Glenn Murcutt, Belrose, New South Wales, Australia, 1969-1972
OfHouses presents “Pritzkers’ First Houses”: In an interview for ‘El Croquis’, Glenn Murcutt (Pritzker 2002) stated about the 1969 design for his brother’s residence in Belrose that this was his “first new house". However, that is not true – 10 years before Doug Murcutt’s residence he had built a house in Sidney for the Olympic swimmer John Devitt. The Devitt House on Beacon Hill was designed when Murcutt was only 24 and still a student. It did caught some media attention at the time, being mentioned in some newspapers (’The Sydney Morning Herald’ nicknamed it “the house with two faces”) and even in professional journals like ‘Cross-Section’ (the magazine of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Architecture). Nevertheless, no proper coverage of this early design was ever done and the Devitt House was (for some mysterious reason) erased from Murcutt’s self-told history. In the meantime, the house was enlarged with a second story and little is still to be seen from what was its original state. (Photos: © Max Dupain. Source: Glenn Murcutt, Haig Beck, Jackie Cooper, “Glenn Murcutt: A Singular Architectural Practice” (Mulgrave: Images Publishing, 2002), pp 35-39; Simone Corda, “L’Opera di Glenn Murcutt Come Manuale” (USI Cagliari, 2009), pp 98-101; “Thinking Drawing/Working Drawing” (Tokyo: TOTO, 2008), pp 24-33.)
