The architecture of Australia is being stymied by “number crunching” planning officials who are making merchandise rather than architecture, Australia’s most internationally recognised architect has said.

Glenn Murcutt spoke for a beleaguered profession when he laid blame for a shortfall in creativity at the planning system’s door, arguing that a commercially bias is sapping the imagination of architecture in Australia.

“Getting things done is, harder, harder and harder,” Murcutt said at a private viewing of Glenn Murcutt: Architecture for Place at the Museum of Sydney.

Murcutt, who has suffered 13 court cases over planning issues winning all but one, said most planning officials were “barely out of school” and should not be wielding the axe over Australian buildings.

“For each case it takes three weeks to prepare, six weeks to get over the stress and a win is better than a Pritzker prize,” he said.

The exhibition profiles a selection of Murcutt’s built work and, through his drawings, his working methods. The exhibition, which is being shown for the first time in Australia in Sydney before moving to Melbourne and Brisbane, is about drawing rather than architecture, Murcutt said.

“There is a spatial sense when one is drawing. The hand is an extension of the mind, an extension of the eye,” he said.

To cheers, Murcutt said the progress of architecture has been stilted by the invention of computer programs such as AutoCAD.

“I have not seen any improvement in the quality of architecture in the last 20 years since the advent of AutoCAD,” he said.

The exhibition, with photography from Anthony Browell, was previously shown in Tokyo at the TOTO Gallery Ma between June and August 2008. The current Sydney exhibition will run until October 2009, presented by the Architecture Foundation Australia in association with the Historic Houses Trust and the NSW Architects Registration Board.

Gemma Battenbough

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