Glenn Murcutt (born 1936) is an Australian architect known for houses shaped by their landscape and climate. Born in London to Australian parents, he spent his first years in Papua New Guinea, where he first met vernacular building. He works alone, without staff, builds only in Australia, and won the Pritzker Prize in 2002, the only Australian to do so.
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His motto, "touch the earth lightly", means studying a site's wind, water, temperature and light before drawing the building. His houses use glass, stone, timber, concrete, steel and corrugated iron. The Marie Short House near Kempsey (1975) and the Magney House at Bingie Point (1984) are among his best-known homes. The Arthur and Yvonne Boyd Education Centre at Riversdale (1999), designed with Wendy Lewin and Reg Lark, sits on a rise; the critic Philip Drew compared its hall to an ancient Greek temple, roofed in corrugated iron. Glenn Murcutt's projects are studied for climate-led design at the scale of a house.
