Profile of selected mid 20th Century Australian Landscape Designers

Profile of selected mid 20th Century Australian Landscape Designers

The concept of an Australian landscape design did not emerge until the mid 20^th century.  Prior to this landscape designs, mostly associated with large estates, were derived the English Landscape School.  By the early 20^th century, an American influence was evident in urban designs copying the City Beautiful Movement.  Research into the emerging Australian landscape design ethos has focused on the works of selected individuals working from the 1960s on.

Richard Clough

The first Australian formally trained landscape designers were educated in the new courses in Britain established as a result of the post WW2 concern to establish new towns and undertake urban renewal as a result of war damage.  One of the early intake of students was an Australian architect, Richard Clough.  After working as a landscape architect on some of the new towns, he returned to Australia and joined the new National Capital Development Corporation which had been set up the develop Australia’s capital city, Canberra.  A video is available which describes his role as the landscape designer for Canberra from 1960 to 1980.  It also shows his work as the landscape designer for major university campuses and one outstanding garden in the Blue Mountains.

Sydney University Courtyard

Garden in Mount Wilson, NSW

Carillion on Lake Burley Griffin

The Sydney School Designers

In the 1960s, a group of designers began to develop houses for the rugged sandstone topography known as ‘the bush’. There were two major influences on these designs, the Bauhaus, which on these sites drew from De Stijl concepts of interpenetration, and the US architect, Frank Lloyd Wright’s organic responses to landscape as seamless interior and exterior spaces.

Two architect/landscape architects, Harry Howard and Bruce Rickard, were instrumental in establishing a landscape response that gave precedence to Australian bushland character.  Both worked on the design of new schools established in bushland settings.  Harry Howard went on to design the Sculpture Garden associated with the National Gallery in Canberra. Bruce Rickard, who has studied under the US landscape architect, Ian McHarg, developed McHargian planning processes for proposed new developments in the 1970s.