The Visit

Abstract

Arriving in Perth from London in 1971, William Busfield was then and perhaps remains very much a part of the 1960s London Scene – a rich and complex legacy of World War Two. By the 1960s, the Space Race was articulating an invigorated sense of the future as competitive and optimistic: advances in science, technology and the emergence of cybernetics were demonstrating extraordinary propositions. For Busfield, this context of experimentation and radical change was seminal, affecting his position in relation to architecture and forming his liberal approach to the education of an architect. This essay examines what Busfield described in interview in 1985 as “strange polarities,” the series of milieus within which he moves: the people, technologies and events and his approach to architecture as described by Peter Cook in Experimental Architecture as “experimenting out of architecture.” The intention is to contribute a reflection on incidents and consequences in relation to the broader political, technological and social discourse with which Busfield engages via architecture – all of which may be understood as generative transference of countercultural thinking and practice.