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Untroubled by theory

Untroubled by theory

People | Modernism meant the end of all that stuff about style and would, we believed, be the basis of all future architecture ’til the end of time. A couple of decades later, postmodernism caused consternatio...
Grand design down under

Grand design down under

Review | - Mike Austin / I wasn’t sure what to expect of Kevin McCloud’s one-man show, Home Truths. He’s been dubbed the ‘David Attenborough of architecture’ and there’s no denying his success in bringing the su...
Book review: John Scott Works

Book review: John Scott Works

Review | Disclosure: When I graduated, I wanted to work for John Scott. (I always knew him as John whereas those closer called him Scott or JC.) But after letters and phone calls, we couldn’t ever get it toget...
Architecture of an ocean

Architecture of an ocean

Practice | 1  Mike Austin, ‘Pacific Island migration’, in Stephen Cairns (ed.) Drifting: Architecture and Migrancy, London, Routledge, 2004, p. 224. 2  Epeli Hau’ofa, ‘The new South Pacific society: Integration an...
Whare meets verandah

Whare meets verandah

Projects | About fifty years ago, in one of a collection of essays entitled The Māori People in the Nineteen-Sixties1, Bruce Biggs (author of the book Let’s Learn Māori2) stated that te reo would become restrict...
Review: In Context: RTA Studio

Review: In Context: RTA Studio

Review | Rem Koolhaas famously said: “fuck context”. This was surprising, especially as he is one of the most serious researchers into the circumstances surrounding his architectural projects. Maybe he thinks ...
Colour Collab: Craig Moller

Colour Collab: Craig Moller

People | I also like what I call “Architect’s Green”, the colour of bathroom tiles in the ’80s and Frank Gehry’s kitchen but also what I recall was the trouser colour of my teachers, Mike Austin and David Mitche...
Posted: 27 Jun 2022
Found in translation

Found in translation

Projects | Most continue to live at low levels and, if the Pacific site is the “edge between land and water”,3 as Mike Austin so cleanly describes it, then the internationalising here is the down-low contribution....
Remembering David Mitchell

Remembering David Mitchell

People | Mike Austin: David and I were complicated friends – regularly working together but maybe mutually envious. I was in awe of his courage and outspokenness in so many spheres. For example: while I grew up ...
From court to camp

From court to camp

Practice | As the research of Mike Austin and others has indicated, the sites are often selected so there are associated landscape features reinforcing the form and creating a backdrop which adds power to the dire...
Transcolonisation: 1990–2020

Transcolonisation: 1990–2020

Practice | Although there was significant research into South Pacific architecture by Mike Austin7 and Michael Linzey8, this learning was optional. There was no core allocation in the curriculum for any indigenous...
On the Rise: Raphaela Rose

On the Rise: Raphaela Rose

People | Brazil's my next travel destination so I can go and see her work! / AMH: What's one piece of advice you’d give to your student self? / RR: I wish that I’d had my thesis tutor Mike’s advice to 'relax and...
Alien subversives

Alien subversives

Practice | Secondly, as the only institution teaching architecture at the time, the Auckland School of Architecture was dominated for decades by nationalist/regionalist advocates, such as Mike Austin, Vernon Brown...
With Patrick Clifford

With Patrick Clifford

People | We learnt drawing from Pat Hanley, who was a very helpful and incredibly encouraging teacher, and people like Fred Beckett, Dave Mitchell and Mike Austin, who were practising and working in a completely...
Pattersons

Pattersons

Practice | Mike Austin discusses this Pacific idea of spatial separation as a positive space in his essay ‘Oceanic Architecture’. “Differentiation and separation are achieved not by walls and partitions, but by sp...