Vale James Birrell
1928–2019
James Birrell was a pivotal figure in twentieth-century Queensland architecture. John Macarthur and Andrew Wilson reflect on his significant contributions.
As Brisbane City Architect, in his mid-twenties, James Birrell was responsible for hundreds of public structures, including an impressive series of libraries and swimming pools. His bold, futuristic forms reflected his belief that buildings should carry meaning and honour the surrounding landscape. His legacy includes a number of iconic works in Queensland and overseas. Inventive, decisive, intellectually ambitious and artistic, he helped to reposition architecture in relation to urban design and landscape planning.
James Birrell recalled playing on the sports fields along the Maribyrnong River, fascinated by the incinerator (designed by the offices of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony) before he even knew what architecture was. But at high school, he did well in art, and despite an attempt to enrol in geology, found himself studying architecture at the end of World War II, first at the Melbourne Technical College and then at the University of Melbourne, with a cadetship from the Commonwealth Works Department. Roy Grounds was a great influence on “Jim,” both as a person and in his idea that buildings should have memorable forms that give them the status of artworks. A course in Renaissance art history broadened and encouraged Jim’s lifelong interest in the relationship between architecture and the visual arts. He became part of the re-founding of Melbourne’s Contemporary Arts Society and, in 1952, co-founded the journal Architecture and Arts with Peter Burns, Helen O’Donnell and Norman Lehey.
The cadetship bonded Jim to the Commonwealth Works Department and, in 1952, he was sent to work in the largely stalled project that was Canberra. He took the opportunity to study Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony’s drawings and their urban design ethos; this research later became a book, Walter Burley Griffin (UQP, 1964). A year later, he was posted to Darwin to work on school and hospital projects, as well as the general repairs of a town still shambolic after the war. He applied for the post of chief architect for Brisbane City Council and was surprised to be successful. (Unbeknown to him, the incoming city administration had sacked the entire previous architectural staff and, in response, the local chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects had blackballed the job.) So, in 1955, aged twenty-seven, Jim finally had the opportunity to exercise his talents, taking charge of the buildings for what was then the largest municipality in the world. Hundreds of depots, substations and toilet blocks went through Jim’s office over the next six years, but he was also responsible for an impressive series of libraries and swimming pools that gave an urban sense and logic to Brisbane’s expanding suburbs. Two projects – Centenary Pool Complex (1959) and Wickham Terrace Car Park (1959–60) – reached a monumental scale, achieving national acclaim for their bold, optimistic forms, their incorporation of artworks and their strategic placement in the urban landscape.
In 1961, Jim was appointed architect to the University of Queensland. Horrified by a suburban allotment approach to building siting, and following lessons learned from the Griffins, he set about a planning process that emphasized the landscape. In three major projects – the
J. D. Story Building, Union College and the Hartley Teakle Building – Jim showed how building form and placement could
create precincts within the campus that were softly defined, neither derived from nor subservient to the Great Court complex (designed by Hennessy, Hennessy and Co. in the mid-1930s). Union College, a linear slab on piloti that weaves between ancient tallowwood trees, achieved international publication and acclaim.
After some disagreements with the administration, Jim left the university in 1966 to set up James Birrell and Partners with Lorant Kulley, Phillip Conn and Richard Stringer; however, he continued work on university buildings for the Coordinator-General of Queensland at St Lucia and in Townsville. Many staff members from Jim’s various offices went on to highly regarded careers, including Rex Addison, Bruce Goodsir, Russell Hall, Helen Josephson, John Railton and Donald Watson.
While at Brisbane City Council, Jim had studied to qualify as a town planner. Increasingly, his interests turned to larger scale urban design. In private practice, James Birrell and Partners undertook some of the early-stage designs for Griffith University’s Nathan campus, a plan and several buildings for James Cook University, and buildings for the University of Southern Queensland. Much to Jim’s amusement, the James Cook Library (renamed in honour of Eddie Koiki Mabo in 2008), which was something of a hip homage to the design for the National Gallery of Victoria, was completed before the Grounds building. Extensive university and government building and planning work in Papua
New Guinea followed, along with planning schemes for local authorities in southeast Queensland.
Jim closed the Brisbane office in 1977 and set up home at Maroochydore, where he lived on the river with his wife, the artist Franki Birrell. He completed a number of projects, including the design for the well regarded Maroochy Shire Chambers, and was elected to Maroochy Shire Council in 1985. In 1997, Jim was appointed to the National Capital Authority and returned to Canberra.
A large personality with a generous sense of humour, Jim could provoke a conversation on any topic.
In his professional life, he set out to project the qualities that he thought an architect ought to have: inventiveness, decisiveness, intellectual ambition and artistic aspiration. He helped to reposition Australian architecture in relation to urban and landscape planning. The bold, object-like forms of his buildings were actors in a subtle play on the landscapes and urban settings that were his real concern. Since the 1990s, a younger generation of architects and students has rediscovered the work of the various Birrell offices. Jim was awarded the RAIA Gold Medal in 2005. His diverse body of work provides a significant benchmark that continues to inspire and inform the best architectural thinking in Queensland and further afield.