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Stutchbury RIBA International Fellow


Peter Stutchbury, announced as 2016 International Fellow of the RIBA, and Richard Leplastrier, 2015 International Fellow of the RIBA, teaching together with a group of Singaporean students on an Architecture Foundation Australia ‘Spring School’ in September 2015, in Ku-ring-gai National Park adjacent to Pittwater, north of Sydney, where they both reside and practice.
(Photo : Lindsay Johnston, Architecture Foundation Australia)

Peter Stutchbury has also been recipient of the 2015 Gold Medal of the Australian Institute of Architects, an award also received by Richard Leplastrier in 1999. Both Stutchbury and Leplastrier are principal tutors on the acclaimed annual Glenn Murcutt International Master Class with Glenn Murcutt and Professor Brit Andresen, both of whom are also Gold Medallists of the Australian Institute.

Nominated by award winning Irish architect Niall McLaughlin, who was a speaker at the Architecture Foundation Australia conference in Australia in 2014, the RIBA citation states that Stutchbury has been nominated ‘because of his consummate skill as an architect, his dedication to his native land and his teaching’ -

Peter Stutchbury is an Australian architect working just north east of Sydney. His home (a modest tent) and office are on the northern beaches and he is a younger member of a loose grouping that includes Glenn Murcutt and Richard Leplastrier. His work shares the same commitment to an environmentally sensitive building practice based on craft and a deep understanding of construction, particularly joinery and metalwork. He has spoken with great consistency about the rights and values of aboriginal people in Australia and his practice clearly acknowledges the influence of their sense of the earth.

Peter has been teaching at the school of architecture in Newcastle University for many years, but perhaps his most influential pedagogy has been based around the master classes that he shares with Leplastrier, Murcutt and Brit Andresen. His influence here is not insignificant - his drive, sociability and skill have allowed the other more reticent characters to shine through his expansiveness. He brings working architects out into nature and offers them an intense engagement with the natural world and with each other. It is an experience that few forget and an expanding group of designers around the world acknowledge the deep influence of his ideas and charismatic company.

Peter runs a small studio of eight or ten people and it is clear that he sets up intense collaborations with individuals within the practice, allowing him to extend his range while developing a lovely collegiate atmosphere in the studio. He sits at his desk quietly sketching in 3D freehand, every little turn and corner of the buildings. The suite of elegant builderly working drawings he has created over the years is an absolute pleasure to browse. His ability to articulate ideas through drawings of construction is a lesson to us all.

Peter’s key projects are a raw, rangy sheep shearing station in Wagga Wagga, an Olympic Archery Centre in Sydney, a Community Centre and Square in Sydney and an exquisite group of houses in New South Wales. His recent house for Issey Miyake in Japan has won him awards and plaudits internationally. In 2015 he was awarded the Australian Gold Medal for Architecture.

Peter Stutchbury was nominated because of his consummate skill as an architect, draughtsman and builder; because of his dedication to his native land and the rights and dignity of its people; because of his teaching and because of that mercurial ability that only a few architects have, which is the ability to create and sustain a milieu where many talents can thrive.

Other 2016 International Fellows were Rick Joy (USA), who has also been a tutor with Peter Stutchbury on Architecture Foundation Australia master classes, Brian Mackay-Lyons (Canada), with whom Peter Stutchbury has taught at Ghost Studio, Mario Cucinella (Italy), Bjark Ingels (Denamark), Peter Markli (Switzerland), José Antonio Martinez Lapeña and Elias Torres (Spain)

RIBA citation –


Peter Stutchbury Architecture –


Architecture Foundation Australia –