He Crusades for Mud, He crusades for mud

KNOX (caricatured in clay by John Frith) is one of the most striking personalities among Australian builders although he regards himself primarily as a designer. He not only built the mud brick houses featured in this issue, but designed them, too, and a good deal of the furniture as well.

He is an unusual builder in another way his apprenticeship was 20 years behind desks as a bank clerk and teller in the State Savings Bank of Victoria, plus some years as a small ships man around the islands during a wartime chore with the Navy.

But the blood of Scots builders and architects ran in the Knox veins, and the bank career was a second-best because the depression ruled out a profes- sional career, as it did for many others of Knox’s age group (he is 40).

During the war Knox began the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme’s course of building construction and, although he returned to the bank on demobilisation, he completed the course. He also did a post-graduate course in town planning.

Though back at the bank, Knox’s heart was in building, and many sheets of bank blotting paper blossomed with designs for dream homes. He started designing House at Eltham built of mud bricks in 1948 by Mr Knox for Mr A. R. McLennan. The curved walls in this home are evidence of the flexibility of plan possible with mud brick building. and building for clients in his spare time. At first he built in timber, but shortages of this material checked his progress and he looked long and hard at the soil beneath his feet. There were the usual difficulties which the adventurous discover when they make contact with the building regulations, but by 1950 Knox had moulded the good earth into eight mud brick houses.

House at Eltham built of mud bricks in 1948 by Mr Knox for Mr A. R. McLennan. The curved walls in this home are evidence of the flexibility of plan possible with mud brick building.

However, scarcity of labor and the high premiums above awards which had to be paid to get men halted the mud brick programme, for the labor content is high in houses of this material. Knox went back to timber.

In 1952 the labor shortage eased, and when Home Beautiful secured the material for this group of mud brick articles late last year, Knox was planning more mud brick achievements.

Knox is an eloquent crusader for both beauty and mud bricks in structures.

Beauty, he admits, is a most contentious word in any language, and particularly so in the language of architecture.

“A house that has beauty has architecture,” he says. “A house that has not is merely a piece of building work, no matter how strong, nor how economically produced.

“While beauty and economy are not diametrically opposed, I firmly contend that any beautiful building costs more than one which is not beautiful. Beauty requires a sense of order, of fitness, of co-relation of the parts to the whole. It must express an idea that makes itself felt to the beholder, either consciously or otherwise. An architecturally informed person should be able to read its statement, its high purpose, and its logic.

“With earth building, beauty can be expressed simply: natural and honest treatment of the walls so that they retain some of the primeval quality of earth; a true sense of topography through the proper handling of the site; a strong sense of shelter by deft use of the thick walls so that they cast deep shadows at the reveals; the use of simple masses, moulded or curved walls to show the pliancy of the medium; proportions that are unpretentious and fundamental, not frivolous. “No material is more responsive to human expression than mud, provided the initial objectives are not lost sight of retention of its primeval character, and abso- lute avoidance of nonsense.”

“Sunningdale,” 30 miles west of Bendigo, was built of mud bricks in 1948 by Alistair Knox for Mr R. H. Nicholls. It replaced an old homestead.

Rooms on the upper floor are joined by this landing. Wall treatment of downstairs is repeated. Pierced brickwork above the cupboard emphasises the strength and depth of the exterior walls of adobe.

From the farther end of the living room, the fireplace area is cosy, with a lower ceiling level, the emphasis is on warmth and comfort. Beamed ceilings are dyed but otherwise the mill-sawn timber is left in its natural