The Architect, Glenn Murcutt

Despite warnings that he would never make a living out of domestic architecture, Glenn Murcutt went into private practice in 1969. Since then, he has become one of Australia's most successful architects, winning a record seven Merit Awards for houses since 1975. His work has attracted 22 architectural awards at State level, including five Wilkinson Awards for housing, three Blacket Awards for country architecture and one Sulman Award for works other than housing.

At national level, he has received four awards, the first Robin Award for housing and another later, a Sir Zelman Cowan Commendation for the Museum at Kempsey and the Timber in Architecture Award. His work has gained international status, having had many works published overseas and representing Australia through travelling exhibitions. He received the International Commonwealth Architects Association Award for an architecture responding to place and its culture.

In 1987 Glenn Murcutt was invited to address the Architectural Leaqgue of New York on his work as well as sit on the American Institute of Architects/Sunset Magazine, Western Division Housing Awards, as the external juror.

Glenn Murcutt was born in Lordon of Australian parents. He spent his early years in the New Guinea highlands, where his father operated a gold mine.

The family returned to Australia in 1941 and went to live first at Manly on the Lagoon, and then in the bush at Clontarf. Upon graduation in 1962, Murcutt left Australia for London where he worked with Ian Fraser and Associates. Each year he travelled in Europe, spending some months in Yugoslavia, Poland, Scandinavia, Greece. Of all countries, the one which influenced him the most was Greece, where he spent six months with a Greek family. In the Greek islands, he discovered the simplicity of this architecture, its inevitability and rationale. He was impressed by the use of a limited number of materials which achieved, when understood, a most poetic architecture. This simplicity, together with the understanding of place, has had considerable influence on his search for an appropriate architecture in Australia.

Upon returning to Australia in 1965, Murcutt went to work with Ancher Mortlock Murray and Woolley. Ancher was then the doyen of Sydney architects, but Murcutt claims to have been influenced by him more as a human being than as an architect.

In 1969 Murcutt set up his own practice and has worked for the most part as a sole operator since then and has carried out extensive overseas travel.

Glenn Murcutt is a country person. One of his major preoccupations as an architect is the relationship of his buildings to the landscape, nature and the bush. To him, a building is a filter between man and the elements.