutt is best known to Australians for his use of corrugated iron in elegant and supremely livable houses which have elevated the humble Aussie shed to an art form.” (full article)

 

In what we take as kudos to Murcutt, Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times offered: “His designs are formally rigorous, minimal structures that recall the work of Charles and Ray Eames. But Mr. Murcutt's selection by the Pritzker jury can be seen as an acknowledgment that sustainability now overrides aesthetic criteria in the urbanizing world. He added a keen observation (barb?) to the Pritzker jury: “Pritzker Prize watchers may note that it has been 11 years since an American architect received this honor, and many may suspect that this is not a simple case of oversight.” (full article)

 

In 1992, Murcutt was presented with the seventh Alvar Aalto Medal. The jury for that award, specifically praised his work for "the convincing synthesis of regional characteristics, climate-conditioned solutions, technological rationality and unconstrained visual expression." Glenn has since commented that he thought it significant that Jørn Utzon, Alvaro Siza, and Tadao Ando were all previous winners of the Aalto Medal, and in his words, "all of them sought to marry modern architecture to the place, the territory, the landscape."

 

It is not surprising that Murcutt says: "I am stirred to the point of anger when I see what continues to be done by so called progress – the destruction of the flora, the displacement of the fauna and all of it with the blessing, if not active collusion of our subdivision regulations. I am not rejecting urbanization. I am not seeking a kind of utopia in the bush — far from it. I am involved with and recognize the importance of a varied milieu. I am opposed to the total taming of this land and the loss of the wildness of the native scene. The land appeals for care and we need to become friends with the landscape and not be threatened by it."

 

Murcutt says, "A building should be able to open up and say, ‘I am alive and looking after my people,’ or instead, ‘I’m closed now, and I’m looking after my people as well.’ This to me is the real issue: buildings should respond. …They should open and close and modify and re-modify …That is a part of architecture for me, the resolution of levels of light that we desire, the resolution of the wind that we wish for, the modification of the climate as we want it. All this makes a building live."

 

One of Murcutt’s favorite quotations, which he is not quite sure whether it comes from his father (who taught him a love for nature and architecture) or from Thoreau, whom his father was so fond of quoting: "Since most of us spend our lives doing ordinary tasks, the most important thing is to carry them out extraordinarily well."

 

Comments by Pritzker Prize Jurors

 

Jury:

 

Chairman: J. Carter Brown

Director emeritus, National Gallery of Art; Chairman, U.S. Commission of Fine Arts
Washington, D.C.

 

Giovanni Agnelli

Chairman emeritus, Fiat, Torino, Italy

 

Ada Louise Huxtable

Author and Architectural Critic, New York City

 

Carlos Jimenez

Professor, Rice University School of Architecture; Principal, Carlos Jimenez Studio, Houston, Texas

 

Jorge Silvetti
Chairman, Department of Architecture, Harvard University, Graduate School of Design
Cambridge, Massachusetts

 

The Lord Rothschild
Former Chairman of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery; Former Chairman, National Heritage Memorial Fund
London, England

 

Executive Director: Bill Lacy
State University of New York at Purchase
Purchase, New York