Australian Landscape

The Australian landscape, along with the international influences that have been placed upon it, provides profound potential for local architects to utilise international connections, particularly when considering the tectonic. In response to this, critics often discuss the affinity of local architects with foreign and international ideas when responding to local conditions. This paper will explore two such architects, looking at the use of the vernacular by Glenn Murcutt, and his link of land and climate, and the American influence upon architects Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin, that allowed the Australian landscape to be elaborately contemplated and integrated into their projects creating distinctive topography. It will also explore

He relates Murcutt’s use of trusses and struts in the Magney House to be similar to that of bone structure, as too, the body navigates gravity when dealing with the landscape. The house’s structural system allows the steel frame to bend into a natural form that responds to the immediate Australian landscape. Mitchell Schwarzer claims that these “forms communicate themes within tectonics of the natural and cultural order” and that the Magney House, through its free form roof (Figure 2.) reflects a climatic consideration of the suns movement. This suggests regionalism is a consequence of Australian architecture, an architecture that is regionally based and achieving a relevant form of contemporary practice. The Magney House is articulated with natural elements, and like the Marika-Alderton House, has no a need for mechanical ventilation systems and what Jennifer Taylor describes as a “finely tuned relationship of man and nature”. Murcutt embraced nature, and as claimed by Ann Whiston, created an architecture both rational and lyrical "expressing poetry of place and of living” that connected to regional

He argues that it is the main point of difference distinguishing Murcutt 's form to that of Mies van der Rohe. Colin Davies says that although an early influence on Murcutt, Mies’s designs are universal, whereas these were responses to specifc site conditions. The vernacular allows Murcutt to deal with issues of climate, space and landscape whilst legitimising appropriation of colonial materials. Just as Drew infers, Vincent Canizaro writes how for this reason, Australian regionalism is not a matter of using the most available material, or a simple form of construction that others before had used. Drew goes onto discuss how Australia was long content to import architectural styles from England, making the identification of the vernacular difficult in Australian Architecture. Many rural building practices were a continuation of colonised practices, only modified because of material or technical obstacles. However, Drew’s awareness of the vernacular frequently implies nationalism, creating an architecture that through everyday building practices, gives status of a regional symbol. Drew saw Murcutt partly responsible for an architecture that was recognisably Australian after a period he