M.baracco Boyd

7/21/2019 M.baracco Boyd

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Coexistence of rational definitenessand irrational onenessAn investigation of Robin Boyd’sarchitecture and theoretical approachthrough a Heideggerian perspective

Mauro Baracco

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Abstract

This PhD examines the approach of Melbourne architect Robin Boyd (1919-1971) through aphilosophical framework primarily developed from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger(1889-1976).

Boyd’s approach to both theoretical discussion and design production – the former undertakenthroughout his innumerable published works, the latter inclusive of an extensive body of builtand unbuilt projects – resists the rational determinations of mainstream modernism throughsensibilities informed by a sense of ambivalence, ‘con-fusion’ and other correlated dimensions thatare in different ways discussed in this thesis: unclearness, vagueness, weakness, irresoluteness,elusiveness, ambiguity, indefiniteness, openness, releasement. These quintessential qualitiesof Boyd’s approach and related works are all indicative of his inclination to rationally accepta comprehensible objectification of the world, and yet at the same time to hope for anincomprehensible dimension of reciprocal co-belongingness of physical and spatial entities. Thethesis proposes that this paradoxical position – this coexistence of rational determination ofindividual entities, and irrational releasement to a dimension of all-inclusiveness/oneness – is apeculiar characteristic of this architect, and places him on the edges of the modernist culture andits related values.

This is argued through two parts: a theoretical framing essay – part one – that is then discussed forits particular application to 36 specific projects – part two. The latter presents the projects anew byredrawing and photographing so as to detach them from their purely historical archival presentationand to provide a comprehensive and consistent documentation. This act is important and supportiveto the PhD’s framework that focuses on essential and philosophical notions of architecture ratherthan historical ‘facts’ or trajectories, therefore offering an alternative reading in comparison to theextensive body of existing material about Robin Boyd and his work.

Robin Boyd’s work and thought are discussed as in empathy with some theoretical positionsof Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy is analogously characterized by a condition of criticalresistance towards a pervasive modernist approach that tends to conceive and perceive reality as ifit was merely consisting of objective and individual physical presences. This modernist approach,extensively diffused in modern and contemporary architecture, is a direct reflection of both:

- a typical Western tradition of thought that is originally, since ever, inclined to identify being withpresence,

and

- the Western Modern creation and gradual amplification of the duality between subject andobject, according to which reality and the world are perceived and represented as objectiveproducts of a cognitive process in which human beings are indeed the subjects, constantlyconsidering themselves as “the relational center of that which is as such” (Martin Heidegger,The Age of the World Picture).

Alternative to this approach, Heidegger’s philosophy proposes to release ourselves to irrationality,

through a “meditative thinking” as a coexisting and parallel sensibility of the “calculative thinking”that predominantly informs rational and logical viewpoints. The paradoxical thinking of Heideggerembraces at once rationality and irrationality, accepting both these conditions as intrinsic of ourbeing-in-the-world.

Boyd’s approach, reflected in particular in the ambivalence of his writings and the senseof potentiality and spatial continuity of his projects, is investigated in relation to the abovephilosophical positions. The thesis argues that the application of this approach in Boyd’s twodifferent operative fields (theoretical discourse and architectural practice) is inclined to forms of‘con-fusion’ and openness rather than clarity and determination. Boyd’s ambivalence is discussed asalternative to many architectural positions of mainstream modernism, generally conditioned by theprioritization of rationality, and therefore condemned to produce outcomes that are trapped by formsof duality/correspondence that are merely dictated by logical accords and formulaic processes drawnby objective/scientific/rational types of determination.



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Introduction 1

Part 1

Rational Definiteness and Irrational Oneness: coexisting conditions

of Robin Boyd’s Heideggerian approach 11

Part 2

Introduction 77

Boyd House 1 1947

87King House 1951 – 1952 99

Gillison House 1952 111

Manning Clark House 1952 123

Finlay House 1952 – 1953 135

Wood House + Shop 1952 – 1954 147

Fenner House 1953 – 1954 159

Bridgeford House 1954 171

Richardson House 1954 183

Holford House 1956 195

Haughton James House 1956 207

Southgate Fountain 1957 – 1960 219

Boyd House 2 1958 231

Lloyd House 1959 243Clemson House 1959 – 1960 255

Domain Park Flats 1960 – 1962 267

Handfield House 1960 279

Jimmy Watson’s Wine Bar 1961 – 1963 291

Tower Hill Natural History Centre 1961 – 1970 303

Wright House 1962 315

John Batman Motor Inn 1962 327

Arnold House 1963 – 1964 339

Baker House 1964 – 1966 + Baker ‘Dower’ House 1966 – 1968 351

McCaughey Court 1965 – 1968 369

Menzies College 1965 – 1970 381

Australian Pavilion at Montreal Expo ’67 1966 – 1967 393

Lawrence House + Flats 1966 – 1968 405Farfor Holiday Houses 1966 – 1968 417

Milne House 1966 – 1970 429

McClune House 1967 – 1968 443

Featherston House 1967 – 1969 455

‘The First 200 Years’ Exhibition 1968 467

Carnich Towers 1969 – 1971 475

Hegarty House 1969 – 1972 483

Flinders Vaults 1971 495

Conclusion 503

References 509

Contents



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Lloyd House1959

Mark Strizic/Adrian Featherston*



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The Lloyd House, demolished in 2003, was located in the suburbof Brighton, approximately 12 kilometres south from the city ofMelbourne, and less than one kilometre east from the coastline ofPort Phillip Bay. “Built as a crescent around a northerly court”1,the house was placed in the centre of a rectangular block, witha concave façade embracing an internal courtyard and a convexback front facing the boundary to the south adjacent block. Adriveway connected the building to the street, leading to a carportspace accommodated under an extended continuous roof.

Similar to many of Boyd’s projects, the design decisions andformal solutions of this house are guided by the existing conditionsof the site. An old pear tree along the south edge was maintainedas a significant presence of the garden that defined the west sideof the block. This open space – labelled in some early drawings asa “service yard” and “children’s garden”2 – was achieved throughthe curving of a footprint that otherwise would have occupieda longer area of the block, modifying “a slim, rectangular SmallHomes plan…into a fan shape”3. The adaptation of this standardtype into a curved plan not only provided the house with twobuffer areas on the west and east ends of the block, but alsoallowed the creation of a semicircular internal courtyard – thisinflected open space was instrumental to catching the light andsun from the north through a façade of continuous floor-to-ceilingwindows. All the rooms directly related to this court, each of themradiating with an open end towards it.

The bedroom areas were located at the opposite ends of thecrescent: the one for the children, on the west end next to the“children’s garden”, was effectively a large open space with awardrobe as a dividing partition in the middle of the room; theparents’ bedroom, at the east end, was provided with an ensuiteand a study, both located at the back of a wardrobe as a partitionelement. The remaining core area between the bedrooms included,from east to west respectively, a living room, dining room, kitchen,and playroom with bathroom/toilet and laundry at its back. Acurved hall, inclusive of the entry door in correspondence to theliving room, ran along the north side of the house, interconnectingthe circulation between the various rooms, but also acting as abuffer space from them and the external court. Curtains insteadof partition walls were used between the hall and the north endof the living, dining and kitchen areas; two sliding doors at theeast and west ends of the hall provided access to the parents’

bedroom and the playroom. These ‘light’ and rather impalpableelements of separation – their informal way of providing privacy,their consistent state of openness and porosity – contributed tothe sense of spatial continuity and visual permeability betweeninteriors and exteriors; the courtyard, embraced through thetransparency of the north façade, was experienced as an extensionof the internal spaces rather than a separated outdoor area.

A sense of potential endless expansion is characteristic of thisproject and the related association of the infinite continuity of thecircle as a geometric form. A modularity based on circular sectorswas the means to not only define the shape and dimension of theinternal spaces which were originally built (as parts of the projectthat are documented in these pages), but also allow the future



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expansions which occurred at a later stage (here documentedthrough dotted lines in some drawings to represent subsequentadditions to the west end, and the expansion of the carport spaceat the east end). It is not surprising that commenting on theadditions that informed this house but never compromised itscurvilinear imprint, Janys and Edward ‘Woods’ Lloyd used to jokefantasising to ultimately extend the crescent – bit by bit, circularsector after circular sector – into a circle over two blocks4, in theirway unconsciously echoing the coexistence of both a ‘sense ofcomprehension’ and ‘sense of incomprehension’ that is intrinsic toBoyd’s approach, here reflected by the vision of a circle that wouldbe informed by the ‘comprehensible objectivity’ of its parts and the‘incomprehensible oneness’ of its infinite totality.

1 Robin Boyd, Living in Australia, Pergamon Press, Sydney, 1970, p. 282 See ‘Robin Boyd Original Sketches’, Architecture in Australia, Vol. 62,

no. 2, April 1973, p. 753 Geoffrey Serle, Robin Boyd A Life, Melbourne University Press,

Melbourne, 1995, p. 187. The Small Homes Service was set up anddirected by Boyd in the years 1946-1954; it was an architect advisory

service for the public, sponsored by The Age newspaper and theR.V.I.A. (Royal Victorian Institute of Architects). As observed by NeilClerehan, director of this service in 1951 and from 1954-1961, “Thesponsorship of the Age enabled the Service to become the force that itdid, providing a weekly column where Boyd could publish articles anddesigns enlightening the public about the service”; Neil Clerehan, ‘TheAge RVIA Small Homes Service’, Transition, no. 38, monographic issueon Robin Boyd, 1992, p. 58

4 As a result of a subdivision of a larger block that was originallypurchased by Janys Lloyd’s grandfather in 1898, the Lloyd House wassitting immediately south from the block including the house of JanysLloyd’s mother. The fantasy idea of the circle over the two blocks wouldinvolve (in fun) the demolition of the latter house and the relocation ofJanys’ mother residence in the circle, as an independent and separatepart of the extension; from a conversation with Janys Lloyd during avisit to the Lloyd House on the 12 March 2003

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Mauro BaraccoLucinda McLeanLucinda McLean

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Lucinda McLean Lucinda McLean Mauro Baracco

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M.baracco Boyd