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Coexistence of rational definiteness

and irrational oneness
An investigation of Robin Boyds
architecture and theoretical approach
through a Heideggerian perspective

Mauro Baracco

10

metres

Abstract
This PhD examines the approach of Melbourne architect Robin Boyd (1919-1971) through a
philosophical framework primarily developed from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger
(1889-1976).
Boyds approach to both theoretical discussion and design production the former undertaken
throughout his innumerable published works, the latter inclusive of an extensive body of built
and unbuilt projects resists the rational determinations of mainstream modernism through
sensibilities informed by a sense of ambivalence, con-fusion and other correlated dimensions that
are in different ways discussed in this thesis: unclearness, vagueness, weakness, irresoluteness,
elusiveness, ambiguity, indefiniteness, openness, releasement. These quintessential qualities
of Boyds approach and related works are all indicative of his inclination to rationally accept
a comprehensible objectification of the world, and yet at the same time to hope for an
incomprehensible dimension of reciprocal co-belongingness of physical and spatial entities. The
thesis proposes that this paradoxical position this coexistence of rational determination of
individual entities, and irrational releasement to a dimension of all-inclusiveness/oneness is a
peculiar characteristic of this architect, and places him on the edges of the modernist culture and
its related values.
This is argued through two parts: a theoretical framing essay part one that is then discussed for
its particular application to 36 specific projects part two. The latter presents the projects anew by
redrawing and photographing so as to detach them from their purely historical archival presentation
and to provide a comprehensive and consistent documentation. This act is important and supportive
to the PhDs framework that focuses on essential and philosophical notions of architecture rather
than historical facts or trajectories, therefore offering an alternative reading in comparison to the
extensive body of existing material about Robin Boyd and his work.
Robin Boyds work and thought are discussed as in empathy with some theoretical positions
of Martin Heidegger, whose philosophy is analogously characterized by a condition of critical
resistance towards a pervasive modernist approach that tends to conceive and perceive reality as if
it was merely consisting of objective and individual physical presences. This modernist approach,
extensively diffused in modern and contemporary architecture, is a direct reflection of both:
- a typical Western tradition of thought that is originally, since ever, inclined to identify being with
presence,
and
- the Western Modern creation and gradual amplification of the duality between subject and
object, according to which reality and the world are perceived and represented as objective
products of a cognitive process in which human beings are indeed the subjects, constantly
considering themselves as the relational center of that which is as such (Martin Heidegger,
The Age of the World Picture).
Alternative to this approach, Heideggers philosophy proposes to release ourselves to irrationality,
through a meditative thinking as a coexisting and parallel sensibility of the calculative thinking
that predominantly informs rational and logical viewpoints. The paradoxical thinking of Heidegger
embraces at once rationality and irrationality, accepting both these conditions as intrinsic of our
being-in-the-world.
Boyds approach, reflected in particular in the ambivalence of his writings and the sense
of potentiality and spatial continuity of his projects, is investigated in relation to the above
philosophical positions. The thesis argues that the application of this approach in Boyds two
different operative fields (theoretical discourse and architectural practice) is inclined to forms of
con-fusion and openness rather than clarity and determination. Boyds ambivalence is discussed as
alternative to many architectural positions of mainstream modernism, generally conditioned by the
prioritization of rationality, and therefore condemned to produce outcomes that are trapped by forms
of duality/correspondence that are merely dictated by logical accords and formulaic processes drawn
by objective/scientific/rational types of determination.

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Contents
Introduction

Part 1
Rational Definiteness and Irrational Oneness: coexisting conditions
of Robin Boyds Heideggerian approach

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Part 2
Introduction

77

Boyd House 1 1947

King House 1951 1952
Gillison House 1952
Manning Clark House 1952
Finlay House 1952 1953
Wood House + Shop 1952 1954
Fenner House 1953 1954
Bridgeford House 1954
Richardson House 1954
Holford House 1956
Haughton James House 1956
Southgate Fountain 1957 1960
Boyd House 2 1958
Lloyd House 1959
Clemson House 1959 1960
Domain Park Flats 1960 1962
Handfield House 1960
Jimmy Watsons Wine Bar 1961 1963
Tower Hill Natural History Centre 1961 1970
Wright House 1962
John Batman Motor Inn 1962
Arnold House 1963 1964
Baker House 1964 1966 + Baker Dower House 1966 1968
McCaughey Court 1965 1968
Menzies College 1965 1970
Australian Pavilion at Montreal Expo 67 1966 1967
Lawrence House + Flats 1966 1968
Farfor Holiday Houses 1966 1968
Milne House 1966 1970
McClune House 1967 1968
Featherston House 1967 1969
The First 200 Years Exhibition 1968
Carnich Towers 1969 1971
Hegarty House 1969 1972
Flinders Vaults 1971

87
99
111
123
135
147
159
171
183
195
207
219
231
243
255
267
279
291
303
315
327
339
351
369
381
393
405
417
429
443
455
467
475
483
495

Conclusion
References

503
509

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Lloyd House
1959

Mark Strizic/Adrian Featherston*

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The Lloyd House, demolished in 2003, was located in the suburb

of Brighton, approximately 12 kilometres south from the city of
Melbourne, and less than one kilometre east from the coastline of
Port Phillip Bay. Built as a crescent around a northerly court1,
the house was placed in the centre of a rectangular block, with
a concave faade embracing an internal courtyard and a convex
back front facing the boundary to the south adjacent block. A
driveway connected the building to the street, leading to a carport
space accommodated under an extended continuous roof.
Similar to many of Boyds projects, the design decisions and
formal solutions of this house are guided by the existing conditions
of the site. An old pear tree along the south edge was maintained
as a significant presence of the garden that defined the west side
of the block. This open space labelled in some early drawings as
a service yard and childrens garden2 was achieved through
the curving of a footprint that otherwise would have occupied
a longer area of the block, modifying a slim, rectangular Small
Homes planinto a fan shape3. The adaptation of this standard
type into a curved plan not only provided the house with two
buffer areas on the west and east ends of the block, but also
allowed the creation of a semicircular internal courtyard this
inflected open space was instrumental to catching the light and
sun from the north through a faade of continuous floor-to-ceiling
windows. All the rooms directly related to this court, each of them
radiating with an open end towards it.
The bedroom areas were located at the opposite ends of the
crescent: the one for the children, on the west end next to the
childrens garden, was effectively a large open space with a
wardrobe as a dividing partition in the middle of the room; the
parents bedroom, at the east end, was provided with an ensuite
and a study, both located at the back of a wardrobe as a partition
element. The remaining core area between the bedrooms included,
from east to west respectively, a living room, dining room, kitchen,
and playroom with bathroom/toilet and laundry at its back. A
curved hall, inclusive of the entry door in correspondence to the
living room, ran along the north side of the house, interconnecting
the circulation between the various rooms, but also acting as a
buffer space from them and the external court. Curtains instead
of partition walls were used between the hall and the north end
of the living, dining and kitchen areas; two sliding doors at the
east and west ends of the hall provided access to the parents
bedroom and the playroom. These light and rather impalpable
elements of separation their informal way of providing privacy,
their consistent state of openness and porosity contributed to
the sense of spatial continuity and visual permeability between
interiors and exteriors; the courtyard, embraced through the
transparency of the north faade, was experienced as an extension
of the internal spaces rather than a separated outdoor area.
A sense of potential endless expansion is characteristic of this
project and the related association of the infinite continuity of the
circle as a geometric form. A modularity based on circular sectors
was the means to not only define the shape and dimension of the
internal spaces which were originally built (as parts of the project
that are documented in these pages), but also allow the future
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expansions which occurred at a later stage (here documented

through dotted lines in some drawings to represent subsequent
additions to the west end, and the expansion of the carport space
at the east end). It is not surprising that commenting on the
additions that informed this house but never compromised its
curvilinear imprint, Janys and Edward Woods Lloyd used to joke
fantasising to ultimately extend the crescent bit by bit, circular
sector after circular sector into a circle over two blocks4, in their
way unconsciously echoing the coexistence of both a sense of
comprehension and sense of incomprehension that is intrinsic to
Boyds approach, here reflected by the vision of a circle that would
be informed by the comprehensible objectivity of its parts and the
incomprehensible oneness of its infinite totality.
Mauro Baracco

Mark Strizic

1 Robin Boyd, Living in Australia, Pergamon Press, Sydney, 1970, p. 28

2 See Robin Boyd Original Sketches, Architecture in Australia, Vol. 62,
no. 2, April 1973, p. 75
3 Geoffrey Serle, Robin Boyd A Life, Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 1995, p. 187. The Small Homes Service was set up and
directed by Boyd in the years 1946-1954; it was an architect advisory
service for the public, sponsored by The Age newspaper and the
R.V.I.A. (Royal Victorian Institute of Architects). As observed by Neil
Clerehan, director of this service in 1951 and from 1954-1961, The
sponsorship of the Age enabled the Service to become the force that it
did, providing a weekly column where Boyd could publish articles and
designs enlightening the public about the service; Neil Clerehan, The
Age RVIA Small Homes Service, Transition, no. 38, monographic issue
on Robin Boyd, 1992, p. 58
4 As a result of a subdivision of a larger block that was originally
purchased by Janys Lloyds grandfather in 1898, the Lloyd House was
sitting immediately south from the block including the house of Janys
Lloyds mother. The fantasy idea of the circle over the two blocks would
involve (in fun) the demolition of the latter house and the relocation of
Janys mother residence in the circle, as an independent and separate
part of the extension; from a conversation with Janys Lloyd during a
visit to the Lloyd House on the 12 March 2003

Mauro Baracco

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Mark Strizic

Lucinda McLean

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Lucinda McLean

Mauro Baracco

Mark Strizic

Lucinda McLean

Lucinda McLean

Mauro Baracco

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