Murcutt Foundation

For more than 20 years, the Murcutt Masterclass has welcomed architects from around the world to learn from 4 recipients of the Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal for Architecture; Glenn Murcutt AO, Richard Leplastrier AO, Brit Andresen and Peter Stutchbury. In this episode, Prof Lindsay Johnston explains the origin story - involving a Belfast-born flute player and an ambitious idea tha...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September. The climax of the Symposium was an unscheduled, and very personal moment when Glenn Murcutt chose to acknowledge the distances travelled by so many and the passing of dear friends in recent weeks, and the support given to him by all those who attended this first ever M...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held this week in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September. Celebrated Australian documentary film maker, Catherine Hunter, has filmed Glenn Murcutt and his work for around 30 years. Two short films by Catherine on Murcutt's life and work have been aired to acclaim worldwide: Spirit of Place and the Cobar Sound Chapel...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September. Sydney-based architect Carol Marra's work on the publication 'Design for Climate/ design for change' synthesises precedents drawn from vernacular architecture that has developed in response to specific place-based climatic, cultural and other conditions. Those preceden...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September. A highly interactive afternoon session led by 2010 Gold Medal winning architects Lindsay and Kerry Clare, Ché Wall and former Environment Commissioner, Rod Simpson, questioned whether our current planning and building regulatory settings are really achieving gains in t...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September. On Saturday 13 September we experienced the irrepressible energy of Dr Piers Taylor - founder of the UK's Invisible Studio and alumni of the 2001 Murcutt Masterclass. Piers opened his keynote address by announcing "I am hardly an architect...I have never had a roadmap...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September. On Saturday 13 September, Francis Kéré and Glenn Murcutt spoke with long term scholar of Murcutt’s work, Catherine Lassen of the University of Sydney. Covering many shared themes, a focus was on the need for design and construction to be understood as a single pursuit...

The inaugural Murcutt Symposium was held in Sydney, with house tours, talks and social events spanning three days 11-13 September 2025. On Friday 12 September, a packed auditorium witnessed a moving ceremony as Glenn Murcutt AO awarded the Murcutt Pin to Francis Kéré ; paying tribute to the sustained commitment shown by Kéré to work for, and with, his community in Gando, Burkina Faso, to build sch...

For more than 20 years, the Murcutt Foundation has placed a real focus on teaching and learning in the landscape - running both a summer school for students of architecture about to launch in to the academic year, and in the Glenn Murcutt Masterclass aimed at architects who are looking to recharge after years of practice.  So what’s different about this way of teaching and learning? How does...

When you’re Rick Joy, small moments of surprise reveal themselves. A lot of these moments are captured in images that Rick speaks to in this podcast, so you’ll have to imagine them, or head to StudioRickJoy.com to see some of the projects he speaks to like his Desert Nomad House, Amangiri Resort, Princeton Transit Hall or the Woodstock Vermont Farm. Rick shares the landscapes, experiences and arti...

In a recent address, Bangladesh architect Marina Tabassum revealed that the first confrontation of her professional life was witnessing the commodifying of architecture drifting toward instant gratification and industrial-scale materials devised to standardise the entire globe. This may be why her work is so grounded in the practical needs of the people of her country who are on the frontier of cl...

In a truly magnificent arc that spans about 10,000 years, the UKs Niall McLaughlin weaves together 10 projects with 10 yarns drawn from characters from Australia’s red centre.  From the first signs of settlement in the neolithic period, to buildings designed to dissolve in the English landscape, Niall shares a visual essay on the structural beauty of a rugby scrum and a truly wild tale from t...

As the trees lose their leaves in the Slovenian winter, the landscape is dominated by strong verticals. It’s a landscape that Marusa Zorec describes as big on solitude; but one in which she finds freedom. Welcome to Slovenia! A country of 2 million people that is around the same size as Lake Eyre in South Australia! Marusa’s talk is an example of how a 3 week journey through the rich and remote Au...

After more than 5 years in the making, ‘Glenn Murcutt: Unbuilt Works’ brings to life 10 projects designed by Glenn Murcutt AO that remain unbuilt. This remarkable book, authored by architect Nick Sissons and published by Thames and Hudson, was launched on 25 July 2024, at the State Library of NSW. In researching the book, Nick Sissons visited the Murcutt Collection held by the State Library on mor...

This is the second part of a conversation between Rick Leplastrier AO and Glenn Murcutt AO from 2014 at the University of Newcastle. It opens with Murcutt’s recollections of meeting famed Spanish architect Jose Coderch in Barcelona in 1973 as part of a travelling scholarship; and Cordech’s famous invocation of effort, love and suffering in architecture.  We’re also taken to the moment Rick me...

In this conversation from 2014 at the University of Newcastle, Rick LePlastrier AO and Glenn Murcutt AO share lessons that have shaped their practice; from early groundings at university; fundamentals like drawing and observation, learning from nature’s own lessons and what goes in to teaching architecture well. We pick it up with a question about when an architect completes their best work, and t...