This is a package of three seminars about the life, work and influences of Sydney Ancher as an architect.
These seminars are live presentations by the Historic Houses Trust and Docomomo (Documentation and Conservation of the Modernist Movement) in Australia, recorded at the Rose Seidler House in Sydney, Australia, during August 2005.
The trilogy of presentations outline the work of Sydney Ancher and explore for different perspectives the character of his personality, the influences on his work and the legacy which he left to Australian architecture.
Part 1: Dr Harry Margalit, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney, provides an introduction to Syd Ancher, with a timeline of his remarkable career. He discusses the major influences of the period and examines the question ‘what caused the shift in architectural thinking?’ which led to Modernism.
Part 2: Stuart Murray, partner with Syd in Ancher Mortlock & Murray gives his personal insight into what it was like to work with Sydney Ancher. Stuart recalls Ancher as a self-confessed anti-intellectual, deliberately rejecting rational justification of his work.
“Absorbed in things learnt by observation and experience, he used his creative ability to transmit them into fresh statements. ”…Syd Ancher’s buildings have rare quality that speaks and reveals the true spirit of the man…”
Part 3: Jennifer Hill, in association with Docomomo, provides and overall survey of Sydney Ancher’s work, with particular emphasis on the Maytone Avenue houses in Killara, Sydney. She discusses the importance of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier as major influences, with particular reference to the concept of the ‘Miesian Spatial Continuum’ which underlies the Maytone project.
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Dr Harry Margalit is a lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney. He has researched and published extensively on Australian modernist architecture, including the introduction to the Australian section of the Docomomo International book on world Modernist architecture, chapters in books on the Sydney Olympics sites, papers on Glenn Murcutt and others and, toget5her with Philip Goad, a book on the Sydney architectural practice of Durbach Block. HE has extensive practice experience, and since 2001 has been a principal in Quinton-Margalit Architects.
Stuart Murray began his architectural career as an architectural assistant to Sydney Ancher in 1947. After 2 years in Ancher’s office he went to London. During travels in Europe he enjoyed visiting Le Corbusier’s Marseilles block, but it was in Italy that he found ‘sophisticated urban building’. Back in Sydney during the 1950’s he and Bryce Mortlock became partners with Ancher and in 1964 Ken Woolley joined them. In 1976 Murray established Stuart Murray & Associates.
Jennifer Hill, from Architectural Projects, has worked extensively on the 20th Century Significant Buildings registers of the RAIA and the Art Deco Society, and this has been crucial in providing a creditable basis for government heritage listing and assisting their protection. Her work for the RAIA, State Library of NSW Foundations in Architecture, the Museum of Sydney and RARA Sulman and Art Deco exhibitions and various publications has been critical to their promotion and success.
