Paul-Alan Johnson resume
Paul-Alan Johnson PhD BArch (Hons) DipCD FRAIA is a retired architect and former UNSW academic. He taught undergrad and postgrad design, theory and history courses for 30 years, has been a design reviewer/critic and an expert witness in copyright and building compliance. He is well-known for his teaching and research and for his public talks on Sydney's early planning history.
This website focuses on Dr Johnson’s theorising, his architect interviews and his historical research, particularly into the planning of Governor Arthur Phillip's three 1788 settlement towns.
A selection of Dr Johnson’s key teaching and research papers and other writings can be found online and in Australia’s National and State libraries. Readers should read these to better comprehend issues raised on this website. Those viewable online are referenced below, though some may require formal access.
Copyright for material herein is asserted by Dr. Johnson, as well as by other providers. Use of this material should respect normal fair-dealing provisions and acknowledge the source.
Theory of architecture
Published in 1994, The Theory of Architecture: Concepts Theories & Practices reviews design thinking in a thesaurus of ten chapters. Intended as a critical compendium, Dr. Johnson’s premise is that a designer’s learning, experiences, intuitions and idiosyncrasies are primary factors in conjuring designs. Theory is thus hermeneutic and affirms an individual’s moment-to-moment role in designing.
This contrasts with formulaic approaches, neo-Platonic notions and ‘design methods’ that have long prevailed among modern architects seeking to design using an overall construct from elusive external abstractions prompted by Platonism and the ‘central idea’. Such an approach tends to constrain and sideline individual freedom and invention.
Dr. Johnson's theoretical process instead confirms ‘theory talk’ is involved, an inner-directed (me-talking-to-myself) or outer-directed (me-talking-to-you) discourse that accompanies the reception and delivery of ideas and concepts worthy of follow-up.
This process is imbued with diverse attributes of authority, allegiance, integrity, obedience, personality, ego, exaggeration and obstinacy. It repositions the designer away from conventional paradigms that impose rigidity of thought, allowing creativity to flourish.
The variability and ‘looseness’ of notions in Dr. Johnson’s book and an apparent retreat from offering a definitive theory has led some to criticise him for not presenting ‘theory’ at all. However, for over thirty years, the book’s international sales, translations, reviews and citations run counter to such criticism.
American architect-theorist and academic Stanley Tigerman asserts in his vigorous Foreword that ‘…[Dr Johnson] has simultaneously presented architecture and its theoretical underpinnings as both intrinsic and extrinsic, establish(ing) architecture’s frightening dialectical dilemma’.
Early Sydney: Albion the first name
The secrets of Sydney’s settlement
Captain Cook’s published account of his New Holland expedition excited the British public and stirred the French to try furthering their own empire by claiming the southern land for themselves.
Learning this, some recent historians claim that Britain used convict transportation to deflect French expansion. They argue that Botany Bay was a strategic decoy to specifically stop them from finding Port Jackson. Cook had sighted the harbour but only privately reported it as a secure and viable location for settlement.
Whatever the real strategy was, another side to the layout of Sydney’s settlement remained hidden to all but a handful until Phillip moved the fleet to Port Jackson. From 26 January, the ships moored in the harbour and Phillip ordered the clearing of land to offload goods and people.
Astronomer Lieut. William Dawes set up an observatory north of the landing away from smoke haze. There he fixed the latitude and longitude of the site.
Within a few days, a formal town plan was started, its layout fixed from the observatory as the only firm anchor in the new land. It had a main street
200 feet wide rising to the Governor's precinct on the crest.
Unbeknown to many, Sydney's layout was imbued with an arcane symbolism and geometry using number substitution via 'gematria'.
Phillip's initial plan
Albion, not 'New Albion' as some writers have said, was chosen as a name either before departure from England, or on the voyage out. Defaulting later to ‘Sydney’ because of early letters written on board the moored ships, the town was laid out by Surveyor-General Augustus Alt in what appears to be a conventional way but with a curious geometry and position.
The original Phillip map sent to England shows a ‘marker’ set 1625 feet along a due south line from the observatory. The marker became the temporary setout point for the plan and the centre of a 1000-feet square grid which capped the main street, the whole layout aligned NE-SW following Spanish ‘Laws of the Indies’ health guidelines. The marker disappeared from all later reproductions of Phillip’s map.
The name Albion can be derived from the Ptolemaic Greek ‘alouvion’ which, via numeration using isopsephy, has the number 1361. This is the side of a square with a 1625 diagonal, a curious match with the marker that suggests an underlying geometry for the plan.
The layout was rotated slightly to give a clear vista along the main street to the future Governor’s enclave at the top of the rise. Lang Street in Sydney is the only remnant of this original alignment.
Detailed study showed that the numbers and geometry of Albion resonated with esoteric and Christian ideas. Why this was so may be found in Dr Johnon’s writings on Albion/Sydney listed below and online.
In further confirmation of high strangeness, symbolic geometry was also used for the later layouts of Parramatta town and Tongabby village.
Early Settlement: Parramatta & Tongabby
Parramatta was a grandiose plan described by some historians as an axial and gridded vista. While it is certainly a vista, it is not a grid in the normal sense. Rather, it is more enigmatic and idiosyncratic. Called ‘Burramedi’ by the aborigines, it was the place where salt and freshwater met, a place ‘where the eels lie down’ (hence the ‘Eels’ football team).
Continuing the analysis from Albion above, the aboriginal name was anglicised to ‘Parramatta’ which, transliterated to Greek via isopsephy, gives the number 924. Double this is 1848, the distance in feet from the centre of the main cross street on the original plan to the governor’s house on the slope of what was initially called ‘Rose Hill’. From this a geometry can be derived that explains the whole layout with remarkable accuracy.
The 205 feet wide main street is a clue. A square/circle figure, used in Albion, gives 205 between a square of 1400 and its inscribed circle of 990. This geometry gives an equilateral triangle 857 high on the side of a 990 square, totalling 1847, the length from the main centre crossing to the governor’s house.
Root 2 and root 3 ratios deliver the other street widths, 700/1400 confirm the rhythm of 100 feet allotments, squares/triangles set the length of the town at one mile, and 3:4:5 triangles fix the town hall position. All of these are straightforward maths.
Numerous symbolic associations can be found from the numbers and geometry, not least biblical and masonic. There are also hints of the influence of mystic Emanuel Swedenborg whose writings were sent with the Fleet and widely read by the military and civil establishment.
See book The Original Parramatta, below.
Toongabbie was originally called The Town of Tongabby and is dimensionally the cousin of Parramatta's plan. Its isopsephic number was 436 and used the same street widths.
Circular Quay
Looking at Circular Quay, among Dr Johnson's Middle Third interviewees is Leslie Morris, a retired NSW railways architect who redesigned Circular Quay Railway Station and its motifs (see images left) from that begun in the 1930s. Morris's renewed scheme is worth mentioning here for the fuss his new design has caused since.
An elaborate glazed interwar-modern style building, the first Quay station design was paused because of WW2 labour and materials shortages. For almost two decades the site was a mess of excavation, materials and scaffolding, causing great inconvenience and unsightliness.
Joseph Cahill MP, NSW Premier from 1952 to 1959, declared he would complete the project, but was concerned about the cost and public criticism. He instructed NSW Railways to restart the project to a simpler design. Then only a young architect, Morris boldly assured the Premier that a new design could be made ‘within a few weeks’.
Cahill quickly approved his sketches and this is the building we see today. Nonetheless, the Quay Station/Cahill Expressway continued to be criticised by many for its bland aesthetic and the blocking of views to the harbour.
From the sixties, a few architectural schemes and many commentators have sought changes, most wanting the station demolished or tunnelled, creating a ‘gateway’ across a public plaza. However, such ideas have overlooked key crucial factors: huge concrete piles to bedrock beneath the Station, obvious seawater influx, and vital services crossing the site, all major obstacles.
Any such work would cost billions and be hugely disruptive, returning the Quay for many years to the sorry state of the 1930s. More public outrage would only haunt any government or politician foolish enough to try.Circular Quay
Selected writings
Theory
PAJ (1991). Mythmaking: The polyhymn of architecture – or taking Barthes, Proceedings, Myth, Architecture, History, Writing: 1991 PAPER Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, 12-14 July: 187-198.
PAJ (1994). The Theory of Architecture: Concepts Themes & Practices, Van Nostrand Reinhold/John Wiley, New York.
PAJ (1996). Figures of Vitruvius's philosopher: Human traces in architectural theory. In M.A. Groves and S. Wong, eds., Design for People. Sydney: People and Physical Environment Research: 13-26. ISBN 0-7298-0296-5.
PAJ (1999). Compliance, subversion and the Australia-Britain nexus: Theoretical dilemmas for Australian architecture and urbanism. Architectural Theory Review, vol.4, no.1, May: 34-50.
PAJ (2001). Designing as a Discursive Practice. Architectural Theory Review, vol.6, no.1: 124-135.
PAJ (2009). Architectural education and the rhetorical practices of designing, tr. by Xu, Yinong. World Architecture, Vol. 224, February, 109-117.
History: Settlement
PAJ (1982a). The Original Sydney: A Geometrical and Numerical Analysis of Phillip's Plan. Working Paper. Graduate School of the Built Environment, UNSW. (58pp). ISBN 0-908502-49-4.
PAJ (1982b). The Original Parramatta: A Geometrical and Numerical Analysis of the Earliest Plan. Working Paper. Graduate School of the Built Environment, UNSW. ISBN 0-908502-50-8.
PAJ (1985). The Phillip Towns: Formative Influences in Towns of the NSW Settlement from 1788 to 1810. 3 Vols. PhD dissertation, Faculty of Architecture, UNSW. (3 vols).
PAJ (1988). Sydney Cove: South from Stowe or Adam's House in Arcady. In Australian Studies in Architectural History: Papers from the Fifth Annual Conference. The Society of Architectural Historians, 1990: 12-19.
Higginbotham, E. and PAJ (1991). The Future of Parramatta's Past. An Archaeological Zoning Plan. 1788-1844. Sydney, NSW Department of Planning. ISBN 0-7305-7044-4.
History: Augustus Alt
PAJ (1988). Augustus Alt: The Life of Australia's First Surveyor-General to 1788. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol.74, pt.1, June: 11-21.
PAJ (2002). Augustus Alt: Australia’s ‘Baron’ Surveyor-General. Heraldry News: Journal of Heraldry Australia Inc., No.30, November: 14-22. ISSN 1039-6829.
PAJ (2008). The Planning, Properties and Patriarchy of Surveyor-General Augustus Alt. Journeys: Ashfield History No 17, Journal of the Ashfield & District Historical Society, August, 25-62.
PAJ (2012). Freemasonry In the Life of Augustus Alt, Australia’s First Surveyor-General, Part 1. The Quarterly Newsletter of the Australian & New Zealand Masonic Research Council, Issue 55, April, pp4-9; and Part 2, Issue 56, July, pp2-6.
Architect Interviews
PAJ & SLJ (1996-2002). Architects of the Middle Third: Interviews with New South Wales architects who commenced practice in the 1930s and 1940s. 5 vols. School of Architecture, UNSW. ISBN 0-7334-0418-9 (set).
PAJ (1996). Modern functionalism and the radically ordinary: Towards a reinterpretation of architects educated in the 1930s and 1940s. Fabrications. The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, vol.7, August: 113-128.
PAJ & SLJ (1998). Upholding the Profession of Architecture: Interviews with some key architectural executives in New South Wales since the 1950s. Board of Architects of NSW. ISBN 0-9586284-0-8.
PAJ (2012). Biographical entries on Prof. H. Ingham Ashworth, Tom O'Mahony, Sir John Overall, Prof. Gareth Roberts, and Robert Woodward, in P. Goad and J. Willis, eds. The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture, New York: 47-48, 517-518, 520, 596-597, 775.9
PAJ & SLJ (2007). FBE Interviews: Reminiscences of former academics of the FBE at UNSW. Vol.1. Faculty of the Built Environment: UNSW. ISBN 978-0-908502-61-5.