John Andrews (1933–) graduated from the University of Sydney in 1956 after spending his second year in Concord Hospital repatriation after a shooting accident during his national service. He had worked part-time for Edwards Madigan and Torzillo, as well as ‘bush-building’ a couple of houses to his own design. On a scholarship, he joined Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, where he gained an M.Arch in 1958. In 1957, he and three fellow students were finalists in the Toronto City Hall international design competition. The following year, he moved to Toronto to become senior designer with John B. Parkin, the Toronto partner of the winning Finnish architect, Viljo Revell. In 1961, he and his family travelled to Europe, Russia, the Middle East and India. They returned to Sydney, where Andrews spent four months working for Stephenson and Turner on hospital designs. In 1962, he returned to Canada to join a five-man multi-disciplinary group called INTEG (Integrated Professions – an engineer, an accountant, a lawyer, a landscape architect and an architect). His first project was a masterplan and the first buildings at Scarborough College, Ontario (design began in 1962), followed by a student residence at the University of Guelph, Ontario (1965); the Bellmere Public School, Ontario (1965); African Place at Expo ’67, Montreal (1965); the Weldon Library at the University of Ontario (1967); the Miami Seaport Passenger Terminal (1967); and Gund Hall at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass (1968). In 1968, he was invited back to Australia by leading Canberra planner Sir John Overall to design the Cameron Offices at Belconnen, but continued on with various Canadian projects, including the School of Art at Kent State University, Ohio (1970) and the Canadian National (CN) Tower in Toronto (1970). In 1970, he returned to Australia permanently and began to design the King George Tower, Sydney (1970), a student residence at the Australian National University (1970), the Belconnen Town Centre retail mall in Canberra (1972), a student residence at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (1973), the University of Queensland Chemical Engineering Building (1973), the Griffith University School of Australian Environmental Studies (1975); the Little Bay low income housing in Sydney (1975) and numerous other education and office buildings, as well as town centre, retail and academic masterplans. His own farmhouse at Eugowra (1978) is an Australia classic of that decade. In 1980, he won an international design competition for the Intelstat headquarters building in Washington and designed a garden-roofed car park for the Australian Navy complex at Garden Island and a public housing complex at Wooloomooloo. He was a juror for the Australian Archives National Building and Australian Parliament House competitions 1979-80, a member of the Australia Council’s visual arts board 1977-81, and chair of the Council’s architecture and design panel. He continued to produce major works of architecture in Australia and the United States until the 1980s. He won the RAIA Gold Medal in 1980. He has lived on farms in Eugowra and (currently at 2004) Orange.
Sources
—Taylor, Jennifer and John Andrews. 1982. Architecture A Performing Art. Melbourne and Toronto, Melbourne University Press.
—Jackson, Davina. 2004. Interviews with Jennifer Taylor and John Andrews, October.
—Architecture Australia Gold Medal edition, May-June 1981.
- Writers:
-
Davina Jackson
- Date written:
- 2015
- Last updated:
- 2015
