Peter Spooner: Architect shaped attitudes to landscape design

Massive: Peter Spooner's work on the highway to Newcastle, north of Sydney. He paid special attention to the landforms while selecting on-site alignments for vistas and construction.

PETER SPOONER 1919-2014

Professor Emeritus Peter Spooner made an outstanding contribution to landscape design as a professional discipline and activity in Australia. His appreciation of Fine Arts and practical skills enabled him to create some memorable landscape designs, record buildings and environments in crayon and pencil and restore antique furniture.

His many friends and colleagues enjoyed correspondence and cards written in his beautiful copperplate script. He encouraged architects and subsequently landscape architects to design with utility and beauty, but his overriding achievement was in the educational development of the professional landscape architecture discipline at the University of NSW.

Recognition: Peter Spooner in 1971.

Peter Spooner was born on November 4, 1919 in Rose Bay and in 1933 the family moved to Vaucluse to live in the house his father built, designed by Leslie Wilkinson. Peter's father and Wilkinson became lifelong friends, which may have influenced Peter's decision to become an architect after he completed his schooling at Scots College.

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While studying architecture at the Sydney Technical College, Spooner met a fellow student, Myles Dunphy, who introduced him to the joys of bushwalking and mapping. This friendship continued throughout their lives.

Spooner finished his Diploma of Architecture (Honours) a year early and joined the army as a lieutenant. He was deployed to Darwin during World War II and during his service, in 1942, he married Jean Morris, a secretary in an architectural office.

After the war Spooner designed and built a reinforced concrete house (bombproof) in Kissing Point Road, which was featured in magazines. The Spooners lived there for a few years until he designed and built his next house, in Warrangi Street, Turramurra. This was an innovative Y-shaped house and was also featured in the press.

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Peter Spooner: Architect shaped attitudes to landscape design