Modern revolutionary John Morphett returns to Adelaide after work on New York tower, Baghdad University

Architect John Morphett with his Adelaide Festival Centre creation.
Main image by Peter Bennetts courtesy ArchitectureAU

In his twenties, John Morphett  – later to design the Adelaide Festival Centre  – was on a team creating a New York skyscraper and Baghdad University that's still standing on the banks of the Tigris.

A star architectural student in Adelaide, Morphett had previously been recruited by Hassell, McConnell and Partners, even before he graduated from the School of mines and industries and Adelaide University.

Opposed to the stuffy established classical/gothic revival architectural order in Adelaide, the young Morphett joined a group of design rebels – the Contemporary Architects Association.

The association’s biggest effort was an exhibition in Adelaide’s Botanic Park models were built in concrete, glass and steel – a radical proposal in a city of red brick and sandstone. The then-dean of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) school of architecture, Pietro Belluschi – in Adelaide to speak at the Australian Architectural Convention –  visited the exhibition.

From that, Morphett was offered a Albert Kahn Fellowship at MIT in Boston where he did a master’s degree in the presence of modernist leaders: Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eduardo Catalano, Philip Johnson and Richard Neutra.

Bauhaus founder Gropius took Morphett on in 1957 as a member of The Architects’ Collaborative. Morphett rose to be on the team designing New York’s Pan Am skyscraper (now the MetLife Building) above Grand Central Station. A bigger job was to design, with Gropius, the Baghdad University, on the banks of the Tigris.

In 1962, after two years in Rome documenting Baghdad University, Morphett returned to Adelaide and Hassell, McConnell and Partners. His modernist Bauhaus leanings appealed to Colin Hassell but grated with partner Jack “Mac” McConnell who rejected modernism. Eight years later, McConnell was asked to leave the partnership and the firm became Hassell and Partners.