Ronald Jack “Gus” Ferguson was born on 26 November 1931 in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. He completed his schooling at Perth Modern School, where he was awarded a scholarship to study architecture at Perth Technical College, eventually graduating with an associateship in architecture in 1955.
In his final year, he was awarded the inaugural Morawetz Travel Prize, which enabled him to travel extensively after his studies. In 1957, Ferguson, together with his wife Clare, set off on a journey that took them across Africa and Europe before spending 18 months in London where Ferguson worked for Chamberlin, Powell and Bon on the new Barbican development. They then spent seven months travelling back to Perth, mostly by car.
This was to be a life-changing experience for Ferguson. He would later establish a travel scholarship through the University of Western Australia (UWA), enabling students to experience the same transformative power of travel that he had enjoyed. This journey was the beginning of a personal search for “architecture” which underpinned a restless effort to produce buildings that were contextual, universal and enduring. This search would produce a body of work that is astonishing for its singularity of vision and commitment to quality.
His breakthrough building was the Hale School Memorial Hall (1961), the first use of off-form concrete as a total and complete finish in Australia, which would come to be a defining feature of his work across six decades of practice. In 1961, the hall was awarded Building of the Year by Architecture and Arts magazine, and the RIBA Bronze Medal (WA). It caught the attention of Gordon Stephenson, who commissioned Ferguson to design the new Law School at UWA. Completed in 1967, the result is a remarkably mature building that combines a contextual re-reading of the UWA campus and a synthesis of vernacular architecture from across Africa, Europe and Asia. It established a formal language and design vocabulary for Ferguson that is now instantly recognisable, and one that he would rework and refine right up until his death at age 92.
Following the success of the Law School, which was awarded the 2010 Australian Institute of Architects Enduring Architecture Award, Ferguson and his practice would go on to design more than 20 major buildings on the UWA Crawley campus, most recently the Indian Ocean Marine Research Centre. He later became the campus architect and wrote a book documenting the history of the campus and its buildings. Ferguson developed a reputation as the leading campus architect in the state and designed buildings at every university and several technical colleges. Most notable is Murdoch University where he, together with Gordon Stephenson, designed the entirety of the initial campus.
While the practice is known for its educational buildings, it was in housing that Ferguson’s original interest lay. Key examples include the Broadway Town Houses in Nedlands, which won the Clay Brick award in 1968, and a series of housing clusters for the WA State Housing Commission.
The apogee of his housing work was his redevelopment of Rottnest Island (Wadjemup) which the practice undertook from 1971 into the ‘90s. Here, he was able to funnel his extensive travel experience into a stunning reformulation of the island as a Mediterranean paradise that was, until recent redevelopment, almost entirely his vision. He also documented buildings erected on the island between 1830 and 1903, the results of which were published in two books on the history and architecture of Rottnest Island.
Ferguson’s output was vast and fundamentally shaped the built environment of Perth. Yet he remains largely unknown outside of the city and the extent of his output is little known even within the state. He was an architect committed to the next generation, and alongside his generous travel scholarship he was a teacher and mentor, and his office nurtured the careers of many. Ferguson was elected an associate of the RIBA in 1956, a Fellow of the RAIA in 1970 and a Life Fellow in 1978, and was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Architecture from UWA in 2000. His wife Clare passed away in 2021 and he is survived by his daughter, Anne.
