This is the story of the development of one of the most interesting and valuable architecture and design schools in Australia.
The School of Architecture commenced 65 years ago, in 1949, at the Hobart Technical College though its history extends back to 1908 when lectures were first given in architectural drawing at the Launceston Technical College. That School, now the School of Architecture & Design, became part of the University of Tasmania in 1991.
Though the School has a rich and varied history, one visionary, Barry McNeill, architect, planner and polymath, shaped its curriculum, making it one of the most distinctive and exciting in the Australian architectural education landscape. He became Director of the Department of Environmental Design in 1969 – a tumultuous and for many, an exciting time in education internationally with theorists such as Ivan Illich in ‘Deschooling Society’ (1971) arguing that institutionalised education was ineffectual. Student initiated learning and self-assessment were among the ideas implemented. These then (and now) radical ideas were implemented by Barry and resulted in a period of optimism, enthusiasm and open-ended exploration.
Sadly, Barry McNeill passed away on the 12th of November 2014. However, his prescient vision persists and forms the core of the school’s pedagogical approach. This approach was founded on the principles of environmental design (still the name of the first degree), self-directed and project-based learning, and learning by making.
One former student, now architect and landscape architect, Prue Slatyer, recalls that the radical course lured her from her studies at the University of Sydney to Tasmania. Barry emphasized environmental design, and with that, says Prue Slatyer, came Barry’s values of “equality, responsibility, democracy, respect for others, collaboration, the educational value of experience, and multi-disciplinarity.” As a mark of his integrity, Barry McNeill resigned when programme changes unacceptable to him were forced upon the school. Nevertheless, many of his core values, as noted above, remain to this day.
Today, the School of Architecture & Design is multi-disciplinary, offering architecture, interior design and furniture design. Environmental Design remains the core principle of its teaching and learning, together with learning by making, and collaborative, team-based working. It is housed in an award-winning building – a converted diesel locomotive workshop on the university’s Inveresk campus close to the urban centre of Launceston. The building won national architecture awards for sustainability and heritage architecture, thus the work environment for students and staff reflects the school’s values. It was intended by the design architects for the project that the building should provide a robust environment in which students, and staff, would feel free to be experimental, to make buildings, furniture and interiors, all in a naturally lit and ventilated three-storey high re-purposed building.
School of Architecture & Design LBM Exhibition, Academy Gallery, October 2014.
Learning by Making (LBM), a legacy of Barry McNeill’s critical contribution to architectural education, has gone from strength to strength. With the move to the Inveresk building with its extensive workshops and assembly areas, together with cutting edge technologies, including a recently purchased robotic arm, new opportunities have opened up. A new building for Furniture Design, attached to the existing restored building, has added specialized workshops. Nevertheless, the real driver for success in this area has been a group of dedicated academics and the workshop manager who believe in learning by making as a valid pedagogical approach and very importantly who also see it as an opportunity to engage with the community on real projects that without the School could never be realized. Playground equipment, seating in wilderness areas, bus stops, furniture, community buildings, mobile and floating stages for community dance and theatre companies, temporary mobile housing for homeless youth (the ‘Castle’, an ongoing project), projects for schools, in-house experimentation with different materials and construction technologies, are among the many projects undertaken over the past 45 years. Through collaborative styles of working, students are encouraged to experiment and test ideas and to lead projects. This approach has influenced teaching and learning in most areas of the curriculum. The attached photograph is of a recent exhibition of the school’s LBM history. They express, I believe, what colleague Ian Clayton describes as the ‘joy’ of learning by making.
Students from all the School’s disciplines engage in multidisciplinary teams, working collaboratively on projects of value to the community. While there is a degree of altruism in these projects, they also serve students very well – they have the opportunity before graduation to work on real design and build projects. They work with clients and always to very tight budgets requiring ingenuity, creativity and high-level design and construction skills. Through the design and making process, students come to see how their designs can be improved, made more environmentally friendly and more economical to build.
Barry McNeill’s approach to architectural education remains highly relevant today, perhaps more so than when he took on the leadership of the school in 1969. Environmental problems though known then have become exacerbated in the intervening decades fuelled by population growth and a consumerist society in most of the countries of the developed world. The role of built environment design, including architecture, interior design and furniture design, is critical to addressing these environmental problems since it contributes approximately half of the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change. Consequently, the School of Architecture & Design has played an important role in educating its students to think of design in quite profound ways and as graduates many have made substantial contributions to the profession and to the community at large.
Colleagues in the school, Rory Spence and Helen Norrie, referred to the School as following a humanist strand of modernism. In reviewing briefly the history of the School, one sees this thread commencing almost fifty years ago. That it continues to this day is something of which the School and the University should be proud for now, more than ever, we need highly educated, creative and innovative, ethically driven and technically competent designers.
About the author: Emeritus Professor Roger Fay BArch (Hons)(Melb), GradDipEd (Hawthorn), PhD (Melb), FRAIA, formerly Head of the School of Architecture and Design, retired from full-time academic life at the University of Tasmania in 2013 but, as Adjunct Professor, continues a close connection with the University, its students, and his research interests in design for sustainability and design for dementia.
