Peter Stutchbury: Voices, sky, land and folk.

Introduction to Peter Stutchbury

0:00Hello. For episode 180 of the Ayers for Architecture podcast, the extraordinary Australian architect Peter Stutchbury joined me to speak about a little of his work, his origins, his purpose and his ethic. It's an extraordinary story, beautifully told by a wonderful man. A worthy addition for this, a Jubilee episode. Peter's work is deeply rooted in the land and culture of his homeland, and all the complexity that that implies. There are histories, cosmologies, manners and methods, which are drawn together in places, and through this, in Peter's telling,

0:30the work becomes a means of connection, so that as you find the work, you also find yourself becoming of the work, not in a way that you copy it, or that necessarily makes sense to you, but in a way that allows you to relax, and perhaps even not be judgmental, perhaps even to take it with you as part of your entourage. Hot dang, that's quite a way of putting it.

0:50A is for Architecture, a podcast about architecture, buildings, urban culture and space. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the A is for Architecture podcast. I'm delighted to be talking today to Peter Stutchbury, Australian architect and general superstar. Peter, thank you for joining me late in your evening and early in my morning. Pleasure.

Outback origins and university years

1:13Would you be, as my guests do, able to introduce yourself in the most effusive way you like? Certainly. I'm from a very middle-class background, having spent a lot of time in the outback of Australia and a smaller amount of time on the coast, involved in both situations in activities around nature,

1:43like surfboard riding, sailing, mustering sheep, tending to land. And I was educated in Sydney, but then went to a regional university because I wasn't brilliant enough to get into the Sydney ones. But it was fortuitous because it was a wonderful, smaller city, very accessible and with a less demanding social fabric to it.

2:22So one could explore ideas a lot easier, I felt. Which one was this? This is Newcastle University, 100 miles north of Sydney. And then I was very fortunate to meet several great thinkers in my period at university, but one that has stayed with me to date, to this date, Richard Laplastia,

2:53who was a great inspiration in those days and still is. And then, of course, my parents were great teachers as well. My father was an engineer and my mother was a, really, she was a philosopher and a musician. And so that combination gave me structure, both structure and poetry to my life, I guess.

3:25And I've followed those two streams of belonging to this day. And I'm an architect.

3:40Yes.

Lyrical technologist and architectural philosophy

3:41That's really interesting. Your architecture has been described as, I think it's described you as a, someone's described you as a lyrical technologist, which kind of brings together both your philosophical and engineering backgrounds, I guess. Do you think that's a fair description? Well, when I read it, I thought about it a lot. And I thought probably those two words together are the most accurate I've felt about my own work and the work our practice does.

4:12The lyrical comes, of course, with imagination. And the practical side is really just a way of being in the world, you know, a way of seeing things and understanding them, which I think then produces a certain honesty to your buildings and honesty to your life. That's a lovely thing to say. It's a great claim.

4:44Well, you know, not always practice to its fruition, but practice as conscientiously as possible. Yeah. I would like to understand the context to go back to Sydney and this comment you just made about sort of finding more of a voice on the edge, away from the, I guess, the dominant atmosphere of Sydney, probably, I'm assuming for the whole of Australian architecture, it's being the kind of the lodestar for Australian architecture.

5:15Is that the case? I mean, obviously, it's kind of changed a bit now as things have moved. But what was it like when you were training?

Escaping the Sydney urban mold

5:23This was, I assume, in the 70s? Yeah, it was mid-70s. Look, I think it is typical of all major cities throughout the world that there's an expectation of place, place being, in this case, a place of education. And there's almost a given stratification of those that are pursuing

5:59that particular education. I found it very dominant at school. I went to a singular boys' school, which was quite terrifying. I found it, at times, haunting. And I was disturbed by that type of education. So to go to a regional university that had none of that structure,

6:34that social structure to it, and that had teachers who themselves were discovering things in a less-pressured environment, was very beneficial to my development and really assisted me in freeing up my thinking. I think that freedom was always there, but it hadn't been released. And I think the university released that. Yes. Whereas I think in a more structured environment,

7:04it may not have happened as easily. Do you think there's something about moving out of the super-urban environments of places like Sydney as well, coming to places where, without wishing to over-romanticise it, you can sort of touch the earth, you can sort of land more securely on the land? Definitely. And definitely when the mind is active and challenged

7:37and investigatory, definitely. And those sort of environments allow that to happen with less judgment. And architecture as an industry is quite disciplinary in a way, isn't it? Well, ultimately, yeah, ultimately I think it is. And you really need to look at the sort of majority of office structures throughout the world. And, you know, I'd say the vast majority

8:08are very structured businesses. It's becoming more and more difficult for an architect to express true freedom or true imagination. It's, you know, the regulatory environment is becoming disturbing. And I was just dealing with it today, you know, with the environmental management of buildings, which I think is a good idea, but it doesn't account for systems

8:42and it doesn't account for the joy of experience, you know. It doesn't account for scale or light. And so it's a, to a degree, it's a flawed system. Yes, strikes me that flattening that you are implying is part and parcel of the sort of modernist imagination that, as I understand it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, your mentoring by people like Laplastria and Mercut

9:18is trying to escape. It's trying to create texture and life through a kind of regional, contextual precision. I truly don't think it's a deliberate move, a deliberate attempt to escape. I think it's more a practice of belief, I guess. It's a practice where one understands or one has been involved in the understanding

9:51of environment and patterns, be them climatic or weather or animal or human and respects that more than the indeterminate, you know, the things that you can't put your finger on. You can explain perhaps by beauty, but you can't explain by, for want of a better word, by truth, you can't explain it by accuracy.

10:26And I find that that area of description for me, when I, of course, there'll always be buildings that are incredibly beautiful without explanation, but I don't think they have infinite time.

10:51I think they have certain limitations, whereas there are buildings which you can go into and you can't determine whether they're past,

Learning from nature and the Opera House

11:03present or future. Can you give an example of that? Well, the Opera House is a very easy example for us to give in Sydney. But there are, you know, there are some beautiful prefabricated, brought from Scotland, warehouses that, you know, are equally as, not equally, I would say, but justifiably beautiful, you know, and I look at your roof structure behind you there and see the work going on,

11:34but see a strong, simple form, you know, that could become a beautiful space in the right hands.

11:46So, you know, it's, I think it's, it's that thing, for me anyway, it's the thing of being able, a building in this instance, being able to tell a story and not just a story of, and not just a fanciful story of colour and rhyme, but a story that goes to the very heart of thinking, to the very sort of beginnings of existence. And I don't mean that in a sort of disturbing way,

12:19I mean it in quite a purposeful way. Is this skill that you're talking about, this type of building, is it something that can be learned? That is to say, is it mimetic? Can, can it be copied? Because of course, I suppose on one hearing, you know, John Ertzson's Opera House, we have a genius at work, a genius working with very, very good engineers, a sort of, I guess, a combination of genius. But not everybody's a genius. So are you saying through things like pattern

12:50and through working with a deep knowledge of ecology or, I guess, indigenous kind of norms or practices, it is possible to get to this sort of point as an, let's call it, an ordinary designer, an ordinary architect? Not sure. But we don't have a lot of truly gifted sports people.

13:19And there is a story to a, you know, there is a story to Hudson. He was gifted, of course, but his education as a young person was rich and a tapestry of different things and patterns and, but all fundamentally grounded in nature.

13:51And my great Aboriginal teacher, Uncle Max Dillamon Munharrison, said, so simply and so gently, nature is your greatest teacher. And very easy to shrug off as a comment, but I find myself contemplating that more and more as we lose things around us.

14:20We lose, and we lose the logic of things around us as well. We lose the ability to understand why the plants in a creek are different to the plants on the hill alongside and why the rocks are exposed in the creek and covered alongside. You know, there's a loss when we sacrifice nature. There's a loss of understanding.

14:51There's a loss of time. There's a loss of principles. There's a loss of patterns. There's a loss of all sorts of things. And I don't think we appreciate that loss as much as we should as a race of animals, really. Yeah, I think that's a fair point.

Designing from the site outward

15:08Your design process, could you talk about that a little bit? I imagine it's very difficult to talk about, though. I was reading a book recently by Nigel Cross on design thinking, and he was talking about interviews that he'd done with great designers, Philippe Stark and people like that, people whose design is revered. And as far as I could see, it was very difficult to get to the heart of what it is a designer does that makes their design work work. But I'm going to ask you anyway,

15:38how do you go about this process of, I guess, an embedded form of architecture? Like, is there time on site? Is there an intuition when you wake up in the morning? For me, it originates from site. I'd say 95% of the time. And one can say, well, what about the sites that are completely urbanised? How do you possibly come up with an idea about site for those?

16:10Well, you take the buildings away and you look at the structure of the land and you imagine that place as it might have been. And that gives you the powder to make decisions.

16:27And I find that not being an academic, but being a practical person that had to move sheep from A to B in the most efficient and effective way through landscapes,

16:44that those decisions, they're difficult because they're architecture. They're not easy. But they have a certain understanding to them, which is about the place. And I'm doing a little house at the moment and it's between it's between two rivers and beyond the river is the ocean. So it's on it's it's on one isthmus

17:15with it looking through another isthmus to the ocean with the most dynamic mouth of the river that changes all the time opening. and it's very difficult. And we walked up onto the headland. We spent quite a deal of time on site. But slowly I recognised and I had to take the buildings away that the power of the river was its movement

17:45and it's unknown. It's a flat plain and you can't see underneath it. So there's a mystery to a river. You know and and how do you discover that through a building but the building is on a flood plain or a plain that can flood. So then you understand that water comes across your site and you slowly assemble the story that goes with that site.

18:15And then I feel that you know maybe it's my training maybe it's innate maybe it's just out of practice that you recognise the activities that might take place logically on that site. and those activities take the form of a building in a funny way. So you know they might be

18:46the building might move with the river emotionally move obviously not physically move but emotionally move with the river to take you there. the client loves this river so it's not like he's looking at it he is part of it so I try and take him there with the building. So that's where they all start really and they all have an explanation that's similar and that's

19:16what I've practised and that's all I know. and it's never well sometimes it's easy but sometimes it's an incredible struggle. I've probably done 50 drawings today. I still haven't presented the building. I know what I'm chasing but it's not falling into place and I think one of the hardest things in architecture is knowing when it has fallen into place.

19:47Not doing a design I think you know. there are some brilliant architects around who can do designs in a day or a week and be quite convincing about those designs. I can't do that. I always ask the clients to give us time to ensure that what we present is what we belong in.

Personal ethics and contemporary challenges

20:09Is there an ethical dimension to this? Is there an ethical effect of this process I suppose is the clearest way I want to ask that question. Do you feel that there is in some way an obligation not just in your own work but for architects to operate in this way and I'm not asking do you want to be an evangelist? Do you want to be a missionary? I'm asking simply I guess do you think that this

20:39is the way architecture should be done? no I don't assume that whatsoever it's it's the only way that I can do it responsibly and creatively in terms of ethical that's a very personal thing your ethics are very personal and and so

21:10all I can ever describe is my my personal ethics my moral standing my moral courtesy and and then from that stems a way of thinking and right or right I mean the other thing in all this is that when we launch into these processes some

21:4040 years ago we're taking a huge risk there's no evidence that it's going to be correct there's no evidence that the outcome will be okay you know sure you have some reference points but they're different people and different times and different energy and different values in many cases so you do take these steps as a as a child learning to walk really your

22:10confidence is not profound no quite the opposite it's exploratory so ethics I find are a very personal thing and I know that you mentioned ethics several times and I think that ethics and ethos are fundamental to architecture and I respect that and I

22:41respect work that is nothing like the work we do for it's when it's intelligent work it's incredible I've I've walked into buildings that bear no reference to or little reference to where they are but huge reference to inspiration and people and I'm challenged and blessed

23:12by those but I can't practice like that and it would be incorrect for me to attempt it yeah that's very sorry also it's a thing about time too you know the time that we're in and owning that time we're in a particular time in the sequence in the the ballet of life how do

23:42we how do we grow within that time and how do we relate we're not 50 years ago and we're not 50 years beyond we're right here and so you know there are certain problems that exist in the world right now and one of them of course is climate so the buildings can't just be dancing

24:13with the landscape they've got to understand their their companions like their weather patterns and what they're disturbing and what they're changing and can that change be education or is it going to be something else whereas I think in 50 years time it'll be a whole different scenario yeah I admit I freely and it's quite nice to be to have

24:43it pointed out that I often bring up this issue around ethics I suppose in my defense I grew up in the architecture world of the early 2000s where there seemed to me to be an increasing absence of this idea of an ethic in architecture that it became around the millennium frivolous in many ways and I found it very uncomfortable it wasn't why I started studying architecture so I'm kind of interested to see and find people whose work embodies a kind of as you put it

25:14most beautifully a moral courtesy I think it's a wonderful preoccupation ethics in terms of the discussion in terms of evolution of thinking in terms of personal wealth not physical wealth but personal wealth I think it's I'm not I'm joining with you in the celebration of ethics and when I read it I went and looked it up to see

25:45make sure or ensure that I was talking about the same thing as yourself and it's you know like I say it's I think a fundamental word in any creative outlet ultimately yeah how do you feel your work has been inflected over time this is not one of the questions that I put to you I guess it's perhaps or it is perhaps the last question I put to you how do you feel that your

26:15engagement with indigenous forms of knowledge have inflected this process and I ask this because to me this process that you describe in your work is very cosmological it's very other it's very numinous it's about trying to grasp the mysterious and ineffable qualities of place it sort of seems rooted in a Norberg Schultz idea of genius loci but it seems to move beyond that as well do you feel that that

26:46idea of indigeneity that idea of that connectivity to land that we understand aboriginal peoples to have had contra modernist ideas has been effective on your work

Indigenous knowledge and deep listening

27:01for for whatever reason and I can't put my finger on it I always felt comfortable in the company and knowledge of indigenous people and it wasn't to do with verbal communication it was to do with emotional and spiritual communication and this is from the age of well my grandmother used to take food

27:32parcels to the aboriginal settlements in Sydney which was very uncommon thing for a white person to do in those days 1940s and I in a way I inherited something of that you know my uncle left to be a missionary in Papua New Guinea the day almost the week I was born and so I've always had this sort of

28:02secondary guidance or discussion going on around people with thinking that goes back thousands and thousands of years and I've always felt really comfortable with that it hasn't I haven't ever been disturbed by it and whereas I have been disturbed by current thinking and current values I have found some of those disorientating so

28:34I did my final year thesis on aboriginal people in Australia and how they occupied the land I went to Papua New Guinea for a couple of years and studied the long house and lived with highland people and documented the buildings I hitchhiked through Africa and stayed in villages I've always and then I met

29:04the most influential elder who took me under his wing really and quietly he was the fellow I talked about teacher my teacher's nature and quietly and simply guided my process within culture

29:35within white and indigenous culture not in a dogmatic way and not in a dominant way and not in a constant way sometimes we'd only meet four or five times a year but when we did it was it was always incredibly meaningful and beautifully orchestrated by he so I think number one that comfort is very important because

30:06once you recognize that comfort you can you can take on knowledge a lot easier because you're respectful of it so you take it on a lot easier and then we formed a foundation several years nearly ten years ago and we started working favelas in Brazil and then when COVID hit we were blessed by a phone call that came through

30:36and said would you do some work some pro bono work for communities Aboriginal communities in Western Australia in remote places some of the most remote places in the world and we've been doing that for the last four or five years and that has been prophetic because I am a lot older and a lot more able to see the picture and put the puzzle together in a

31:07constructive way that understands some of the things that are much deeper than a conversation about politics a really good example that I cited recently and suddenly realised how important it was I was due to meet an elder and he travelled

31:38from Perth up to Newman which is a mining town and we had been there waiting for him and he turned up and he went straight to his room and we were deliberately there to meet this fellow traditional elder and anyway we had dinner but he didn't join us got up in the morning he had breakfast by himself and we travelled all day to the community which was about 12 hours by car and

32:08I was in his car and he did not say a word to me that night he went to his own accommodation which I must say was not salubrious at all and we got up the next morning and caught up again and he still hadn't talked to me so that's like two days now that night I was sitting next to him by a fire and

32:40the night sky overhead beautiful sky no moon so full of stars breathtaking and he just looked over at me and said nice of you to come and we started a conversation which went on into the night and at some point I felt comfortable enough to say to him why haven't you talked to me for like nearly three days I've got to go tomorrow you know

33:11we've had so little time together he said I was just getting to know you I mean so different to how we operate as people and that in a funny way typifies the difference in in how we educate ourselves and

33:41what our priorities are in that education and it's been magnified today with the computer what we're doing now is incredibly convenient and worthwhile but it's not all like that you know it's the whole thing about when the hammer was invented it saved time and it was wonderful but you could also hit your finger and give yourself a sore thumb for three weeks there are pluses and minuses to everything

34:12and they're very important to recognise so not as a consequence but as a respect to how I understand or how I view people of the land I try and respect the land that I do buildings on I just try my best to do that so that every building has a logical explanation and it's a wonderful

34:43process because it can be creative you know it can be exceptional it doesn't have to be prosaic you know it doesn't have to be sort of so logical it's mathematical it can be incredibly poetic and of course anything can but something with logic that's poetic is quite incredible

Uncovering the landscape in ancient cities

35:08do you feel that that poetry comes more particularly from this synthesis between both an understanding of the landscape and a sensitivity towards the folk that live there the people that live there absolutely and I and I ask that because I because I I wonder how this works in contexts where you're in a very urban environment that's been urban for a long time that the markers of the landscape of the topography

35:38have become very obscured or you're working with a community that doesn't have even a medium length connection to the ground we were in Hyde Park in London once and we decided we'd follow the old creek line down to the Thames and it came out near Westminster Cathedral and through

36:08that journey which was half a day in its entirety we then were able to map the city as an old city and work out why that low lying area was an area of ill health I forget the name of the area now but there's a low lying area adjacent to the river and and one could have almost drawn the topography of that city and every city has an origin

36:39and every city has a sort of foundation and it grows logically you know traditionally logically from that I in Sydney our buildings are only first generation so you know the ability to find the landscape is not as difficult as it would be in Europe but we did a building in Japan and one in Russia

37:09and finding the landscape was a lot more walking and a lot more questions and a lot more time but you can uncover it you can I've found to date I haven't ever been in a situation where it's been irretrievable and we always have the sky and we always have the land it's true we do I guess

37:39this is a fairly tender question your architecture seems to me or the way you're certainly describing it and how it appears to me in media seems to kind of pursue an idea of authenticity I think that was a word I wrote down when you were talking earlier kind of a desire to be authentic which I think is a very elegant kind of desire motivation are there complexities and tensions thrown up by a

38:11middle-class white man like yourself engaging with cultures which are not our own so as to embed that learning that knowledge in our work I mean that's a very controversial question very challenging it's not it's not a controversial question it's a very reasonable question and I don't think someone with my background can ever expect to walk with the same abilities that

38:41an indigenous person has but I my starting point is respect and I think that's when you start if that's your starting point then the other things fall into their rightful place which is not the ability to spear a holuby it's the ability to understand why it's necessary and

39:13the wonderful I don't you know my uncle who has lived in a village for 36 years when he finally came back to Australia he said I've been there for 36 years but I'm still a foreigner and that's that's you know we we can move into other cultures and we can depending on their overlap we can inherit their

39:43patterns but our best pattern is our self and whatever that means and that really I know it's commonplace but that really is the discovery and so I've been incredibly blessed with the guidance I've been given by all sorts of people but the guidance by my

40:14aboriginal friends and aboriginal is a general term for any indigenous people in any country is has been very stabilizing and very very easy to work with I mean there are aspects of it like the spiritual aspect is

40:45challenging but I mean I appreciate it but the day to day is so refined that it creates its own particular beauty because you don't have to anticipate it because it's going to happen it's going to be there and so in in a parallel

41:15way I'd like to think that when you look at our buildings you look at them and for some reason you just feel comfortable about it you almost accept it without final reason I was presenting to a client yesterday and he said I'm not sure what it is about your invisible house but for

41:46me it just makes sense and that's you know that's a reasonably radical house but it makes sense to a I'd say you know a conservative client and so if you can create a world of fascination in your work and yet also make sense then

42:16your the words around you are songlines they're connected they're making music it's a really interesting idea that rather than the architect as a kind of ambivalent and extracted scientist operating you seem to be suggesting that both the architect and their architecture become

42:47implicated in the story of the site become mediators of this world and our experience of it mediators is a very strong word and I would probably say the work becomes a means of connection so that as you find out

43:18or as you find the work you also find yourself becoming of the work not in a way that you copy it or that it necessarily makes sense well necessarily makes sense to you but in a way that allows you to relax and perhaps even not be judgmental perhaps to take it with you as part of your entourage

43:48it's a completely alternative way of talking and thinking about architecture which I think is particular to Australian architects that I've spoken with it's like an emergent new way of thinking about the world and our business of architecture hopefully it's a responsible way of thinking and it's not very important it is informative

44:22to know that from the age since I could walk I've been climbing trees and chasing lizards and I mean that's been my life and that has never changed in any way in any way been over civilized you know I'm still going out to the farm I'm still in the ocean I'm still walking the landscape so

44:53that education continues and that practice continues so the talk is not frivolous it's actually coming from you know if we were to sit around the fire that it would get deeper it's coming from honesty really and that's how I started with the conversation with you and I'm learning that more and more as time goes on as I get older I mean I'm getting quite old now

Elemental solutions for complex places

45:24and is there in your design when you design is there a pairing back process do you design things and then have to pair it back or or is it paired back in its does this lead to an intuitive pairing back you just never know as I said before the most heroic thing I've learned to do or I've learned to appreciate is when it's right that's the

45:54tough thing you know like I I haven't done 50 drawings on the job for two or three years I've been producing outcomes quite quite quickly that I'm delighted with but this one for some reason I think it's the the complication of the place it's a very very it's a very demanding place to be in and so

46:26it requires a very elemental solution to be there it can't be a complicated solution otherwise you'll confuse the place you know we walked up on the headland adjacent to this place and stood there and all you needed to do was stand in the landscape to be grounded so somehow I've got to take that into this complexity of two river

46:57fronts and an ocean good luck yeah thanks Peter thank you so very much it's okay thanks for asking it's been too long since I sat on granite in my country and thought perhaps a bit obvious here but that's the first two lines of country speaks by Janine Leanne and it's beautiful thanks to Peter for giving me the time of day thanks to Gabrielle for patiently enabling

47:27this fielding all emails and supplying all material and even the good man himself into my hands see the podcast description for links to Peter Stutchbury architects and to a wonderful book by Ewan McCoy under the edge the architecture of Peter Stutchbury published by Thames and Hudson in 2016 and thanks for listening