ustralian architect Roger Barrett gave a talk at the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney reflecting on his time working on the design of the Los Angeles Getty Centre, including its library, and gave his background to the experience and to the current work of Barrett Pinet Architecture. Amongst other aspects of the talk, Barrett issued a call to action to Sydney to develop itself as a cultural centre. “Sydney is the major western city in Asia, the major English language centre. It has been financially successful, and is now a wealthy city. It needs to enrich itself culturally beyond its mono-financial development,” he said. Barrett made some compelling suggestions as to how this should be carried through, such as the establishment of philanthropy and private research institutes, cultural institutions such as a living aboriginal museum, easily accessible by school children and students documenting the aboriginal presence in Australia, a global museum of indigenous people; a museum of the Pacific Rim, a museum of the Australian landscape and an independent architecture gallery. Roger Barrett worked on the LA Getty museum with Richard Meier and Michael Palladino as the only Australian on the team. He spent three years in LA working on the Getty Centre for the History of Western Art, the Museum and the Conservation Institute. Working on a team with Pritzer Award winning architects, he says he learned a great deal from the project, such as developing procedures and systems to cover situations, methods and processes. He emphasised the importance of test pieces, the thorough testing of elements, samples and mock-ups before their repetition on a larger scale. “Understand the importance of the design process — you don’t just jump in to a solution,” says Barrett. “Clients need to understand the extensive design process and the amount it takes to get to a solution (even more so when the solution looks simple).” Subsequent to his return to Australia, he set up the Barrett Pinet architectural practice with Danielle Pinet, which works across a number of projects from commercial, to residential to public buildings.
Source: BPN
