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Glenn Murcutt: A Singluar Architectural Practice,
by Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper.
Glenn Murcutt is an anomoly of architecture:
a celebrated and internationally well-known architect who
eskews style and size in favor of functionalism and the
level of control that comes from a "singular practice."
His relatively solitary ways, deliberate process, and exceptional
buildings earned Murcutt the Pritzker Prize in 2002. This
monograph illuminates his working method and ideas about
architecture while also dispelling some myths, mainly that
he only builds remote, bush houses and only designs with
linear plans. The book is broken into three sections: the
first contains essays by the authors and the architect and
a detailed description of Murcutt's design process, the
second presents a selection of built and unbuilt projects
(mainly houses), finally the third compiles working drawings
of the projects presented. Through the projects we see an
evolution from Miesian, flat-roof designs executed when
he started his practice in the late 1960s to his more popular
angular and curved roof sections done in corrugated metal.
Along the way we see how Murcutt's linear plan usually arrives
after initial ideas (usually courtyard) don't work, and
we see a number of suburban houses Murcutt has completed.
The consistent quality amongst all his buildings is their
relationship to nature and culture, the way they are derived
from natural elements, be they typical (heat/cold, wind,
rain) or atypical (insects, wildfires, snakes) and the way
the buildings respond to their context and the client's
wishes. These responsibilities result in structures that
not only tread lightly upon the land but also function in
a way that - as Murcutt describes - "great poetic potential
arises from the utilitarian."
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