"I especially enjoy working outside the confines of the city. In the countryside I am able to draw more fully on the special character of the land. It is only on such sites that I can begin to consider anew what is truly required."
Indulges curiosity in wind patterns, materials, climate, and characteristics of site. Lessons from nature are fundamental while plants act as the revealing indicator of site conditions. Ex: a form of the same species is determined by its location on a hillside.With regional and environmental concerns, Murcutt's buildings contrast with nature in that the natural environment's raw and delicate attributes are enhanced through the comparison with the finished industrial character of his buldings. Murcutt, however, does not subvert nature to man because his buildings, with their reflective quality, depend upon the environment for their identity with facades that change with the time of day and the colors of the foliage. His buildings sit very lightly on their harsh yet delicate sites expressing concern for environmental preservation.
Is the character of architecture an expression of the life of the people? Do forms possess a 'core of truth' ?(reference to Thoreau) Murcutt concludes that visual consistencies are a coming to the surface of inner facts. All vernacular buildings are lessons...integrity of form given when buildings make contact with life.
Murcutt on Aalto. Aalto depended on the landscape for special qualities which set his architecture apart. The landscape and the buildings were inseperable-like an old married couple they had grown into one another. Put an Aalto building in some other landscape and it would be injured, it would no longer be entirely Aalto. ...a culture which was shaped by its experience of landscape, a culture which had assimilated nature. Leaves of Iron
Buildings lodged in the landscape; the building as line, holding the horizon and calibrating infinity; the building in submission-not subjugating the land; the building as expression of ideology and rationalism; the building as embodiment of an existential contract of human freedom and responsibility, confronting the unavoidable destruction that accompanies human occupation. A Singular Architectural Practice
