Edited from NSW A.I.A. bibliographic file
Mrs Ruth Lucas (neé Cotter Harvey) B.Arch. (Hons), ARAIA.
(Mary) Ruth Harvey was born in 1926, was educated at Frensham and studied architecture at the University of Sydney, graduating with Honors and becoming registered to practice in New South Wales in 1951. She became an Associate of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects the following year.
Bill Lucas and Ruth Cotter Harvey moved into Neville Gruzman’s Studio on the 5th Floor 80 Hunter Street, Sydney in 1956 and shared the studio for many years. Nevlle Gruzman, Bill Lucas and Ruth Harvey studied at Sydney University together. Bill, Neville and Ruth and occasionally Tony Moore argued architecture all day every day. They formed the ‘Design Group’ and did one or two buildings together. While living in a boat shed at Sugar Loaf Bay she began work on the Opera House design competition with Nevlle Gruzman, Bill Lucas and Tony Moore. They lobbied for an international competition and jury for the proposed Sydney Opera House.
Ruth married the architect Wilfred Ernest (Bill) Lucas in 1956 Paddington they had six children, Anne, David, Richard, Peter, Christine and Michaela, they later divorced.
(Extract from a publication in The Crag, the newsletter of the Castlecrag Progress Association, February 2002, written by Peter Moffitt FRAIA)
In 1956 Bill and his new wife Ruth, who was also an architect and Bill’s collaborator, bought three adjoining blocks of land in The Bulwark at a point where the road turns sharply around a stone bridge over a rainforest-covered creek. In 1957, in consultation with Ruth, Bill designed and built a house for themselves. This house at 80 The Bulwark is known today as the Glass House, and remains as one of Australia’s most significant modern houses.
Built on a site which in conventional 1957 terms would generally have been regarded as almost unbuildable, the Glass House turns the challenge of its site to great advantage. Audaciously simple in its concept, it stands on tiptoes amongst the boulders and the ferns on four slender steel posts. The whole single storey structure is suspended by cables from the post tops at roof level and stabilised by slender steel cross bracing. This skeleton of steel supports a house of timber and glass, forming a hollow rectangle with a hole in the middle where half of the hole is a timber deck open to the sky and the other half is an open void with the trees of the site growing up through it. The house appears to barely touch the ground, suspended amongst the trees. All of the rooms look outward to the bush and inward to the central void.
The house appears deceptively simple to our eyes today, 45 years on. But in 1957 it was radical stuff, throwing aside every precept of house design and construction of its day. It was built for minimal cost (Bill and Ruth didn’t have much money), it had minimal structure, minimal materials, minimal energy use, and it is beautiful in a timeless way.
Most importantly, it was designed to have minimal impact on the natural bushland. The house was inserted amongst the carefully preserved trees, becoming part of them. The Glass House leaves its beautiful bushland site almost intact, as undisturbed as possible. The use of dark stained timber and dark painted steel blends beautifully with the bush.
The house is entirely subservient to the surrounding landscape in a way that makes it difficult to see clearly from the street. In this sense Bill Lucas truly carried the torch of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney Griffin in their concept for Castlecrag as a place where landscape would dominate over buildings and the houses would be lost amongst the trees. Lucas and the Griffins shared a passionate love affair with Australian plants and especially the rugged character of the Castlecrag bush.
Bill and Ruth lived in the Glass House from 1957 until 1962 when they moved with their six children to Paddington. They purchased three important terrace houses, together with four blocks of adjoining land in Underwood Street, Paddington. Bill & Ruth, strongly supported by others, worked to save this neglected inner-city area from slum clearance. This tumultuous time stimulated the beginning of the highly influential Paddington Society.
In the late 1960s, Bill Lucas as President of the Paddington Public School P & C Association pushed for reforms within the public education system. He often found himself in conflict with the school headmistress who disbanded the after-school activities. The Underwood Street garage and gardens became the location of an after-school creative arts centre run by Ruth and other parents for up to 60 mostly latch-key children. Ruth, some of the parents and other concerned people, then began work on forming a breakaway alternative school. With Bill sourcing the premises, Guriganya Community School came into being at 444 Oxford Street from 1972 to 1976.
- Writers:
-
Michael Bogle
Davina Jackson
- Date written:
- 2015
- Last updated:
- 2015
