Glenn Murcutt
Recipient of the 2002 Pritzker Architectural Prize, Murcutt is noted as Australia's chief exponent of sustainable and site-sensitive buildings.
Working alone, as the title
suggests, he created an original Australian architecture, characterized
by the quality of the outback landscape. His buildings have evolved
from the work of Mies van der Rohe (e.g., Mies's Crown Hall at the
Illinois Institute of Technology), as seen in structures dating from
the Laurie Short House of 1973 to the more expressive Magney House of
1985. Written by architecture critics Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper and
divided into three sections-theory, practice, and technique-the volume
begins with a series of brief essays, including one by Murcutt himself,
on the technical, material, and aesthetic aspects of the work; oddly,
none of these essays acknowledges the architect's obvious debt in his
early work to Mies. In the middle section, 23 designs, illustrated with
color and black-and-white photographs, are presented with brief,
sometimes overly promotional descriptions and more insightful analyses
by the architect. In the final section, a series of highly informative
sketches, drawings, and construction details documents each of the same
designs. Complementing E.M. Farrelly's more concise but ultimately more
satisfying Three Houses: Glenn Murcutt, this volume is recommended for
larger architecture collections.
Paul Glassman, New York Sch. of Interior Design Lib., New York
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
