Daryl Jackson, the son of a bank manager, was born and spent his early childhood in Clunes, the town that gave Victoria its gold rush when the precious metal was found there in 1850.
The little old town is replete with quaint cottages and a few impressive Victorian brick buildings – hotels that once roared, a bank with vaults for gold, two fine churches on a hill and a lovely Town Hall.
You might imagine that none of the old town’s buildings influenced Daryl Jackson’s style in his chosen career of architect.
He was, after all, to become a champion of modernising Melbourne and cities beyond, dreaming big and often realising vast buildings of lasting importance.
Among the striking designs to come from Jackson’s busy drawing board were the wonderfully named Harold Holt Memorial Swimming centre – his first major commission – the Great Southern Stand at the MCG, the Telstra Dome in Docklands (now known as Marvel Stadium), and the city’s first real skyscraper.
Jackson, who valued working in collaboration with others of his profession, began his career by embracing the brutalist style – featuring exposed concrete and large unembellished surfaces – and moved through postmodernism, which turned the past on its head, to what he spoke of as “evolutionary modernism”, an umbrella term for his creative work.
Yet, Jackson’s son Tim, an architect himself, says little Clunes’ sense of community and its layers of history left a deep and lasting impression on his father, who died on February 21, aged 89.
It’s why, decades after he had moved far from his childhood home to become an influential and much honoured member of Australia’s architectural community, Daryl Jackson designed a Year 9 campus for students of Wesley College in Clunes itself.
“My father loved the way there was a clarity in the way the town was set up – its country town main street, its churches built on a hill,” said Tim Jackson.
His father was taken by the way the old village sat comfortably within its environment, serving with ease the needs of the people living there: principles at the heart of what would become his life’s work.
“He believed architecture should make people’s lives more enjoyable or easier,” Tim Jackson said.
Traditionalists in Melbourne, however, took a bit more to be persuaded that a Daryl Jackson building sat comfortably in what was one of the world’s great Victorian cities.
Visit what was called the Paris End of Collins Street, for instance, and you will find a great Daryl Jackson-designed office tower that, at 265 metres, was Australia’s tallest building for 14 years until 2005, and was Melbourne’s tallest skyscraper until the Eureka Tower opened in 2006.
Simply known as 120 Collins St, its postmodern style, with a nod to the art deco flourish of the Chrysler and Empire State buildings in New York City, put quite a lot of noses out of joint as it rose above the old city.
Still, within two years of its completion in 1991, it was granted an award as the most commercially viable building in Melbourne. Ever since, it has been in demand as the prestige headquarters of major Australian businesses.
Among the most instantly recognisable Jackson-designed buildings in Melbourne’s CBD is the County Court of Victoria.
But a vast array of work from Jackson’s busy drawing board over 40 years has transformed the way Melbourne – and other major Australian cities – present themselves to the world.
His stamp sits upon numerous educational buildings, hospitals and other health and research centres, temples to sport, art galleries, residential projects, major government buildings and commercial and retail centres.
Educated at Wesley College, RMIT and Melbourne University, Jackson established his first practice, Jackson Architecture, with Evan Walker in 1965. Walker later entered politics and became Victoria’s planning minister, which proved no impediment to Jackson’s rise and rise.
Jackson Architecture expanded over the years into Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, London, Vietnam and China.
Meanwhile, Jackson’s influence on generations of architects spread through his writing and in-demand lecturing. He taught architecture at RMIT, was a visiting professor in architecture and design at the University of NSW, and extended his cultural reach as chairman of the Australian Film Commission and as a trustee of the National Gallery of Victoria, among other pursuits.
He wrote a column for The Age from 1966 to 1999, advising Melbourne’s home owners and builders on better house design, a tradition begun in 1947 by the famed architect Robin Boyd in what was called The Age’s Small Home Services.
His favourite creation, according to his son, was the gracefully sweeping Great Southern Stand at the MCG.
Jackson, a keen footballer, attended Essendon High School for the early part of his secondary education, and sat next to Ron Clarke, who would become a great Australian middle and long-distance runner.
Tim Jackson envisages his father looking out across Windy Hill, dreaming of playing for Essendon at the MCG.
He didn’t make it to Essendon’s senior team, but he made a fair slice of the MCG his own.
His design for the Great Southern Stand (now the Shane Warne Stand), was completed in 1992 at a cost of more than $150 million, and has served immense numbers of Jackson’s fellow sporting enthusiasts. The later redevelopment of the Northern Stand is his, too.
The list of honours heaped upon Jackson – like any list of his buildings – is far too extensive to be listed here.
Suffice, perhaps, to point out that in 1987 the Royal Australian Institute invested him with its Gold medal, and he was in 1990 appointed Officer of the Order of Australia for his service to architecture.
Daryl Sanders Jackson is survived by Kay, his wife of 65 years, his son Tim and his daughters Sara, Olivia and Melissa.
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