Ronald Jack “Gus” Ferguson was born on 26 November 1931 in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. He accomplished his education at Perth Fashionable Faculty, the place he was awarded a scholarship to check structure at Perth Technical Faculty, finally graduating with an associateship in structure in 1955.
In his closing yr, he was awarded the inaugural Morawetz Journey Prize, which enabled him to journey extensively after his research. In 1957, Ferguson, collectively together with his spouse Clare, set off on a journey that took them throughout Africa and Europe earlier than spending 18 months in London the place Ferguson labored for Chamberlin, Powell and Bon on the brand new Barbican growth. They then spent seven months travelling again to Perth, principally by automotive.
This was to be a life-changing expertise for Ferguson. He would later set up a journey scholarship by the College of Western Australia (UWA), enabling college students to expertise the identical transformative energy of journey that he had loved. This journey was the start of a private seek for “structure” which underpinned a stressed effort to supply buildings that have been contextual, common and enduring. This search would produce a physique of labor that’s astonishing for its singularity of imaginative and prescient and dedication to high quality.
His breakthrough constructing was the Hale Faculty Memorial Corridor (1961), the primary use of off-form concrete as a complete and full end in Australia, which might come to be a defining characteristic of his work throughout six many years of follow. In 1961, the corridor was awarded Constructing of the Yr by Structure and Arts journal, and the RIBA Bronze Medal (WA). It caught the eye of Gordon Stephenson, who commissioned Ferguson to design the brand new Legislation Faculty at UWA. Accomplished in 1967, the result’s a remarkably mature constructing that mixes a contextual re-reading of the UWA campus and a synthesis of vernacular structure from throughout Africa, Europe and Asia. It established a proper language and design vocabulary for Ferguson that’s now immediately recognisable, and one which he would rework and refine proper up till his dying at age 92.
Following the success of the Legislation Faculty, which was awarded the 2010 Australian Institute of Architects Enduring Structure Award, Ferguson and his follow would go on to design greater than 20 main buildings on the UWA Crawley campus, most not too long ago the Indian Ocean Marine Analysis Centre. He later turned the campus architect and wrote a guide documenting the historical past of the campus and its buildings. Ferguson developed a fame because the main campus architect within the state and designed buildings at each college and a number of other technical schools. Most notable is Murdoch College the place he, along with Gordon Stephenson, designed the whole thing of the preliminary campus.
Whereas the follow is thought for its instructional buildings, it was in housing that Ferguson’s unique curiosity lay. Key examples embody the Broadway City Homes in Nedlands, which received the Clay Brick award in 1968, and a collection of housing clusters for the WA State Housing Fee.
The apogee of his housing work was his redevelopment of Rottnest Island (Wadjemup) which the follow undertook from 1971 into the ‘90s. Right here, he was in a position to funnel his in depth journey expertise into a shocking reformulation of the island as a Mediterranean paradise that was, till current redevelopment, virtually totally his imaginative and prescient. He additionally documented buildings erected on the island between 1830 and 1903, the outcomes of which have been revealed in two books on the historical past and structure of Rottnest Island.
Ferguson’s output was huge and basically formed the constructed setting of Perth. But he stays largely unknown outdoors of the town and the extent of his output is little identified even throughout the state. He was an architect dedicated to the following era, and alongside his beneficiant journey scholarship he was a trainer and mentor, and his workplace nurtured the careers of many. Ferguson was elected an affiliate of the RIBA in 1956, a Fellow of the RAIA in 1970 and a Life Fellow in 1978, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Structure from UWA in 2000. His spouse Clare handed away in 2021 and he’s survived by his daughter, Anne.
