Abstract:
This paper represents a foray into a new research area, which explores
questions of architectural authorship, myth, and representation (1).
It is
concerned more with the reception than the production of architecture, and
in particular with the way that architecture is understood (or not),
appreciated (or not), and constructed in the popular mind. There are two
broader questions that underlie this enquiry, which constitute its secret
motivation: the first is the question of why, in architecture, the author
seemingly never died. This is of course a reference to Roland Barthes'
seminal 1968 essay, 'The Death of the Author', to which the paper will
return. The second question is a pondering on the topic of why (aside from
the accepted fact that he is a good architect) the work of the Australian
architect Glenn Murcutt is so well liked and well received, in Australia and
internationally. These two questions fit within the broader context of a
generally post-colonial exploration of how identity is constructed in and
through architecture, to what instrumental ends it is used, and what this
means both for architecture and for culture more broadly.
