The best Christmas present I received last year was a surprise letter from Glenn Murcutt. Before he came to teach at my school, making a 48 hour round trip flight every other week, he had just won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s top award. He looks like a mild mannered koala bear with glasses perched on his nose, but beneath the surface he’s incredibly intense. As a sole practitioner from Australia who works by himself on a handful of projects he often works very late into the night. Clients often have to wait years for him to start work on their projects because he’s so busy. He only builds in Australia because he says he knows that land the best. His buildings are like boats, they are made to respond to the elements and are able to take advantage of winds and sun. None of his buildings rely on air conditioning.
Our studio at school was a hypothetical visitor’s center based in Chaco Canyon. He had the students look at the project from multiple aspects: cultural history of the Anasazi, geology, flora, fauna, and archaeology. We made a site visit to New Mexico. I was tasked with driving the minivan for Murcutt and our studio for our trip. Driving on desert sand is tough. Initially I tried to drive in the tracks left by other vehicles (like skiing in cross country ski tracks) but I kept getting stuck in the sand. Murcutt taught me to drive with one wheel in the track, with the other wheel straddling the embankment. It took a little getting used to as the car is always tilted while driving. Making turns you have to accelerate from one side to another or risk getting stuck in the middle. By the end of the trip he had me driving through the sage brush dotted desert sand like a dirt bandit.
I learned so much wisdom through our conversations driving in the desert. He’s most renowned for his houses, but he’s able to process large scale ideas and think outside the box. He told me about the master plan for the pyramids of Giza. All the circulation has been routed to the perimeter so the experience of the pyramids is not compromised by crossing car traffic. A shuttle bus system is set up to move people around. In America, the typical interpretive strategy for a historical site is to put a road, a parking lot, and an obtrusive label on a site... The geology and hydrology of a site will determine what flora can grow there which in turn will determine what fauna will be at a site... He told me how his father brought his family to Papua New Guinea, where it was very dangerous to be a white man. To survive, he developed a heightened sense of nature and was very aware of suspicious movements in the brush and nature and lurking figures.... He told me how Aalto linked curves together in his geometries.... He told me to make a building generous in its flexibility, to allow multitude of activities to inhabit and invade it organically... He spoke of entering buildings from the side, like the aborigines, to provide a sense of refuge.... His father had 5 pianos in the house for the kids to play, they won swimming competitions because he made them swim while he held resistant elastic bands around their waists. They built their own bricks, windows and boats.... “You start every project with fear, you don’t know what will happen since design is not predetermined. But you overcome fear by trust your abilities to resolve design problems.... Never be afraid to throw a good idea away. (I’ve learned a good architect or scientist knows where to look, sees the dead ends before walking down the street, and test ideas quickly)... You are only as good as your last job. If you compromise, your future client will want to hire you for your compromises.”
He returned to America a couple years ago and made a speech at Cooper Union about a recent mosque project. Afterwards he told a whole story about how he and his dad went around people’s backyard collecting nutrient rich septic tank soil late at night. They harvested eucalyptus seeds, burned them to germinate, grew eucalyptus saplings within the pilfered septic soil, and planted them around his neighborhood. After 50 years, the trees stand tall and nobody knows where they came from. A few months ago, I sent him a booklet of my Dallas work, and put a picture of eucalyptus seeds and bark on the cover and thanked him for going around the world teaching studios, planting 'seeds' in students' minds. I didn’t think he’d ever write back, because I didn’t hear from him for months. His letter appeared in my mailbox 12/24.
In the letter he answered the hardest issue I’ve been wrestling with recently: ‘How do you start your own firm?’ Murcutt said he worked for another firm until he was 33 and they couldn’t stand each other at the end. He questioned their design integrity. They thought he was stubborn. A mentor of his told him the risk of not starting a firm is that later in life you’d feel regret for not having taken the chance to embark on your own venture. He told me starting a firm during a recession was not easy, but it toughened him to economize enough to survive. You find out quickly what is essential and what is not. He didn’t have enough money to afford car insurance, so he had to take public transport to client meetings. Murcutt not only persevered, he would win the Pritzker in his 60’s.
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