Introduction To Robertson Memorial Lecture

Speaker 2008: Fleur Watson

http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/ilectures/ilectures.lasso?ut=1441&id=28050

Speaker 2007: William Smart

http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/ilectures/ilectures.lasso?ut=1098&id=21784

Speaker 2005: Jae Cha

http://dbs.ilectures.curtin.edu.au/ilectures/ilectures.lasso?ut=1441&id=2818

The WH Robertson memorial lecture was begun in 1989 and has as its aim to attract distinguished and notable national architects/interior designers to address the Western Australian architectural community. Typically this has involved innovative, often controversial and insightful architects involved in design projects that have had a major impact on the way Architects and Interior Designers conceive, collaborate and challenge our understanding and appreciation of the urban environment. We plan to focus these lectures on graduates of the Department.

Such presentations would have delighted W.H. Robertson (after whom this presentation is named) who was the inaugural lecturer and head of the first Department of Architecture in Western Australia. ‘Robbie’ as he was universally and affectionately known to his colleagues and students began teaching architecture in Western Australia at the Perth Technical College in 1946. He is remembered as having been a wonderful teacher with the ability to enthuse his students and have them share his sense of architecture as a compelling obsession.

Robbie died at the relatively young age of 48 but he left behind an educational tradition in architecture that is as relevant today as it was in post war Perth. The Department that he established at the Perth Technical College was relocated to the Western Australian Institute of Technology in the 1960s and over time evolved into the School of Architecture Construction and Planning with the establishment of Curtin University of Technology in the 1980s. In 2003 with the formation of the new Faculty of Built Environment Art and Design a new Department of Architecture and Interior Architecture was established and this organisation now forms the basis for the delivery of architectural education on this campus.

In addition to his qualities as an educator Robbie Robertson was well known as an active member of the WA chapter of the RAIA and he was always keen to develop a positive relationship between architectural education and the practice of architecture. This approach has always been embraced by the generations of WAIT and Curtin academics that have followed in his footsteps and is the reason we celebrate and share this occasion with the local profession.

This annual event is supported by the School of Built Environment due entirely to the support of the Head of School Dave Hedgcock and managed by the Department of Architecture and Interior Architecture and I would like to express my sincere thanks to both bodies.

Errol H. Tout RAIA B.Arch [WAIT] M.Arch [Curtin]
Head of Department of Architecture + Interior Architecture