Peter Neil Muller (3 July 1927 – 17 February 2023) was an Australian architect with works in Sydney, New South Wales, Victoria, Adelaide, Bali, and Lombok.
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Early life and education
Muller was born in the suburb of Leabrook, Adelaide on 3 July 1927. He was educated at St Peter's College from 1942 to 1944. He studied at the University of Adelaide graduating with Bachelor of Engineering degree together with the South Australian School of Mines and Industries graduating with a Fellowship in Architecture in 1948. Muller won the Board of Architectural Education and Royal Australian Institute of Architects travelling scholarship in 1947. He won a Fulbright Scholarship and was awarded a Graduate Tuition Scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia in 1950 and 1951, where he obtained a Master of Architecture degree. Muller became an Associate of the Royal British Institute of Architects.
Career
After completing study in the United States Muller began private practice in Sydney in 1952, based in Whale Beach on the Northern Beaches. Muller took an alternative design approach to the then-contemporary modern movement. He travelled and lived in many places around the world which included France, London, Bali, South Australia and Sydney. He had several influences including Adrian Snodgrass (1952), Albert Read (1954) and lastly, Frank Lloyd Wright (1952) whom only "influenced him on the Audette house at the beginning of his practice". In Sydney 1953, Muller worked in his own architectural practice called 'The Office of Peter Muller'. He avoided synthetic finishes and instead used natural materials, as he felt strongly about the Australian landscape. This is reflected in many of his Sydney contemporaries.
Muller later moved to Marulan, New South Wales where he practised at home in his grazing property 'Glenrock'. In 1962 Muller tutored at the University of New South Wales. He worked as a director of the National Capital Branch of the National Capital Development Commission in Canberra from 1975 to 1977. This inspired him to author a book 'The Esoteric Nature of Griffin’s Design for Canberra’ in 1976. Later, in 1978, he was the founding Principal of Regional Design and Research and he has acted independently from locations all around the world as a consultant for 'Peter Muller International'.
Recognition
In the 2014 Australia Day Honours, Muller was appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) "for distinguished service to architecture, to the adaptation and preservation of Indigenous design and construction, and to the integration of the built and environmental landscape".
Personal life and death
In 1953, Muller married Rosemary Winn Patrick. They had three children named Peter, Suzy, and James. In 1964, they divorced and he married Carole Margaret Mason, whom he also divorced in 1991. He remarried, but three years after the death of his third wife, Helen Hayes, in 2001, he returned to Sydney and reunited with Carole.
Muller died on 17 February 2023, at the age of 95.
Notable projects
Richardson House, 1956
949 Barrenjoey Road, Palm Beach, Sydney, Australia
Like many of Peter Muller’s designs, the Richardson House began with extensive research of the site. Muller designed this house to sit on the edge of a cliff face, seven metres below the adjoining road and fifteen metres above the water. One design key was the use of circles as the primary motif. This motif came from the form of a large rock already on the site. Twenty-nine hollow cylinders, made of curved concrete blocks and of a natural grey and green appearance, made up the main support system. Muller was a designer of organic architecture and all of the interior spaces of this design are connected and freely flowing.
Hoyts Cinema Centre, 1966
134-144 Bourke Street, Melbourne, Australia
The Hoyts Cinema Centre, designed in 1966 and completed in 1969, is considered unique due to the shape of the building, taking similar traits to an upside down oriental pagoda was seen to be of considerable interest in the local area. In fact the design was based on a structural idea of bracketing each floor out similar to the way in which very wide eave overhangs were created in Chinese and Japanese roofs. This particular building is the largest built project by Peter Muller and was the first 'cinema centre' of its kind in Australia; housing three screens in the complex.
Publications
Publications by Peter Muller
The Esoteric Nature of Griffin's Design for Canberra, Canberra 1976
The New and Permanent Parliament House, with others, Canberra 1977
Canberra and the New Parliament House, with others, Dee Why West, New South Wales 1983
Glenrock, Marulan, Sydney, New South Wales, Walsh Bay Press, 2014
Publications about Peter Muller
Books
An Australian identity: houses for Sydney, 1953-63 by Jennifer Taylor, Sydney 1972
Fine Houses of Sydney by Robert Irving, John Kinstler and Max Dupain, Sydney 1982
Architecture Bali by Bingham-Hall, Pesaro Publications 2000
Peter Muller by Jacqueline C. Urford (398 pages) 2013
Articles
"Molinari House" in Architecture and Arts (Melbourne), July 1954
"Audette House" in Architecture in Australia (Sydney), July/September 1955
Special issue on Peter Muller in Architecture and Arts (Melbourne), December 1955
"Peter Muller House" in Architecture in Australia (Sydney), January/March 1956
"Richardson House" in Architecture and Arts (Melbourne), August 1956
"House by Peter Muller" in La Architettura (Rome), August 1958
"Craftbuilt Houses" in Architecture in Australia (Sydney), September 1961
Article by David Saunders in Art and Architecture (Sydney), June 1971
Numerous illustrated articles in The Australian Home Beautiful, Vogue Australia/ France, Belle, 1955–1999