2022 MURCUTT MASTERCLASS

September 2022

Recently during a warm winter week I had the pleasure of participating in the 2022 Glenn Murcutt Masterclass. The internationally renowned architecture course is led by Glenn Murcutt, Britt Andresen, Richard Leplastrier, Peter Stutchbury and Lindsay Johnston, a group of architects whose work and teachings over recent decades has come to define the discourse around building on the rich and complex Australian landscape.

The class has been running annually for two decades, with the 2022 edition entailing a one week class centred around the Tocal Agricultural College in the NSW Hunter Valley. The Tocal campus was designed by Ian McKay in 1965 and entails a beautifully intact late mid-century series of buildings that has been awarded the AIA enduring architecture prize. The experience of the week was quite profound and has left my mind swirling with ideas and concepts since leaving the class, which prompted this document to capture the concepts passed down by these enduring masters.

I have been lucky across several lectures and events to hear Glenn Murcutt, Richard Leplastrier and Peter Stutchbury speak in person before. Their work and experiences often focuses on the area of Australia between Sydney and Brisbane, a landscape that personally I had never visited. To develop a better understanding of this area (and to escape the Melbourne winter) we decided to travel down from Brisbane to Sydney over the week before the masterclass. Across this seven days we slowly explored the amazing coastline, visited secluded beaches, hiked trails and unearthed timeless architecture.

The warmer weather in northern NSW allows for a larger engagement with the landscape and water across the whole year, best exhibited by the numerous ocean pools, busily used even through the winter months. The clear highlight from the busy week was hiking into uncover Ian McKay’s iconic Lobster Bay House, sitting peacefully in a forest above a beautiful bay beach. Rounding out the week was a trip to the Pittwater YHA in far north Sydney. Several of the masterclass tutors live in this area and it was easy to quickly realise why, as you leave the car and worries behind and catch the ferry out to this area of serene natural beauty.

The masterclass kicked off on the Sunday morning at Sydney Airport, where 25 fresh faces were ready for a bus trip out to the Hunter Valley and the week of activities to follow. The masterclass group consisted of a range of architects and allied professionals from across Australia and abroad, all with a varied range of backgrounds that would hopefully cross pollinate throughout the week.

After a three hour bus trip, the group arrived at Krinklewood Winery in the Hunter Valley where they have recently completed a prototype of the Dimensions X OM1 Mobile Studio. This small scale, low impact house, is part of a new venture by Peter Stutchbury Architecture in collaboration with Oscar Martin to provide an alternate path to the increasingly large, inflexible and poorly designed typical Australian houses. The finely-tuned project is soon to be available in several modular sizes and endeavours to balance the necessity for well crafted outcomes at accessible prices. It will be exciting to see how this project progresses and if it inspires any change to the current trajectory of Australian residential design. We then returned to the bus and continued onto our accommodation at Tocal and dinner at the College dining hall, before more introductions and an early night.

The next morning started excitedly as we got back on the bus and ventured north up to Glenn Murcutt’s own farmhouse, the Marie Short House, where Glenn was waiting for us to host the group and give an in-depth tour and the backstory of one of Australia’s most important homes.

The house was initially designed for Marie Short, a relation of a previous house Glenn completed, the Laurie Short House. The Marie Short House is well known by architects across the globe and at first glance the joy of the design is in its simplicity – two elevated gabled corrugated metal parallel forms sitting gently on the landscape. In person the experience evolves to a new level of beauty, rather than only being a pragmatic form, it is as Glenn emphasised “a balance of the rational and the poetic”. The house feels simultaneously obvious and ethereal, a level of achievement that I have only experienced elsewhere in Australia at Robin Boyd’s Walsh Street House.

To cap a wonderful day Richard Leplastrier led an evening discussion on his work and experiences, all from the perspective and influence of drawing. Richard is an enigma of Australian architecture, a person of amazing wisdom and sensitivity. He is intentionally relatively unknown, happily enjoying the tranquillity of his life living in the Pittwater.

Richard’s education as an architect featured a heavy drawing component under the tutelage of Lloyd Rees who accentuated his affinity for the landscape and desire for all of his projects to have a fundamental comprehension for the earth in which it sits. His designs often look to explain and discover aspects of the landscape to enable architecture to highlight the remarkable nature of the setting. Most importantly Richard is an incredibly humble and warm character, and it was a true pleasure to get to spend a couple large portions of time getting to know him better and understand further how he thinks. Personally I found a strong link between Richard and my own grandfather, who was a major influence on my own childhood in rural Victoria in developing an appreciation for living on the often dry landscape. An experience of realisation that is unique to the Murcutt Masterclass.

After a couple big travel days I get out early for a sunrise run to explore the area around Tocal. This was timely as the focus of the masterclass was about to change towards a design task on the campus. Later in the morning the full group made our way over to the main campus buildings which were designed by Ian McKay in 1965 with the help of a series of other young architects including Philip Cox. The masterclass has been hosted at this location for the last two years since the recent additions at the Arthur & Yvonne Boyd Education Centre prompted a change of location.

The Tocal campus features a series of interior spaces, cloisters and courtyards to create a nestled environment that also open up to the vast Hunter Valley landscape. The layout of the campus is quite eclectic with glancing views and semi blocked sight lines that give the impression that the area, much like European villages, evolved over time. The detailing and craft of both the timber structure and brickwork is quite special and has allowed the forms to age wonderfully – especially the exposed timber ceiling structures of the main hall and chapel. Unlike many other campuses of this era, Tocal has remained relatively untouched, which is undoubtedly a big reason for the selection as the location for the masterclass.

Slightly down the hill from the main campus is the pool and adjacent amenity building which was to become the main topic of the masterclass design task. The pool was introduced a decade after the main campus and is unfortunately sited in a position that is detached from the campus, unsympathetic to the landscape and unforgiving to maximising the pools use. While at the pool, the Tocal Principal joined the group and discussed at length the current limitations and possibilities of a renovation to the pool area – which were many.

Following this we broke out into preassigned groups of four and started to discuss the site and to develop a potential focus for a design proposal that would improve the pool area to both maximise its functionality and the discourse it has with the wider landscape in which it sits. These discussions and ideas continued through the afternoon and evening, which included a sunset walk with Peter Stutchbury to the nearby Homestead, a formal dinner at the refurbished barn and a moonlight stroll back to the accommodation. This elongated and varying thought process was all leading towards coming up with a key question that we were looking to explore for the site and present these findings to the tutors early the next day.

The fast passed nature of the design charette ahead of us became evident when early the next morning we found our group standing in front the masterclass leaders explaining our concepts for the site – less than 24 hours after learning of the task. Our initial ideas explored a range of concepts around water, refuge and prospect and land use appropriateness. We felt that each of these larger concepts all reinforced the following question that we proposed as our key concept to drive the scheme:

“How can the area function most appropriately for all seasons?”

The feedback from the tutors after our brief presentation was one of the main reasons why many had chosen to attend the masterclass. Each tutor had differing perspectives and the real magic appeared when two tutors partially disagreed and debated their differing ideas on the projects potentials in front of the starstruck presenting group.

Our feedback was varied, but largely focused on the need to step back and look more broadly. Our ideas at a finer scale were well placed, but needed to have a greater connection to the broader context of the site, environment and cultural aspects. Given this feedback our group reconciled our thoughts, filled up with lunch and went back over to the site for the afternoon to delve deeper into the complexities of the larger site. Stepping back and reassessing the foundations of a sturdy, but not perfect concept is often unnerving, as it intuitively feels counterproductive to quickly coming up with a design solution. This was indeed a concept that the masterclass was looking to reinforce and demonstrate to highlight that as a society we are are becoming increasingly tolerant of hasty solutions that do not improve or acknowledge their context, leading to a growing propensity for mediocrity.

The afternoon at site did indeed uncover a fundamental site issue that we felt could be used to underpin our scheme: the need to rectify the altered grades across the campus. During the construction of the main campus in the 1960’s and decades of the area being used as an agricultural field days site has led to undulating terraces dominating what would otherwise have been a relatively evenly sloping site. The terraces are creating a range of subtle, but important issues on the area which are impacting the sites ability to function effectively – as explored in the sketches above.

Contrasting most interestingly with this idea of rectifying the counterproductive terraces encircling the site was the flat planes of the existing pool and adjacent tennis court areas that were the focus of the brief. Thankfully at this moment of excited progress, but unclear trajectory, we had the opportunity to sit down with Glenn Murcutt at the poolside tables. As you would expect he was able to humanise our concepts and provide some pragmatic examples for how the design ideas could be weaved into harmony with the setting. With a fresh focus and increased confidence in the underlying concepts behind the scheme the sun set on the day and we returned for dinner.

Following dinner Peter Stutchbury lead a talk that delved into his philosophies, upbringing and career. Peter is the youngest of the tutors and has developed one of the preeminent firms in Australia in close alignment with the ideals learnt from the original occupants of this incredibly old landscape. Peter’s dry tone and confusion with the current trajectory of Australian housing, when coupled with his deep interface with first nations people across the globe, has allowed him to develop an architectural logic that looks to create truly connected, enduring and sensitive outcomes – a blunt rebuttable of the façade washing of commercial sustainable solutions.

The sun arose early to another beautiful Hunter Valley clear winter morning. The day was set aside as the first of two big design days to progress ideas in regular dialogue with the design leaders who were available for crits to test and explore the evolution of each group’s ideas. Given our teams concept evolution the afternoon before we quickly developed some sketches and plans to demonstrate the concept and took the first available opportunity to sit down with Brit, Glenn and Peter to test the design proposal.

The step back in focus was appreciated in the review and we were given scope to continue and expand the concept to refine its appropriateness. During the discussion with the design leaders Peter questioned an under researched assumption in our scheme, this searing but inspired moment of clarity highlighted the need for all designs to be considered and researched. Presumptions can not only lead to poor outcomes, but also missed opportunities. In stark contrast to the litany of unconsidered design outcomes that continue to increasingly taint this amazing country. I left this meeting with a new realisation: “if you don’t feel confident enough to present it to Peter Stutchbury, go back and continue to explore and research the basis of the design until you are”.

Once again, the feedback from the tutors prompted a return to the site to explore further and excitingly we began to theorise the layout of the brief more formally on the site. The task focused on remediating the updated pool and adjacent amenity block, as well as adding a series of health and wellness functions to increase the usage of the area. The sketch of the pool and tennis courts sitting as sandstone outcrops, with the rest of the site returning to its more typical even grading was strong in the groups minds and we began to test this concept through theorising the introduction of the program. As our ideas started to take shape on site we decided to return to the work areas to pursue them on paper for the afternoon.

Unfortunately, this is where the masterclass took a detour. Over the previous few days a single, then numerous cases of Covid began to appear in the group. Even with mandatory masks, the majority of the time spent outside and regular testing the cases began to snowball and the decision was made to end the class slightly early before the situation became worse. This sadly meant an abrupt end to the design task, a pause on burgeoning friendships and most notably a restriction on the extent of wisdom we were able to learn from the class leaders.

Immediately after the class, during a short stint in the Blue Mountains at my brothers house I continued the design ideas a little further to close out the active design concepts and hopefully draw a somewhat more natural conclusion to the class. Now back in Melbourne I have compiled my experiences in this document and below are the design ideas our group was exploring, that I extended individually the weekend after the class ended. Whilst obviously not perfectly realised, it greatly helped my own recollections of the course to compile and present these ideas:

The Murcutt Masterclass was something that I had been hoping to attend for nearly a decade ever since an old employer had spoken glowingly of his own experience on the student version. After being abroad for many years and then stagnated by covid lockdowns recently it was wonderful to finally get the chance to attend. Even though the full experience was cut short, it was still a wonderfully eye-opening experience that I feel will by an enduring moment in my life going forward, both architecturally and as a person living on this amazing country.

Above my desk is a large format aerial photo of the farm that I grew up on. Even though the landscape it captures is inherently familiar to who I am, ever since taking the class it feels different. More complex yet somehow simpler. Instead of something to be occupied, it is something to understand and nurture. I look forward to continuing to harness the energy and wisdom of the leaders of the masterclass and the peers who undertook it with me for many years. The work and continuing teachings of Glenn Murcutt, Richard Leplastrier, Brit Andresen, Peter Stutchbury and Lindsay Johnston is a true asset that is unique to Australia. We need to do all that we can to continue their amazing legacy and shape the trajectory of Australia in a more positive direction in harmony, not conflict, with this remarkable country.