Works 1980–2015 Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper Both Have Formative Links a Sensibility, Some Might Say an Aesthetic

DOSSIER presented with a succession of projects ume Clare Design: Clare Design of varying scales, typologies, methods About the editors Clare Design of procurement and contexts that share Works 1980-2015 Works 1980–2015 Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper both have formative links a sensibility, some might say an aesthetic. Works 1980-2015 Works to Queensland, Australia, but spent many years away before ume returning in 2000. Haig left for England in the late 1960s A newand monograph completed his studies at the Architectural Association explores the most Beck and Cooper call attention to the School in London. During the 1970s, Jackie worked in the AA’s Communications Unit for seven years during the School’s importantmost dazzling period. projects In 1976 Haig was appointed editor by Lindsay and Kerry freshness of each work regardless of its of Architectural Design. In 1979 he and Jackie launched their independent magazine, International Architect, in London. Clare,In 1986and they returned highlights to Australia where they continued the significance of position in the chronology of practice, collaborating as architectural editors, critics, writers and publishers, and in 1996 launched UME magazine. (UME and their workInternational Architect beyond are available as free downloads: Queensland. www.umemagazine.com.) Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper’s joint a resistance to the vagaries of style and output over forty years of writing includes books, chapters, articles and critical reviews, and in particular books on (and with) Glenn Murcutt, Denton Corker Marshall, Lindsay and fashion and the sustained commitment WORDSKerry Clare,Elizabeth Brit Andresen and Peter O’Gorman, Musgrave Architectus, Cox Rayner, Tract Landscape Architects, graphic designer Garry Emery and sculptor Akio Makigawa. They are both to a set of key principles. At the Brisbane visiting professors in the Abedian School of Architecture, Bond University. UME continues. book launch Lindsay Clare self- Architecture exudes from the pages of deprecatingly expressed a concern that the UME monograph Clare Design: Works such consistency might suggest a lack 1980–2015, offering insights into the lineage of development. A quick flick through and legacy of Queensland modernism. the pages of this monograph might Clare Design: Works 1980–2015 edited by Jackie Cooper In this latest UME publication from Haig suggest an evenness, but to dismiss the and Haig Beck (Oro Editions with UME Publications, 2015). Beck and Jackie Cooper on the practice work on such simplistic grounds would of Lindsay and Kerry Clare, what resonates be to misrepresent its significance, most are plans, sections, sketches, details a significance that extends beyond and glossy images of selected built and Queensland, which nevertheless is unbuilt projects, generously proffered where it all started. alongside essays from Beck and Cooper It was a contribution from Gabriel Poole and explanations by the Clares of each at the Brisbane launch that reminded individual work selected for inclusion. those present of the vigorous strand of Surprisingly, projects are presented Queensland’s architectural culture that alphabetically, not chronologically, such has given rise to practices such as the that the Goetz House, designed in 1985 Clares’, a lineage which is sustained when Lindsay and Kerry Clare were through the work of other Queensland practising as Lindsay Clare Villari architects who were in turn mentored Architects, is followed immediately by the Clares, such as Richard Kirk and by the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Annabel Lahz. The reclusive but still completed in 2006 when both Clares active Poole teased the audience with stories were design directors at Architectus. about the two young students who began It also means that the earliest house their careers in his practice in the early selected for inclusion, the White Residence 1970s while studying architecture part-time. (1980–81), is the very last project presented. The young couple would, in time, come A consequence is that the reader is to realize how influential the steel-framed Clare Residence (1991) on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Photography: Richard Stringer MAY/JUN 2016 AA 51 DOSSIER Dobie House (1972), with its nod to the Case Study Houses of California, and the timber-framed Schubert House (1972) would be to their own practice, but were eager to test their wings in practice. Poole in turn is clear about the debt of gratitude he owes to Robin Gibson and John Dalton, who convinced Poole, the bushy, that he should study architecture rather than medicine and who facilitated his employment at Theo Thynne and Associates. When Gibson left Thynne’s practice to set up his own, Poole joined him. Poole describes Dalton and Gibson as “tough men,” men of conviction, assiduous with respect to detail, structural and constructional integrity and compositional clarity. They nurtured Poole’s rebellious streak and inculcated in him the set of principles that underpinned his climatically and environmentally responsive modernist The University of the Sunshine Coast Chancellery (2006), designed by Lindsay Clare and Kerry Clare as design directors at practice. These principles were then Architectus. Photography: John Gollings fostered in his young employees along with a conviction of their invincibility. architect in 1994, Graham Jahn identified significance has been a long time coming. There are some obvious associations. Poole and Dalton as precursors, describing It is this that, apart from its delightful The influence of Poole’s light and airy them – together with Colin and Irene Still, presentation, makes this recording of the houses and of his work with prefabricated Max May, Terry and Heather Dorrough most significant projects from Lindsay and and industrial components is evident in the and Ken Woolley – as “regionally inspired, Kerry Clare such an important publication. Clare (1990–91) and Hammond (1993–94) modernist-sympathisers who relied on oroeditions.com Residences and in the University of the detail and invention … anti-art, anti-style Sunshine Coast Recreation Club (1997). and anti-establishment; squarely aimed at 1. Graham Jahn, Contemporary Australian Architecture Similarly Poole’s masonry houses are issues of life-quality, justifiable use of land (Basel, Switzerland: G+B Arts International; East Roseville, echoed in the Clares’ Goetz (1984–85) and materials and energy resources. It was a NSW: Distributed by Craftsman House, 1994), 7. Thrupp and Summers (1986–87) Houses. quiet, low maintenance ideology of social Poole’s capacity to weave architecture responsibility.”1 These are the attributes Elizabeth Musgrave is a lecturer in architecture out of whatever the situation demands of timelessness. It is this legacy that is at the University of Queensland. is apparent in the Clares’ response to sustained in the Clares’ work. Paradoxically the tricky circumstances surrounding the these attributes may also be why their work Library at the Dock project in Melbourne’s has been undervalued by some. Docklands (2011–14). But a closer scrutiny, A survey of scholarship on modern especially of later works, reveals a much Queensland architects and architecture deeper engagement. It also reveals how the reveals Haig Beck (who incidentally worked lessons gained through a lifetime of practice briefly orf John Dalton) and Jackie Cooper and deepened through exposure to the as consistent contributors over many years architecture of masters such as Alvar Aalto to what, apart from the contributions of the have resulted in an effortlessness that late Jennifer Taylor and the recent foray by conceals an increasing intentionality and the University of Queensland’s Centre for sophistication. Architecture Theory Criticism History team, Gibson and Dalton might not recognize is otherwise a patchy recording of mid- the ideology invoked by “topos, typos century modernism. From their vantage and tectonics,” by which means Beck and of working across international and local Cooper frame the Clares’ practice, but they contexts, Beck and Cooper are well placed would certainly identify with its sensibility. to identify significance. In the case of the In naming Lindsay Clare as an emergent Clares an acknowledgement of their 52 AA MAY/JUN 2016.

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