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Burgess, Gregory
(b Newcastle, NSW, 8 Aug 1945). Australian architect. He graduated from the University of Melbourne (1970) and worked for Daryl Jackson Evan Walker Architects before starting his own practice in 1972. Burgess’s architecture, inspired by esoteric literature, particularly Asian writings, and by the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, was concerned with human responses to form and space, the expansion of human consciousness and encouraging a sense of spiritual wholeness. He was also influenced by the Melbourne tradition of improvisatory ‘bush’ architecture and perhaps by the geometrical plans of such architects as Roy Grounds in the 1950s. Burgess’s buildings generally have strong, complex geometries, often combined with more intuitive organic forms, conveying a sense of spiritual struggle in a contradictory modern world. He designed many houses, often largely in timber, for example the Hackford House (1981), Traralgon, Victoria, with a central stair tower that symbolically links earth and sky. His many public commissions included several school buildings; the church of St Michael and St John (1987), Horsham; Brambuk Living Cultural Centre (1989), Halls Gap, designed for an Aboriginal community, all in Victoria; the exuberant Boxhill Community Arts Centre (1990), Melbourne, with patterned brickwork and coloured glazed tiles produced in collaboration with an artist and the local community; and studios (1991) for the School of Art and Design, Bundoora Campus, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.
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