John Andrews had a unprecedented life and profession. Having accomplished a bachelor of structure on the College of Sydney in 1956, and after a stint at Edwards, Madigan and Torzillo, he undertook a grasp of structure diploma at Harvard’s Graduate College of Design beneath José Luis Sert and Sigfried Giedion. In 1958, with three of his fellow MArch college students, Andrews entered the Toronto Metropolis Corridor and Sq. design competitors, an occasion as internationally well-known because the Sydney Opera Home competitors of the 12 months earlier than. Andrews and his colleagues got here second. This success modified his life professionally and personally; it gave him the boldness (and a few money) to ask Rosemary Randall (“Ro”) to marry him. The 2 had met shortly earlier than he left Sydney. The marriage was at Cape Cod.
The Metropolis Corridor competitors led to a job provide with the formidable Toronto agency of John B. Parkin Associates. There, Andrews honed his abilities of designing for local weather – abilities he had precociously demonstrated in his Metropolis Corridor proposal. He additionally contributed to the structural decision of the successful Metropolis Corridor design by Finnish architect Viljo Revell, who labored with Parkin to appreciate his venture.
In 1961, Andrews left Parkin to tour Europe, the Center East and India, notably visiting the post-war work of Le Corbusier, together with the under-construction buildings at Chandigarh. After a quick interlude again in Sydney working with Peter Stephenson of Stephenson and Turner, he returned to Toronto, the place he began instructing on the College of Toronto’s faculty of structure. In 1962, he was appointed with two colleagues – planner Michael Hugo-Brunt and panorama architect Michael Hough – to conceive a plan for a brand new satellite tv for pc campus of the college at Scarborough in Toronto’s japanese suburbs. The architectural fee adopted. Andrews devised a single constructing to deal with 5,000 college students in arts and sciences in an inflected linear kind, with an inside “road” following the highest of a wooded ravine. A bravura composition in off-form concrete, it exemplified the megastructural second of the mid-Nineteen Sixties and, when it was opened in 1965, it gained worldwide plaudits. Andrews was made professor and chair of structure because of this. Whereas he promoted necessary reforms within the architectural curriculum at Toronto, he was set on growing an architectural follow moderately than a tutorial profession.
Scarborough’s success led to many different college commissions in Canada and the USA, together with the South Residence on the College of Guelph (seemingly the most important scholar lodging venture in North America) and smaller tasks for prestigious American establishments comparable to Smith and Sarah Lawrence faculties. As he had at Scarborough, Andrews launched an city order in every of those tasks, or additional elaborated city alternatives latent within the context. Most prestigious of all was the fee he obtained in 1967 (virtually actually at Sert’s instigation) to design Gund Corridor, the principle constructing of Harvard’s Graduate College of Design. The dominant canted roof kind at Gund, supported by metal tube trusses glazed at their vertical faces, expressed the centrality in Andrews’ design of the studio “trays,” with all of the disciplines of the college – structure, panorama structure, city planning – sharing the energetic, multi-level house beneath this roof.
In 1968, John Total of the Nationwide Capital Growth Fee supplied Andrews the design of Cameron Places of work in Belconnen, a brand new satellite tv for pc of Canberra. Seizing the chance to return to Australia, he relocated his household (he and Ro had 4 sons) from Toronto and arrange an workplace in Palm Seashore in Sydney’s north. Devised to deal with 4,000 federal bureaucrats, Cameron was organized as seven workplace wings linked by a north-south pedestrian “mall” on the japanese aspect. This mall was alleged to be linked to housing additional to the east, and – most significantly to the logic of the scheme – a fast transit node and a city centre to the fast north. Nonetheless, the disestablishment of the fee led to those plans being deserted, undermining Cameron’s city order. Studies that Cameron Places of work leaked attributable to design faults led Andrews to sue the Sydney Morning Herald and two different newspapers for defamation. He gained. However poor upkeep practices at Cameron (not the architect’s duty) did certainly result in issues.
In Australia, Andrews continued to undertake college tasks: Toad Corridor on the Australian Nationwide College and residences on the Canberra Faculty of Superior Training are vital examples. Within the late Seventies and the Eighties, institutional tasks dried up because the neoliberal ethos of “small authorities” took maintain in Canberra, and Andrews more and more regarded to industrial tasks. He had a notable success within the King George Tower in central Sydney, accomplished in 1976. Later workplace tasks, such because the Octagon Places of work in Parramatta, clustered octagonal flooring plans with vertiginous atria between. Repeated octagons had first been proposed by Andrews for an additional Canberra complicated, the Callam Places of work at Woden, in 1973, however with the octagons broadly dispersed and linked by walkways and vertical circulation nodes. Partly realized as a school of technical and additional schooling 5 years later, solely three of the proposed 24 octagonal pods had been constructed. Callam, nevertheless, turned the template for Andrews’ final worldwide success, the competition-winning design for the Intelsat headquarters in Washington, accomplished in 1988. 9 high-tech octagonal modules of six flooring every are linked by glazed, planted atria, technically calibrated to reinforce the constructing’s environmental efficiency.
Andrews gained many accolades throughout his profession, notably the Gold Medal of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1980. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 1981, “in recognition of service to structure.” However Andrews had many pursuits aside from his architectural follow. He owned a farm at Eugowra, the place he constructed a nice, steel-framed home and raised a herd of pedigree deer. Close by at Canowindra, he grew vines from which the extremely regarded Hamilton’s Bluff wines had been made. For 10 years from 1978, Andrews was concerned within the Australia Council, turning into chair of its Design Arts Board. On this position, he helped to advertise design’s cultural and financial significance, to exhibit Australian structure at dwelling and overseas, and to deliver the editors of worldwide design journals to Australia. He additionally championed an Australian pavilion on the Venice Biennale.
He served on the juries of two internationally vital competitions: for the brand new Parliament Home (1979–81) – gained by Mitchell/Giurgola and Thorp – and for the Hong Kong Peak Leisure Membership (1982–83) – gained by Zaha Hadid Architects. A late modernist Andrews may need been, however he supported expertise nevertheless it manifested itself.
Within the Eighties, Andrews constructed three conference centres in Australia, in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. Adelaide and Melbourne had been completed, however the Sydney constructing was one other bravura efficiency, its critical monumentality at odds with a lot else realized at Darling Harbour. It’s shameful to file that these constructing have all been demolished, together with 4 wings of the Cameron Places of work – the substitute buildings are largely forgettable banalities – whereas the King George Tower and its plaza have been topic to modifications that may solely be described as a travesty. It pained Andrews to see his work handled so. No matter went flawed with this nation?
Paul Walker is a professor of structure on the College of Melbourne and lead creator of John Andrews: Architect of Unusual Sense, which shall be printed by Harvard Design Press later in 2022.