Murcutt Foundation

For more than 20 years, the Murcutt Foundation has placed a real focus on teaching and learning in the landscape - running both a summer school for students of architecture about to launch in to the academic year, and in the Glenn Murcutt Masterclass aimed at architects who are looking to recharge after years of practice. So what’s different about this way of teaching and learning? How does it seek to complement what’s taught in schools of architecture? Come with us as we listen in to two of the masters, Rick Leplastrier and Peter Stutchbury - both recipients of the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal for architecture - and from students who were part of the summer school held in 2024....

In a recent address, Bangladesh architect Marina Tabassum revealed that the first confrontation of her professional life was witnessing the commodifying of architecture drifting toward instant gratification and industrial-scale materials devised to standardise the entire globe.This may be why her work is so grounded in the practical needs of the people of her country who are on the frontier of climate change and displacement of peoples it brings.Marina starts by describing the natural forces that are continuing to shape Bangladesh thanks to more than 700 rivers that form the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta. We hear that water shapes and reshapes the terrain - giving rise to new land while absorbing other land back into the vast waterscape of this delta…and all under a colonial system of property rights that assumes land is a fixed asset!Marina Tabassum joined Rick Joy, Marusa Zorec, Niall McLaughlin, Peter Stutchbury and four others in a driving epic over three weeks across the rich, remote Australian desert landscape; before speaking at an event called Stories of Earth: Echoes in Architecture, hosted by the Murcutt Foundation in September 2024.Marina starts us out on that journey; showing us a swag, a pair of boots, a water bottle…and the milky way that she saw for the first time.

In a truly magnificent arc that spans about 10,000 years, the UKs Niall McLaughlin weaves together 10 projects with 10 yarns drawn from characters from Australia’s red centre. From the first signs of settlement in the neolithic period, to buildings designed to dissolve in the English landscape, Niall shares a visual essay on the structural beauty of a rugby scrum and a truly wild tale from the 9th C of a ship suspended in the air that inspired a place of quiet spiritual reflection.According to Niall, the first houses gave us a history. They encouraged us to believe that we could jointly invest in more ambitious activities whose returns were not immediately obvious. This expanded horizon transformed human culture. It also gave us our present conception of architecture, which is, above all, a representation of temporal depth.Niall McLaughlin joined fellow architects Marina Tabassum, Rick Joy, Marusa Zorec, Peter Stutchbury and four others in a desert odyssey over three weeks in Australia’s rich and remote desert landscape; before speaking at an event called Stories of Earth: Echoes in Architecture, hosted by the Murcutt Foundation in September 2024.

As the trees lose their leaves in the Slovenian winter, the landscape is dominated by strong verticals. It’s a landscape that Marusa Zorec describes as big on solitude; but one in which she finds freedom.Welcome to Slovenia! A country of 2 million people that is around the same size as Lake Eyre in South Australia! Marusa’s talk is an example of how a 3 week journey through the rich and remote Australian outback shaped her thinking - as it did for Marina Tabassum, Rick Joy, and Niall McLaughlin who all joined Peter Stutchbury and others to drive across the red centre; from Broome to the Chau Chak Wing building at UTS, Sydney for an event titled ‘Stories of earth: echoes in architecture’ in September 2024. Marusa Zorec tells us Slovenia’s past is one marked by conflict, which has somehow imposed a negative on its memory. So much so that many buildings and spaces are just not appreciated; so often rejected for what they represent in the minds of so many.As a result, much of the built heritage is derelict. This brought Marusa to the work she’s become known for - modern interventions in older buildings. It’s patient work, requiring her to listen to the stories of the sites she works with. As she puts it; so many of the buildings she works with are stone and brick, with vaulted rooms inside. These are spaces Marusa is driven to liberate with contemporary thinking that brings daylight and places for community while balancing the latest construction standards and conservation.Marusa speaks to one of her early projects, interventions in a Franciscan monastery in Ljubljana, and more recent projects like the Square and open air altar at the basilica of Mary Help in Brezje, the Renovation of Plečnik house - the museum-home of one of Slovenia’s most well known architects - and an Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People in Ljubljana.

After more than 5 years in the making, ‘Glenn Murcutt: Unbuilt Works’ brings to life 10 projects designed by Glenn Murcutt AO that remain unbuilt. This remarkable book, authored by architect Nick Sissons and published by Thames and Hudson, was launched on 25 July 2024, at the State Library of NSW.In researching the book, Nick Sissons visited the Murcutt Collection held by the State Library on more than 80 occasions; working through early sketches, drawings and correspondence to identify the projects, interviewing - and working closely with - Murcutt to faithfully render those works on their original sites. Large format photo-realistic renders bring to life all of the projects in the book, with text, sketches and working drawings prepared by Murcutt at the time. The projects included a house designed in 1969 for Murcutt's mother on a site in Seaforth.But the book doesn't treat Murcutt's unbuilt projects in isolation. Instead, references are made to built projects that were being designed at the same time. For example, the house on the central coast explores themes similar to those being explored by Glenn Murcutt, Wendy Lewin and Reg Lark at the Boyd Centre on the NSW south coast. The book also includes essays from Glenn Murcutt and Laura Harding, a Sydney-based architectural designer, writer, critic and educator who taught in the design studio led by Murcutt at UNSW.Speaking at the event Sissons described the layers of record that are held in the Murcutt Collection; ranging from early sketch ideas that are often discarded, to the ‘diamonds’ that reveal themselves in the final layer of working drawings. Murcutt spoke of important early mentors, like the great Spanish architect Jose Coderch, who first described how the start of every project brings a certain anxiety that drives design exploration and that ultimately proves Murcutt's dictum that architects do not 'create', but 'discover'. But such discovery does not come without commitment to doing the ordinary extraordinarily well, as Murcutt is often heard to say. In fact, as Murcutt puts it:“With every compromise you knowingly make in your work…when that compromise is built, that represents your next client” - Glenn Murcutt AO'Glenn Murcutt: unbuilt works' demonstrates that Murcutt is one who has consistently refused to make compromises over the 55 years of architectural practice. Copies can be purchased through Thames and Hudson here.

This is the second part of a conversation between Rick Leplastrier AO and Glenn Murcutt AO from 2014 at the University of Newcastle.It opens with Murcutt’s recollections of meeting famed Spanish architect Jose Coderch in Barcelona in 1973 as part of a travelling scholarship; and Cordech’s famous invocation of effort, love and suffering in architecture. We’re also taken to the moment Rick meets the client for what would become one of his most celebrated projects; the Palm Garden House. And Murcutt shares with us how his early practice specialising in modest alterations and additions grew to produce some of his most well known new works like the Marie Short House, and the house at Mount Irvine - all achieved as a sole practitioner seeking to build, as he says, a vocabulary of his work.We hear again about working with materials, the joy of detailing well….and why it's important to always do the ordinary extraordinarily well.

In this conversation from 2014 at the University of Newcastle, Rick LePlastrier AO and Glenn Murcutt AO share lessons that have shaped their practice; from early groundings at university; fundamentals like drawing and observation, learning from nature’s own lessons and what goes in to teaching architecture well.We pick it up with a question about when an architect completes their best work, and the risks that come with recognition and fame...