Ken Woolley


Kenneth Frank Charles Woolley, AM B Arch, Hon DSc Arch Sydney LFRAIA, FTSE, Architect, was an Australian architect. In a career spanning 60 years, he is best known for his contributions to project housing with Pettit and Sevitt, the Wilkinson Award-winning Woolley House in Mosman, and his longstanding partnership with Sydney Ancher and Bryce Mortlock. He is regarded as being a prominent figure in the development of the Sydney School movement and Australian vernacular building.

Personal life

Ken Woolley was born in Sydney on 29 May 1933. He attended Sydney Boys’ High School and studied architecture at the University of Sydney, graduating in 1955. On graduation, he worked in the Government Architects Branch of the New South Wales Public Works Department. During this time he was the design architect for the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney and the State Office Block. He joined Ancher Mortlock Murray & Woolley in 1964, just prior to Ancher's retirement. This practice has received all the major architectural awards and created numerous outstanding buildings which include the Australian Embassy in Bangkok, Town Hall House Sydney, the Park Hyatt at Campbell's Cove, the ABC Radio and Orchestra Centre at Ultimo, the Victorian State Library, the Control Tower at Sydney Airport, the Olympics and RAS Dome Exhibition and Indoor Sports Halls, the Olympic Hockey Stadium, the Sydney Convention Centre, Darling Harbour and the refurbishment of the Queen Victoria Building. The most recent recognition was to the State Library of Victoria with the 2006 Lachlan Macquarie Award for Heritage Architecture.

Publications

Woolley took on a growing number of outside projects while still working with the Government Architect. He generated a reputation in the field of housing, winning a low cost competition for an exhibition house with Michael Dysart, in 1958. Consequently, both architects were invited to submit designs for a display village of model project houses in Carlingford, in 1961, proving to be a successful event that signalled the architect designed project house to be a welcome alternative to the individually designed and standard range houses of the time.
He began a working relationship with the project housing company, Pettit and Sevitt, the same year, creating house types of high quality design and construction. "Split Level", "Lowline" and other early forms incorporated design principles through simple lines, natural features and an emphasis on functionalism. They were widely affordable due to the standardised usage of materials: brick veneer construction, Gyprock plasterboard interior wall cladding, Monier concrete tiles and Stegbar aluminium windows. They often used basic grids, rectangular planes, and flat roofs, and were always firmly grounded with room to be easily adapted to various sites and terrains. These sophisticated types underwent various levels of modifications as they were marketed through display villages and later sold to individual buyers, who had a consultation with the architect to discuss the interior and exterior details, as a part of the service. Through these modifications based on the clients’ needs and clever marketing, these houses gained an unprecedented popularity with prominent architects worldwide.
At the completion of the Woolley House in Mosman in 1962, a work he would become most famous for, Ken Woolley emerged as a leading figure in a regional romantic movement often referred to as Sydney School. This new movement combined the influence of organic architecture, brutalism and the arts and crafts movement together with elements of the International Style, and came to embody the harmonious relationships between man and nature as intimate domestic spaces in the Australian bushland. The basis of the Woolley House design was derived from a series of garden terraces, most of which were covered by sections of timber roof sloping parallel to the land. A geometric order was applied to the plan as a series of 12-foot square units that combine to make up the main central space. Natural materials were exploited, with neutral colour schemes of dark tiles, western red cedar boarding and panelling, and painted bricks, creating a feeling of warmth in the house. The open plan living spaces were connected with volumes containing variations of ceiling height and changes in direction, enabling floor areas to be narrow but for the feeling of space to still be maximised. The house won RAIA’s Wilkinson Award the same year it was completed. The house was gifted to the University of NSW in 2016 by the Hesketh family.
Woolley joined the existing partnership of Sydney Ancher, Bryce Mortlock and Stuart Murray in 1964, and with Murray leaving the practice in 1975, as Ancher Mortlock & Woolley, the team went on to establish a reputation in the design of special purpose buildings. Notable examples are the Australian Broadcasting Corporation Ultimo Centre, the RAS Dome and Exhibition Hall and the Olympic Hockey Stadium at Homebush.
In addition, Ken Woolley worked on notable concrete buildings, multi-housing projects and buildings of structure and technology, with many of them picking up various esteemed awards over the following two decades.
Among his many notable buildings in Sydney are the headquarters of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in Ultimo, the Garvan Institute of Medical Research building in Darlinghurst, Sydney University's Fisher Library, the Park Hyatt Sydney, the former State Office Block and buildings on the Olympic site. There is also the Victorian State Library and the Australian Embassy in Bangkok.
Woolley was awarded the highest architectural honour in Australia when he received the RAIA Gold Medal in 1993.

Significant projects

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Monograph: Australian Architects: Ken Woolley – RAIA 1985
A.S.Hook RAIA Gold Medal Address Sydney 1994 ‘State of the Art’
Walter Burley Griffin Memorial Lecture Canberra 1997 ‘Give Art a Chance’
Address ‘A Pitch of Magnificence’ Academy of Technological Science & Engineering, 2001

Awards

WILKINSON AWARD
NATIONAL ZELMAN COWAN AWARD
NATIONAL ROBIN BOYD AWARD
LACHLAN MACQUARIE AWARD FOR HERITAGE ARCHITECTURE, RAIA
VICTORIAN CHAPTER AWARD
SULMAN AWARD
BLACKET AWARD FOR COUNTRY BUILDINGS
CIVIC DESIGN AWARD
PROJECT HOUSE AWARD
CANBERRA 25 YEAR AWARD
MERIT AWARD FOR RESIDENTIAL, COMMERCIAL, PUBLIC, CIVIC or ADAPTIVE RE-USE
PERSONAL
For more comprehensive project list, biography, bibliography, publications see ‘Ken Woolley & Ancher Mortlock & Woolley’ The Images Publishing Group.

Exhibitions