"At the end of the day, what makes a city great is its own memorability"

Daryl Jackson commenced his practice in 1963 with Evan Walker who was a partner until 1978 when he decided to enter the political arena. Since then Jackson has been practising as Daryl Jackson Pty Ltd. with offices in Sydney, Canberra and the Gold Coast. Jackson has worked on a wide variety of projects around Australia and overseas, including the swimming pool at the National Sports Centre in Canberra, the recently completed Canberra College at Belconnen, Lake Ginnidera, Canberra, Bond University on the Gold Coast and 120 Collins Street, Melbourne. We asked Mr. Jackson to describe the significant influences to he development of Australian architecture and to suggest where they might lead us in the future.

"I think there will be many distinct, yet identifiably Australian architectures which will develop their own sense of place in different locations. You will find similarities between different types of buildings across the country, but there will be a continuing diversification around Australia, with the authorship of each particular architect involved.

"At the same time I believe that it is an excessively optimistic prospect to believe that any one architect can alter the vision of a city. We live in too complex a society for a particular one-off building or even a series of buildings to alter the characteristic of a whole city.

"Australian cities possess very unique and positive attributes. I think Sydney comes to mind clearly as a topographic city in which the form of the harbour with the green fingers of land working with the sea is very exciting. It gives you peninsulas with strong ridges on which one could build the taller buildings steeping down towards the water; a definite form that is particular to Sydney."

"Hobart by comparison, has a similar topographic landscape value but is a tinier town, and is likely to remain so. On the one hand there is a horizontal layering as the contours build up to the dominant Mt. Wellington poised behind. One can layer the city like a theatre reaching up to the gods with Mt. Wellington poised, being the powerful icon, contrasted against the tranquillity of the Derwent River below."

"Perth is a strip of land between the ocean and the backwaters of the Swan River. Then there are three very different cities: Melbourne, which has the grid plan and the traditional 200 square metre block; Adelaide, which is similar but has a more profound sense of the edge of the parks, with five major squares orchestrating the quarters of the city; and Brisbane, with the Serpentine River and rid plan running through it.

"One of the difficulties for Australian architecture is that it means very little outside our own country. Taking things even further, Australia doesn't produce a particular scale of art, painting, sculpture, or music, which has a cerebral value to alter the framework of the rest of the world. Not yet, but I see that it has the potential to do that."

"One of the reasons why this is the case is because by comparison, our cultural package affects personal friends whereas the same thing in Milan affects 60-70 million Italians. One of the joys about Australia is this very thing - being on the edge of Western intelligence rather than in the centre, and I think one of our problems is that we haven't understood the power of the edge, and that is ours to make."

Jackson believes that other cities, like Milan, Paris and London, have a power of history whereas our cities are still relatively young. "We really are still developing what I can beachheads, so the best part is that their future is yet to happen, that Australians are in the process of making their own future."

Jackson acknowledges that the "role of planning is to secure the public realm," but states, "no one wants the city to be pre-ordained and pre-planned and orchestrated in a way that means we have to dance to the same tune every time, but we do have to know that the power of the music is there. Our cities fail to present a vision of form allowing individual interpretations to take place. We haven't yet understood the power of the city, we tend to see our cities in Australia as a purely functional mechanism, not as a spiritual mechanism. I see it as both. One of the real positives here is that there is an Arcadian presence about Australia that I enjoy very much. The mix of the landscape and the built form and the sense of the open space is critical. It is the amalgam of the city and the bush that makes Australia what it is.

'I've said before that if Australians actually live in the suburbs, their hearts and minds are somewhere in the open space beyond. I don't think that Australians are demanding enough of their architects, and they have failed to see the metaphor of the city as being representative of their culture and that is the halfway mark between built form and landscape form. It deals with visions of ownership and therefore security."

"Australians want to got to work, return home, live in their own house on their own block of ground, and as long as they have an automobile to link them with their friends, they are satisfied. They don't care about the visuals and amenities of the journey from one house to the next, so there is another factor which is making our world very different to the world of our grandparents - mobility. And home entertainment systems - you don't have to go outside because its there on television.

"It is the role of the architect to play a stronger role in the developing perspective of the cities, because at the end of the day, what makes a city great is its own memorability. If cities are not memorable, then they are not performing the function that mankind wants from them."

Jackson's three favourite landmarks are St. Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne, the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Ayers Rock.

"St Patrick's Cathedral I admire because of the inspired work of Wardell, the architect, and because when you think of the scale and quality of that particular building, it does represent a positioning of intelligence in Australia which was heartwarming. St Patrick's is very artistic and Wardell is one of those architects who should be celebrated. I think that the atmosphere at the M.C.G. with a big game on is very exciting. I think sport is a very important spiritual metaphor for Australians; it is something we can see as a universal satisfier which draws us closer together. Ayers Rock is a geographic symbol which is also a gathering place and a place of mysticism for the aboriginal culture as well as a mystery for us. Whilst the Rock is a different icon to the Europeans than it is to the Aborigines, it is, nevertheless, an easily recognizable symbol for Australia."