Tenting on Terra Nullius: The Work of Glen Murcutt

摘要

In his awe before the immensity and fragility of the Australian landscape, Glen Murcutt throws the entirety of its European development into question. Any penmanent mark is a potential scar, any building site an eventual brownfield. He is fond of quoting Thoreau's passage on how man is a prisoner of his house, and of carefully describing the ventilation patterns allowed by the movable layers of bark cladding an Aboriginal hut. Yet, he insists, 'I am not rejecting urbanisation, far from it. I am not seeking a kind of utopia in the bush. I am involved with and recognise the importance of a varied milieu. I am opposed to the total taming of this land, my country, and the loss of the wilderness of the native scene.' Amy Lelyveld describes Murcutt's search in European colonial thought and Aboriginal traditions for what he calls an architecture of 'refuge and prospect'.