{"id":732582,"date":"2026-06-12T20:47:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732582\/"},"modified":"2026-06-12T20:47:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T20:47:25","slug":"michael-dysart-remembering-the-influential-architect-behind-the-uts-tower-and-iconic-housing-projects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/732582\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Dysart: Remembering the influential architect behind the UTS Tower and iconic housing projects"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MICHAEL DYSART <\/p>\n

April 18, 1934 \u2013 May 28, 2026<\/p>\n

You might expect the creator of the often-reviled UTS Tower to disappear into obscurity after its completion. But that was far from reality for its architect, Michael Dysart. It was just one building, albeit controversial, in a long career of inventive, innovative and influential architecture.<\/p>\n

Dysart possessed three interwoven talents: a creative desire to explore new ideas, an architect\u2019s eye for making forms for his ideas, and wit and charm, to overcome the forces against different ideas.<\/p>\n

With those skills, he originated new ways of designing schools, homes, churches, medium-density housing and hotels. It was the way he challenged the possibilities in each environment which saw him vaulted into the pantheon of Australia\u2019s most significant architects. He died late last month.<\/p>\n

Born in 1934 in Brighton, UK, Dysart migrated to Australia with his family when he was 15. He attended Katoomba High School, and commenced architecture at The University of Sydney in 1953. By 1955 he had won a traineeship at the NSW Government Architect (NSWGA). He joined \u201cthe Design Room\u201d, a hothouse of creativity set up by Harry Rembert within the NSWGA\u2019s office. Other alumni included Peter Hall (who completed the Sydney Opera House), Ken Woolley and Peter Webber. Even before graduation in 1958, Dysart was entrusted with the design of Robb College at the University of New England, a striking scheme of basalt and concrete vaults.<\/p>\n

\"BrutalistBrutalist monolith: Michael Dysart is best known for the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) tower, designed in 1968, and taking almost 10 years to build.Photo: Oscar Coleman\"DysartDysart in the foyer of the Regent Hotel in George Street in 1984. Now the Four Seasons, the building was \u201cradical\u201d when it was opened.John Nobley\/Fairfax Media<\/p>\n

In 1958, while working for the NSWGA, Dysart and colleague Woolley won the Australian Women\u2019s Weekly Family Home competition. Fortuitously, the government was supportive of their extracurricular work, where Dysart designed innovations for Pettit+Sevitt, Aspect, Habitat, and Program homes.<\/p>\n

His designs were driven by two key ideas: a better fit in the Sydney topography, and interiors reflecting new-found domestic freedoms. Whereas traditional homes had level floors in \u201cboxes\u201d, these \u201cdesigner\u201d homes had open plans, with spaces defined over split levels, and indoor-outdoor relationships for views and interactions with the bushland.<\/p>\n

External walls were highly textured in \u201cclinker\u201d bricks or bagged and painted in Grecian-inspired white. Skillion roofs with sloping ceilings and dark-stained exposed timber beams gave vaulted spaces, for a more natural fit in the bush settings. Dubbed \u201cthe Sydney School\u201d, the design movement forever influenced suburban houses.<\/p>\n

\"AA Lowline board used in the display village to promote the homes. During the 1960s and 1970s, home building company Pettit+Sevitt led the way in architect-designed project homes by Dysart, creating what may be considered the first original Australian architectural house.\"ManyMany of Dysart\u2019s buildings were considered \u201cahead of their time\u201d.Courtesy Tim Ross @modernister<\/p>\n

In 1964 Dysart displayed his versatility designing the Polish War Memorial Chapel at Marayong in Sydney, with the \u201cclever and memorable\u201d building formed from a series of triangles narrowing and rising towards the steeple at the back.<\/p>\n

Rapidly rising population in the 1960s, as well as the progressive \u201cWyndham Scheme\u201d curriculum, required more and bigger schools. Dysart asked for the work, wanting to change \u201cdouble-loaded corridors\u201d of closed-up rooms into natural cross-ventilated spaces (since air-conditioning was banned).<\/p>\n

Two radically different approaches resulted: the \u201cdoughnut design\u201d, single-sided rooms accessed from external corridors around an internal courtyard, for privacy and security, and shaded indoor-outdoor connections; and the \u201cchimney\u201d design, which exhausted summer heat through towers, not for winter smoke, but ventilation.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe Polish War Memorial Chapel at Marayong rises in six successive stages, with the final spire reaching nearly 40 metres.<\/p>\n

The Department of Education opposed both ideas. Dysart sought out the bureaucrats for Friday beers in a bid to overcome their resistance, eventually getting the \u201cdoughnuts\u201d approved and under budget, to everyone except Dysart\u2019s surprise.<\/p>\n

He developed 43 new high schools in three years. Some won architectural awards \u2013 Taree Technical College won the Blackett in 1965, and Ryde High School was highly commended in the Sulman in 1967. Natural cross-ventilation became a vital component in designing for sustainability in schools.<\/p>\n

In these seminal years, Dysart, with his Design Room colleagues, were influential tutors at the University of NSW.<\/p>\n

Dysart is best known for the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) tower, designed in 1968, and taking almost 10 years to build. Close to the CBD, the tower, with its heavy brutalist structure, was often criticised, but was highly radical for its time, being the first \u201ctown and gown\u201d project in a high-rise building.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Paddington<\/a><\/p>\n

Large column-free spaces for foyers and halls were created using a new technology of post-tensioning, using cables within concrete slabs, with end cappings expressed externally to break up the solid surfaces. The exposed aggregate concrete, or \u201cconcrete skin\u201d, as Dysart called it, reflected the colouring of Sydney sandstone, weathering better than other brutalist buildings.<\/p>\n

Now seen as a \u201cbrutalist icon\u201d \u2013 it is surrounded by buildings of differing styles by four \u201cstar\u201d architects \u2013 its simple engineering aesthetics can be perceived as a strong statement of its time.<\/p>\n

Dysart left the NSWGA\u2019s office to form his own studio in 1969, to expand his ideas from project homes into grouped housing. Searching for a different way to build mass housing, he formed the Baranbali co-operative to fund a communally minded project of 40 units in a 10-storey building near
Moore Park.<\/p>\n

The scheme had a commercial laundry for income, communal areas, a kitchen and \u201cgathering areas\u201d. Dysart\u2019s energy and skills were vital in overcoming the obstacles of finding finance for an unusual project, and finishing construction when the builder went broke.<\/p>\n

The most famous of his co-operative projects were two \u201cahead of their time\u201d projects in Canberra, designed and built between 1974 and 1977. Kambah\u2019s Urambi Village consists of 72 houses with views of the Brindabella ranges, and Wybalena Grove, established by the Cook-Aranda Co-operative Housing Society, included 105 houses. Both had bush settings, with conjoined courtyards and townhouse plans drawn from his project homes work.<\/p>\n

\"AA promotional photo showing the interior of a Lowline project home.\"PartPart of the landscape: the award-winning Urambi Village in Kambah.\"Back-to-natureBack-to-nature living: Dysart\u2019s Wybalena Grove in Cook.AFR<\/p>\n

The houses \u201cgrew out of the ground\u201d, stepping down steep sites, while retaining outlooks into existing trees. They were grouped around shared communal facilities, meeting rooms with fireplaces and outdoor gathering areas, in a highly developed landscape designed by Dysart that included communal gardens for food.<\/p>\n

Again, Dysart\u2019s force of will was required to overcome the bitter opposition of both the banks and Canberra\u2019s all-powerful planning authority, the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC). Both projects won Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) awards and the Roy Grounds Enduring Architecture Award. Urambi Village is now on the AIA\u2019s Register of Nationally Significant 20th Century Architecture<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 1977 Dysart was commissioned to bring these medium-density housing ideas to a Housing Commission redevelopment in Woolloomooloo, reworking townhouses into a four-square plan on an urban site. In continuous use, they remain strong evidence of a time when there was conviction and action on public housing.<\/p>\n

Dysart then sought larger, more commercial work with his firm, Davis, Heather and Dysart, winning several commissions for hotel designs. The Regent Hotel (now Four Seasons) in George Street was radical in two ways: the usually \u201chidden\u201d meeting and conference rooms were opened up to \u201ccreate a theatre for the people\u201d, and the tower was reimagined with a faceted facade of windows for views alternating with solid walls of washed aggregate sandstone for sun protection.<\/p>\n

Other projects included The Old Sydney Inn, combining an old warehouse and new rooms around a glazed atrium, the Clocktower Hotel, also in The Rocks, the Hilton in Cairns, the Australian Golf Club in Rosebery, and a resort on St Bees Island.<\/p>\n

\"DysartDysart in the foyer of the Old Sydney Inn in 1984.John Nobley\/Fairfax Media\"Dysart\u2019sDysart\u2019s award-winning holiday house in Wagstaffe.<\/p>\n

Dysart bemoaned the sudden loss of work in the early 1990s that destroyed his business, from which he barely recovered. Nevertheless, small projects continued, his final project being alterations and additions to his family holiday house in Wagstaffe<\/a> on the NSW Central Coast. This house won the AIA\u2019s small project award in 2009.<\/p>\n

Dysart was a Life Fellow of the AIA and was awarded an AM in 2013 for services to architecture.<\/p>\n

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\"ToneTone Wheeler<\/a> is president of the Australian Architecture Association and the design director of environa studio, which specialises in social and sustainable architecture.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-732582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}