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you have to learn the material and understand how the material behaves
mean that life and death became very pronounced very quickly and so building
02
a shelter, constructing anything, becomes more important than in Europe where you can go from a village to the next village. There is nothing before your construction. Does this thing have a consequence in your techniques, in the systems of your architecture, and in the way you conceive it? Yes. That is an interesting question. When Australia was first populated, building materials would be put on a ship in the UK and the ship would sail for 6 months and arrive in Australia. Sometimes the ship would sink and the materials would be lost. That caused a different type of reality in Australia, where left with nothing, the early settlers in had to invent ways of building from what they could remember, from home in England, and make do with what they had. So it’s an historic fact for example, that the first people got off the boat with axes and swung the axes into the Australian eucalypts, breaking the handles because the trees were so hard. They didn’t have tools and so it was very primitive to start with distance from civilization was a burden. Then, slowly the technique of building evolved, but it was a technique of “making the most with what you had”, so usually it’s making the most with very little and I think that is still evident in the work of some Australian architects today. There is a term in Australia called “bush mechanics”. A ‘bush mechanic’ is somebody who can keep a car going using virtually nothing. Because they’re so remote they have developed techniques that are innovative and can solve problems without the luxury of the city at their disposal and that resolute spirit can be seen in construction as well. Materials in architecture. Is it the material that influences the project or is it the contrary? It is both. The choice of material that is appropriate for the project and the need for materiality that the project demands make a two-way conversation.
44 OFFICINA*
03 02 - Foto di El Croquis n. 165 di Sean Godsell che rappresenta un testo dell’architetto all’età di sei anni. 03 - Sean Godsell al lavoro.