The house teaches you things, Lynne Eastaway says. Today, a choir of cicadas fill the scrub with a rhythm that rises and falls. On other days, there may be visits from birds, goannas, echidnas, wombats, wallabies and kangaroos.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe bush ends, and the house begins,\u201d she says. \u201cYou\u2019re not the centre; you\u2019re just part of it. That\u2019s the thing you learn.<\/p>\n
\u201cWestern life has forgotten that we\u2019re not above nature. It can affect us and we can affect it too. Living here has been a wake-up call to living life.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is the kind of thing that happens when you live in a house designed by the pioneering architect Glenn Murcutt.<\/p>\n
Eastaway\u2019s house \u2013 known usually as the Ball-Eastaway House \u2013 on the 10-hectare block of dry sclerophyll forest north-west of Sydney, was built in 1983 at the request of Eastaway and her former partner, the artist Sydney Ball, in the early days of Murcutt\u2019s career.<\/p>\n
The interior of the Ball-Eastaway house. Photograph: Nick Sissons<\/p>\n
Since then, he has gone on to win architecture\u2019s most storied award, the Pritzker<\/a>, and is often cited as one of the pioneers of modern sustainable architecture.<\/p>\n When the house was commissioned, Eastaway and Ball had what would prove a short-lived romance, but a lifelong friendship. Ball had lost a studio to fire in New York and had been suddenly evicted from another studio in Sydney in 1976.<\/p>\n They had a modest budget but wanted somewhere to live and paint. Ball\u2019s only demand was that it include a single, gallery-style wall on which to hang a painting.<\/p>\n A friend suggested Murcutt, and the three met for lunch before taking Murcutt out to see the land where the couple had been camping on and off.<\/p>\n Ever curious, he walked off into the bush for hours. \u201cIt was an amazing site,\u201d Murcutt says. \u201cIt was just so beautiful. We were so careful about how we sited that house.\u201d<\/p>\n Within the landscape, the key feature was a sandstone rock shelf \u2013 the obvious place to build, Murcutt says. It was already clear of trees and provided a refuge from fire, but the usual heavy-handed approach to construction was a risk.<\/p>\n \u201cI thought closing it to the ground would destroy the rock and the topography,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Murcutt\u2019s eventual design sunk 14 steel columns into the rock, suspending the whole structure above almost as though it were floating. It also ensured that, should the house ever be dismantled, there would be almost no trace it was ever there, in a way that has become part of Murcutt\u2019s signature style.<\/p>\n As the jury citation for the Pritzker says, \u201chis structures are said to float above the landscape, or in the words of the Aboriginal people of Western Australia that he is fond of quoting, they \u201ctouch the earth lightly\u201d.<\/p>\n Side view of the house built on 10 hectares of forest north-west of Sydney. Photograph: Nick Sissons<\/p>\n Lifting the building on stilts like this also allows air to circulate more freely, as it does with Murcutt\u2019s own home, the Marie Short house, where itcools the house in the warm months and provides shelter for native wildlife (as the architecture journalist Katelin Butler notes<\/a>, in Murcutt\u2019s work there is usually more than one reason for each design decision).<\/p>\n There were other flourishes, too. Eastaway recalls Murcutt spending his time measuring eucalypt leaves to find the biggest.<\/p>\n These ended up determining the slope of the gutter, a system built so that, as leaves collected and were washed away in rain, they oriented themselves to form what looked like a birds\u2019 nest at the base of the downpipe when they hit the ground.<\/p>\n Australian architect Glenn Murcutt pictured in 2016. Photograph: Sean Fennessy\/NGV<\/p>\n Built out of corrugated-iron \u2013 a common but underappreciated material at the time \u2013 the modest exterior gives no hint of the light-filled home with its hardwood floors.<\/p>\n In addition to its two bedrooms, living and dining areas, kitchen and amenities, there were two verandas \u2013 one a social space, another enclosed on three sides so that it opens out on to the bush.<\/p>\n \u201cThe house is not taking you away from the environment,\u201d Murcutt says. \u201cThere are parts in these buildings where you can remove yourself from the environment, or you can thrust yourself into it.\u201d<\/p>\n Murcutt\u2019s approach was deeply out of step with the way that Australia built in the 1970s and 80s \u2013 and even now.<\/p>\n But today, new generations of architects, in Australia and internationally, are influenced by his work. Francis K\u00e9r\u00e9<\/a>, a subsequent Pritzker winner, has spoken of<\/a> the impact of seeing one of Murcutt\u2019s designs early in his career: <\/strong>\u201cThe simplicity, the openness, the comfort it created, it stayed with me.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat struck me most was how architecture could feel so gentle and human, shaping a space that nurtures people. Later, when I met Glenn in person, I felt that we were connected in spirit, even though we come from very different places.<\/p>\n \u201cHis work shows that thoughtful architecture can honour culture, place and the environment all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n Murcutt rejects any description of his work in political terms. What mattered, he says, was that everything was done for a reason \u2013 everything had to be \u201clogical and sensible\u201d.<\/p>\n For him, listening to the landscape and thinking about environment, climate and nature was as obvious and fundamental to the design process as thinking about water supply and sewerage.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy shouldn\u2019t all buildings be prized for sustainability?\u201d he asks. \u201cIf you get the basics right, if you start to work with nature, not manipulating nature, it starts to offer you the most beautiful solutions.<\/p>\n \u201cNature gives us the lead-in to many things that will resolve some of the questions we have \u2013 if we\u2019re curious.\u201d<\/p>\n