All About Eva: Buhrich House Transcripts

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.  An Ingenieur-Architekt by training, Eva Maria Buhrich (1913-76) graduated in 1937 from the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, then led by Otto Salvisberg. Born in Nuremburg, she studied initially at the Technical University Munich, then under Hans Poelzig at the Technical University Berlin-Charlottenburg. Emigrating from Nazi occupied Germany via London, where in 1938 she married Hugh August Buhrich (1911 – 2004), Eva arrived in Sydney Australia in 1939. There, she worked between fields, and in collaboration with her architect husband, designing furniture, as a ‘town planner,’ engaged in political advocacy, as an architectural and urban critic, and writing a book for a wide audience focussed on landscape design, Patios and Outdoor Living Areas, published in 1976. Her work was all about architecture yet her professional contribution remains by turns present and absent. An article that appeared in Australian House and Garden in January 1976, described her in the opening paragraph as 'well-known architectural journalist Eva' and later as 'also an architect.' Fragments such as these raise questions, especially around her contribution to two modern houses the couple built for themselves in the Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony planned Sydney suburb of Castlecrag. The later dwelling, Buhrich House II (1971-73), the subject of that article, has from 1991 attracted significant critical attention. Drawing on archival research, a close reading of key moments within Eva’s papers, scrapbooks of her published articles and a collection of her private letters, this paper repositions her in the history of modern architecture—in Australia, and more broadly.