Castlecrag After the Griffins, Modernism and the Sydney School

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Built Environment, Environmental

Castlecrag is an affluent suburb on Sydney’s lower North Shore with an abundance of bushy vistas and water views. The other thing Castlecrag has in abundance is architectural heritage, and the foundation of that heritage was laid by Walter Burley Griffin (WBG), the suburb’s American planner, early in the 20th century.

Griffin’s Guy House (Source: Walter Burley Griffin Society) . . .
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WBG’s bold experiments in living
The 15 houses that Griffin completed in the northern peninsula suburb (>30 more remained on the drawing board) are low-rise dwellings constructed in concrete, sandstone or brick, mainly locally sourced. Most of the houses are modest dwellings, small and squat, and for the most part the exteriors could be said to be aesthetically challengeda⃞. WBG’s credo was “designing for nature”, his enunciated goal—subordinating the Castlecrag houses to the surrounding landscape thus preserving the natural features—was realised…WBG left a legacy that inspired the projects of later architects in Castlecrag, notwithstanding that much of post-war Castlecrag housing development has not however been sympathetic with the Griffins’ architectural vision (‘Sydney — Castlecrag’, Walter Burley Griffin Society, www.griffinsociety.org).

Glass House (Source: Sydney Living Museums)

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The Glass House
Two architects drawn to Castlecrag in the 1950s to create Modernist residential buildings that are both innovative and in synch with the bush environment are Bill Lucas and Peter Muller. Lucas, a WWII veteran, with his wife Ruth, also an architect (cf. Walter and Marion Griffin) designed the “Glass House”…built in 1957 by Bill and his brother Nev and a friend and financed by Bill’s war service loan. The Glass House is like no other dwelling in Castlecrag, open plan in design, all four walls are of glass and thus the house is open to the landscape on all sides. The Lucas House (which was constructed as the Lucas family home and a studio for Bill’s practice) has been lauded for its economical design, providing the bare essentials while maintaining its sustainability…its “featherweight structure float(ing) miraculously about the tree canopy”b⃞ (with rocks and creek below) (‘Revisited: ‘Glass House by Bill and Ruth Lucas’, Peter Longeran, Architecture Australia, 17-Aug-2022, www.architectureau.com). The Glass House has been described as an “excellent seminal example of the shelter-in-nature minimalist composition constructed in Northern Sydney post World War II by architects of the ‘Sydney School’” (’Aus_Modern_House_Lucas_GL’, Docomomo International, 2003, www.docomomoaustralia.com.au).

The radical Glass House was a reaction by the Lucases to WBG’s restrictive covenants and building controls in force in Castlecrag. WGB’s covenant forbid housing construction in materials other than stone, concrete or brick, but the all-glass Lucas House somehow circumvented the stringent building restrictionsc⃞.

Lucas House,
80 The Bulwark
Castlecrag, NSW

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Audette House

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Audette House
Muller’s House (built for an American client in 1952) was the 24-year-old rookie architect’s first completed commission. Intended as an American colonial house, however Muller won the client over to something more Antipodean, devising a technique for the walls which became known as “snotted brick” – mortar oozing out the grout lines between the bricks (‘Striking a chord: Peter Muller on Audette House and why architecture is like music’, Architecture and Design, 17-Sep-2014, www.architectureanddesign.com.au. Muller drew on his recent experience studying in the US for his project which bears the strong influence of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic ‘Fallingwater’ and Muller’s liking for traditional Japanese motifs in residential architecture.

Audette House
265-267 Edinburgh Rd
Castlecrag NSW

Gowing House [Gruzman] (Photo: Max Dupain)
. . .

Sydney School v International School: “Nature-responsive” v purist “white painted walls” Lucas and Muller were part of a loosely-connected group of Australian architects in the mid-20th century labelled the “Sydney School”. The group rejected the prevailing trend in architecture, the International School of Le Corbusier, Gropius and Van Der Rohe (whitewashed masonry, steel framed glass houses) as unsuitable in an Australian context. Sydney School architects, influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright‘s organic (“natural”) principles for designing houses, and WBG’s Castlecrag project which was visually sensitive to the natural bushland, “displayed distinctive choices that were driven by the natural environment and employed simple, ‘minimally processed’, low-cost materials”. ‘Sydney School, the virtuous case of Australian modernism’, Tommaso Picciioli, Domus, 27-Mar-2020, www.domusweb.it. The School was sometimes referred to as the “Nuts and Berries” Style for its preference for rustic materials (stone, brick, timber).

Buhrich House II (Photo: Eric Sierins 2000)

. . .

Footnote: Modernist Castlecrag
Castlecrag architecture is interesting in that it contains examples of both of these rival Modernist styles. In addition to Lucas and Muller, many of the leading local architects of the second half of the 20th century (quite a number of them émigrés from Nazism) including Neville Gruzman, Harry Seidler, Hugh Buhrich and Andre Porebski, contributed to the residential profile of the suburb. The variety of architecture sitting under the umbrella of Modernism can be seen in houses as different as Gruzman‘s ”organic” monolithic Gowing House (8 The Bulwark) (1969) and the two Hugh Buhrich family homes, 315 and 375 Edinburgh Road (No. I constructed 1940s, No. II constructed 1968-72)d⃞. Both Buhrich Houses are in the European Bauhaus style, the later one rated by architect Peter Myers as “the finest modern house in Australia“, and an example of Brutalist domestic architecture (‘Brutalist Architecture in Sydney’, Sydney Morning Herald, 29-Sep-2017, www.smh.com.au). Architect and urban designer Glenn Harper extends the Brutalist tag to include the Lucas Glass House, despite Lucas eschewing the use of one of Brutalist architecture‘s key materials, raw concrete, in his Glass House (”How the ‘Sydney School’ changed postwar Australian architecture”, Davina Jackson, The Conversation, 28-Jun-2019, www.theconversation.com).

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a⃞ with the exceptions of Fishwick House and Grant House

b⃞ the house has been described as being “barely there” (www.archinform.net)


c⃞ one explanation is that the construction being engulfed in dense bush was overlooked by Willoughby Council (Longeran)

d⃞ Buhrich also designed the Duval House at 2 The Tor Walk

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Glasgow’s Postwar Planning Wars: Utopian Visions of Dystopia, Slum Clearances, New Towns and Social Engineering – Part 1

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, National politics, New Technology,, Regional politics, Town planning
⏏️ Corporation engineer Robert Bruce (Source: Scottish field) ⨳

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As WWII drew to a close Glasgow Corporation (City Council) had big plans for changing the face of Scotland’s biggest city and the (British) “Empire’s Second City” in the postwar period. Determined to rid Glasgow of its unhealthy “ghettos of decay and decline”, its plague of overcrowded slums and entrenched poverty and to fix the city’s critical housing shortage, the Corporation was gearing up for a mission to transform the city-scape. In 1947 a plan for total urban renewal put forward by the city engineer and master of works, Robert Bruce, found favour with the authorities〚𝔸〛 [‘Streets in the Sky: a social history of Glasgow’s brutalist tower blocks to be documented’, Judith Duffy, The Herald, 29-Mar-2015, www.heraldscotland.com].

⏏️ Central Train station, Glasgow (Photo: Network Rail) ⨳
⏏️ The Planning Committee’s eight-minute film ‘Glasgow Today and Tomorrow’ (1949) was its sales pitch for Bruce’s vision of “New Glasgow”. The functionality and conformity of the estate in this model illustrates why the Bruce Plan was likened to a communist Eastern Bloc city (Screenshot, ‘Scotland on Screen’)
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“New Glasgow”
Bruce’s radical scheme was to wipe the slate clean in Glasgow…tear down a whole slab of the city including the run-down tenements in a wholesale slum clearance. Included in the plan for demolition were much of Glasgow’s iconic buildings, including architectural gems built by famous 19th century architects of the city, “Greek” Thomson and CR Mackintosh (Glasgow Central Railway Station, School of Arts, etc and many other historic Victorian, Georgian and Art Deco buildings). Bruce, an avid admirer of Le Corbusier modernism, wanted to fill the void at least partially with skyscrapers (“Streets in the sky”), the plan being for the city to “reinvent itself by building high and building modern”, alongside a program of urban and industrial decentralisation〚𝔹〛 [‘Canned designs: Two sides of Glasgow’, Christopher Beanland, TheLong+Short, 07-Apr-2016, www.thelongandshort.org]. Bruce also wanted to jettison the city’s familiar grid pattern in favour of straight streets and rectilinear blocks.⏏️ Slums in the Gorbels (Photo: thesun.co.uk)⨳ ⨳ ⨳
Fixing “the worse slums in Britain”
Apparently unfazed by the horror expressed by many Glaswegians at Bruce’s brazen assault on the city’s grand architectural heritage, the Glasgow City Council had definite self-interest in mind when it endorsed the plan: Bruce’s scheme was essentially about slum clearance and re-housing people in the less densely populated parts of the city, not about re-location away from the city’s boundaries. Politically, this suited the Labour-dominated Corporation which was concerned that large scale depopulation of central Glasgow〚ℂ〛 would diminish the city’s standing in the UK. In the late 1940s Glasgow Corporation walked back its initial endorsement of the Bruce Report…shied away by the projected astronomical cost of the project while Britain was in the vice of postwar austerity. Ultimately some of its initiatives were implemented but many were never put into practice〚𝔻〛. One ‘modernisation’ initiative that did come to realisation was the M8 motorway, constructed right through the middle of Glasgow (“Glasgow Inner Ring Road” encircling the city centre). Around 230 tower blocks in the city did get built (some of the tower blocks were subsequently torn down much later), eliciting mixed opinions from the community. Most of these high-rise constructions were cheaply and quickly finished to meet the pressing exigences of public housing. While some residents were initially attracted to the features of modern convenience included—central heating, indoor toilets and hot running water—the downside for the longer term was poor quality housing stock (Duffy). ⏏️ Moss Heights (Source: UK Housing Wiki – Fandom) ⨳ ⨳ ⨳
 Moss Heights
Moss Heights in Cardonald was the Corporation’s debut experiment with high-rise family housing (accommodating 263 families, built 1950-1954), and one of the best known. Intended to be “superior high-density housing for the working class”, the reality was that Moss Heights was more expensive to rent or buy than the usual Glasgow Corp units, thus many of those same working class families couldn’t afford to live there [‘Moss Heights’, University of Glasgow Case Study, www.gla.ac.uk]. The radical nature of the Bruce Plan polarised the community and dismayed many Glaswegians, eventually provoking a reaction to its extreme position and an ensuing tussle between two competing bodies of technocrats, one national and one local, to determine the future shape of Glasgow. The rival plan, the Clyde Valley Regional Plan 1946 (CVRP), was backed by the Scottish Office in Edinburgh. Part 2 of ‘Glasgow’s Postwar Planning Wars’ will look at the CVRP and its impact on Glasgow. Red Road Flats (Photo: glasgowtimes.co.uk) ⨳ ⨳ ⨳

Footnote: Red Road Flats
 While Moss Heights was a “one-off”, Robert Bruce’s vision of clusters of high-rise buildings filling the Glasgow skyline didn’t really arrive until the 1960s, their belatedness made up for by being scattered all over the city. One of the most notoriously Brutalist of the high-rise Sixties complexes was the massive complex of eight tower blocks known as the Red Road Flats in the northeast of Glasgow〚𝔼〛 . The ageing and condemned buildings, vandalised and afflicted with asbestos and rising damp, were demolished between 2012 and 2015 [‘End of the Red Road’, Disappearing Glasgow, www.disappearing-glasgow.com]. Red Road, along with “the equally controversial and derided Hutchesontown C estate in the Gorbals”, became a symbol of “the errors of Glasgow’s ambitious post-war housing renewal policy” [‘Red River Flats’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

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〚𝔸〛 officially, the “First Planning Report to the Highways and Planning Committee of the Corporation of the City of Glasgow”

〚𝔹〛Bruce’s vision was long-term, envisaging a transformation over a 50 year-span into “a healthy and beautiful city”

〚ℂ〛 the city an agglomeration of one million people at the time

 〚𝔻〛 an embittered Bruce resigned his post with the Corporation in 1951

 〚𝔼〛 furnished with the same set of “mod cons” as Moss Heights