"THE LANDSCAPE IS THE DOMINANT THING, IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN"

Phillip Cox is a Sydney based architect, who established his practice, Phillip Cox and Associates, in 1967. Cox has been described as positive aggressive and a battler, and his work has been described as a commitment to an 'Australianness in design'. Some of his better known projects include the Market Three Campus for the New South Wales Institute of Technology, Haymarket, Sydney, 1980; the Yulara Tourist Village, Ayers Rock, N.T., 1982 ,The Melbourne Tennis Centre and three of the buildings in the Darling Harbour Redevelopment Project. We asked Phillip Cox to comment of the "Australianness" of architecture in this country and the future of Australian building designs.

"There is an Australian style of architecture that has been developing since 26th January 1788. It has always been a reaction to the climate, the landscape and the society which has created it. Although then genesis might have been entirely European or Anglo-Celtic, the day the first buildings went up they could not help but be affected by the geographic conditions. Aboriginal structures were also part of that influence. Although the traditional histories of Australian architecture deny that the aborigines had very much influence, you only have to look at the earliest structures that were made of bark and rush; they were very much the types of buildings around the harbour in the early days.