Remembering Lionel Glendenning 1941–2025 | ArchitectureAu

In Could 2025, the structure fraternity misplaced an necessary contributor to sustainability and the constructed surroundings. Lionel William Augustus Glendenning, probably most nicely often known as the unique architect for the Nineteen Eighties Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo, was gifted with a formidable mind and creativity. He embraced life to the complete, and all through his profession explored passive environmental design and the challenges of adaptive reuse, the latter nicely forward of his time.

Born 1941 and raised in Gordon, Sydney, with two brothers and one sister, Lionel performed cricket and tennis from an early age and later developed a ardour for the finer arts: portray, sculpting, designing and making jewelry, and enjoying piano – ideally classical. Like many architects of his technology, Lionel was a maker, builder, drawback solver and gifted creator. He skilfully constructed and sailed dinghies, a follow that continued till very late in life, with distinctive finely crafted mannequin Balmain Bugs and different boats.

In 1958, whereas a younger pupil, Lionel started a cadetship with the Authorities Architect’s Department on the New South Wales Division of Public Works, an affiliation he would retain till 1988. In 1967, he graduated with an honours diploma in structure from Sydney Technical School, and the next 12 months obtained a Bachelor of Structure with First Class Honours from the College of NSW.

Lionel was awarded a number of educational prizes and scholarships, together with the WE Kemp Prize (1963), RAIA Prize (1966), Byera Hadley Testimonial Prize (1966), Byera Hadley Travelling Scholarship (1967), and the inaugural Robert Gordon Menzies Scholarship (1967) together with a Fulbright Journey Grant (1968) to review on the Harvard Faculty of Design, the place he gained a masters diploma in 1969.

Lionel would describe his time at Harvard as seeding the “lifelong seek for excellence, ardour and repair” that outlined his skilled life.1 Notable amongst his formative teachings have been the architectural historical past lectures of Eduard Sekler (1920–2017), who would instruct college students “to ask themselves: how does what I design make the lives of the individuals who will use it higher and happier? One ought to not neglect that basic query.”2

In 1984, Lionel turned principal architect of public buildings on the NSW Authorities Architect’s Workplace, a place he held till he left for personal follow in 1988. Key initiatives the place he labored as principal designer embrace Claymore Public Faculty (1980 Royal Australian Institute of Architects NSW Advantage Award), and the buildings and constructions for Bicentennial Park in Homebush Bay (1988 NSW Advantage Award).

Arguably, Lionel’s most well-known and profitable challenge was the Powerhouse Museum in Ultimo, designed and constructed between 1978 and 1988. Lionel headed this challenge from inception to completion, working with an exceptionally proficient group of architects and exhibition and graphic designers, together with Richard Johnson and design agency Emery Vincent, and the museum’s then-director, Dr Lindsay Sharp. The challenge received many state and nationwide accolades, together with the distinguished 1988 Sir John Sulman Award for Public Buildings and the 1988 nationwide President’s Award for Recycled Buildings.

The Powerhouse Museum was applauded by the general public, and was a lot acclaimed internationally by design professionals and museum consultants for its distinctive and progressive integration of structure and collections show, celebrating the achievement, creativity and marvel of each. Lionel’s design set an exemplary precedent for adaptive reuse of commercial constructions. His contribution to the sphere of heritage conservation and the sustainability that underpins adaptive reuse is invaluable.

In 1988, Lionel entered personal follow, becoming a member of the agency Edwards Madigan Torzillo Briggs as managing director. There he labored on quite a few initiatives till he retired in 2012, together with an unbuilt proposal for a Multifunction Polis in Adelaide (1989–90) and the IMAX Theatre in Darling Harbour (1996). His design for Caves Beachside, on the NSW Central Coast (2009), received each structure and concrete design awards in 2010.

I met Lionel in 2020 and really shortly got here to know and admire his scholarship, creativity, integrity, ardour, wit, and above all, his generosity of spirit. I used to be attempting to know the concepts and inspiration that had formed the design for the Powerhouse Museum and had learn a lot of what Lionel would inform us in quite a few publications, however listening to it straight from him in his measured however passionate voice made it a lot clearer, integrating and increasing on concepts and inspirations in a manner that the publications couldn’t.

His explanations highlighted the poetry of the museum’s design: the Wran Constructing, impressed by the broad arch of Normanton Railway Station in north-west Queensland, capturing a slice of that infinite Australian area, a grand lobby for each arrivals and departures; the light-filled Galleria referencing Sydney’s 1879 iron and glass Backyard Palace exhibition constructing; and the finely crafted timber-clad board room on the south finish of the Galleria’s prime stage, a easy, nearly primal hut, a constructing inside a constructing.

Lionel’s concern for a sustainable future for the constructed surroundings and the planet was at all times front-of-mind in his work. He was very pissed off that others couldn’t perceive or respect these when contemplating the way forward for the Powerhouse.

In a paper Lionel wrote for a 2008 presentation, “Powerhouse to Powerhouse Museum,” he articulated these issues:

“It’s within the complicated, dense layering of historical past, in earlier generations’ aspirations and expertise, that our values as human beings and our place within the complicated internet of life are expressed, moderately than as an alien species briefly occupying the planet then leaving the mess to others.

“We are able to now not squander the generational funding and finite assets unthinkingly, utilizing incomplete financial and social fashions in a world turning into extra complicated by the day.…

“Slightly than ‘asset administration,’ we have to start to ‘improve asset’ in a holistic manner that accounts for assets as a continuum wherein we’re custodians. It bears restating – it’s not about ‘revenue,’ it’s about ‘values.’”

Lionel and his household, together with colleagues {and professional} and group organisations, fought arduous over quite a few years to maintain and save the Powerhouse Museum from demolition, however, sadly, the unique museum is now dismantled and faraway from the location as a part of the NSW authorities’s controversial redevelopment plans. All of Lionel’s award-winning work is being demolished within the redevelopment – an motion that’s the antithesis of his tenet of adaptive reuse. It survives now solely in publications and reminiscences.

Quoted in a 1987 article concerning the Powerhouse earlier than its completion – and echoing the phrases of his Harvard lecturer, Eduard Sekler – Lionel would observe: “What I wanted to ask myself was: what’s it concerning the current surroundings that may be enhanced? What can I draw inspiration from? What can I reinforce?”3

To me, this encapsulates Lionel Glendenning – the inventive, passionate architect, involved for our accountability, care and stewardship (or lack thereof) of the constructed surroundings.

As we race headlong right into a less-than-sustainable future, Lionel’s query is pressing – and directed in any respect of us.