After more than 5 years in the making, ‘Glenn Murcutt: Unbuilt Works’ brings to life 10 projects designed by Glenn Murcutt AO that remain unbuilt. This remarkable book, authored by architect Nick Sissons and published by Thames and Hudson, was launched on 25 July 2024, at the State Library of NSW.

In researching the book, Nick Sissons visited the Murcutt Collection held by the State Library on more than 80 occasions; working through early sketches, drawings and correspondence to identify the projects, interviewing - and working closely with - Murcutt to faithfully render those works on their original sites. Large format photo-realistic renders bring to life all of the projects in the book, with text, sketches and working drawings prepared by Murcutt at the time. The projects included a house designed in 1969 for Murcutt's mother on a site in Seaforth.

But the book doesn't treat Murcutt's unbuilt projects in isolation. Instead, references are made to built projects that were being designed at the same time. For example, the house on the central coast explores themes similar to those being explored by Glenn Murcutt, Wendy Lewin and Reg Lark at the Boyd Centre on the NSW south coast.

The book also includes essays from Glenn Murcutt and Laura Harding, a Sydney-based architectural designer, writer, critic and educator who taught in the design studio led by Murcutt at UNSW.

Speaking at the event Sissons described the layers of record that are held in the Murcutt Collection; ranging from early sketch ideas that are often discarded, to the ‘diamonds’ that reveal themselves in the final layer of working drawings. Murcutt spoke of important early mentors, like the great Spanish architect Jose Coderch, who first described how the start of every project brings a certain anxiety that drives design exploration and that ultimately proves Murcutt's dictum that architects do not 'create', but 'discover'.

But such discovery does not come without commitment to doing the ordinary extraordinarily well, as Murcutt is often heard to say. In fact, as Murcutt puts it:

'Glenn Murcutt: unbuilt works' demonstrates that Murcutt is one who has consistently refused to make compromises over the 55 years of architectural practice. Copies can be purchased through Thames and Hudson here.

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This is the second part of a conversation between Rick Leplastrier AO and Glenn Murcutt AO from 2014 at the University of Newcastle.

It opens with Murcutt’s recollections of meeting famed Spanish architect Jose Coderch in Barcelona in 1973 as part of a travelling scholarship; and Cordech’s famous invocation of effort, love and suffering in architecture.

We’re also taken to the moment Rick meets the client for what would become one of his most celebrated projects; the Palm Garden House.

And Murcutt shares with us how his early practice specialising in modest alterations and additions grew to produce some of his most well known new works like the Marie Short House, and the house at Mount Irvine - all achieved as a sole practitioner seeking to build, as he says, a vocabulary of his work.

We hear again about working with materials, the joy of detailing well….and why it's important to always do the ordinary extraordinarily well.

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In this conversation from 2014 at the University of Newcastle, Rick LePlastrier AO and Glenn Murcutt AO share lessons that have shaped their practice; from early groundings at university; fundamentals like drawing and observation, learning from nature’s own lessons and what goes in to teaching architecture well.

We pick it up with a question about when an architect completes their best work, and the risks that come with recognition and fame...

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