Max Collard
Max Collard was a significant contributor to the architecture of 20th century Australia. His influence was felt in his practice, in his management skills and in his finely honed philosophy of what is now called the "built environment".
His teaching at Sydney University in the 1960s explored the link between the role of the architect and the speculative boom years as he saw an industry changing, somewhat awkwardly, from craft-based (before World War II) to industrialised (after the war) methods of construction.
Max Ernest Collard was born and raised in Melbourne, the only son of Marc Collard and his wife, Louisa Taylor. The family was of French Mauritian descent. Collard graduated from Melbourne University in civil engineering, a faculty where he had encountered student architects and became, in his own phrase, "starry-eyed" about the aesthetic possibilities of architecture.
Ever one to follow his star, he re-enrolled and completed a degree in architecture. In 1938 he won a travelling postgraduate scholarship to study architectural trends in Europe and the US. Overseas, he built on his earlier trips to Europe, which he recorded in beautifully detailed notebooks, photographs and drawings.
The outbreak of World War II brought him back to Australia and he joined the Sydney architectural firm of Stephenson and Meldrum (later Stephenson and Turner). He enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force and rose to the rank of flight lieutenant, as he used his engineering skills to design runways in the Pacific.
Wartime notwithstanding, Collard became an associate of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1942, and in 1944 he married Joan Malloch, an interior designer he met at Stephenson and Meldrum. After the war he resumed practice as an architect in Sydney, and established the firm that became Collard Clarke & Jackson; the Collard Group still bears his name as a tribute to his influence on the architectural precepts of his adopted city.
Collard admired the historical architecture of Europe, but his own designs were inspired by modernists such as Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen and Joern Utzon. Of his successors, Collard loved the work of Glenn Murcutt, with its faithfulness to the Australian environment.
Collard designed many of Sydney's public buildings, including the Isotopes and Technical Physics Building, the first to be built at Lucas Heights. However, some of his most important architectural achievements are to be found not in Sydney but in Canberra. He designed the Menzies Library and the School of Earth Sciences building for the Australian National University, one of the most beautiful of modern Australian campuses.
Max Collard 1909-2008