When A Square Building Flips Out: With more than 16,000 rotating glass discs, a center for multidisciplinary design gives a new spin to engaging with its surroundings.
Sean Godsell is a surprise. I'm expecting a rising rock star of an architect, a Melbourne Bjarke Ingels, with more success than he knows how to use. The man I find is almost the opposite'more in the mold of Glenn Murcutt, with a small, dedicated practice, an intense seriousness about the job, and a staunch devotion to making architecture from first principles.
Godsell's reputation, like Murcutt's, is bigger than his buildings, which are themselves remarkably Murcuttesque, with their orthogonal forms, underdressed materials, and attenuated plans. Mostly boxes, they range from Future Shack, the 1995 parasol-sheltered habitable shipping container that first put Godsell on the international stage, through a series of widely published steel-and-timber houses. They stand in contradistinction to the typical Melbourne shtick, which implies that architecture is a bit of a giggle and repeatedly reenacts Venturi with the multicolored, the stuck-on, the decorative. Godsell is undisturbed by this, saying, 'I'm happy to work in isolation.'
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