Decorating Distance: Civic Dispositions in Non-Professional Environmental Education

Abstract

In the 1970s, the Jewish émigré architect and writer Paul Ritter (1925-2010) initiated a series of experiments with modelled concrete in Western Australia. Paul Ritter taught at the Nottingham School of Architecture from 1952 to 1964 and became the first City Planner of Perth, WA, in 1965. After his very own Planned Environment and Educreation Research Institute (PEER) licensed a machine to model concrete by using polystyrene moulds, Ritter was asked to design a series of seven pedestrian underpasses in Rockingham Park in Perth. These walkways formed a footpath system in a pioneering Radburn-style housing scheme often used by children on their way to school. By decorating the distance between home and school with animals and inserting games on the concrete surface, Ritter wanted to make the “anxiety-ridden” walkway from home to school into an “attractive playspace” or a “clubroom for children.” This paper takes Ritter’s experimental so- called “sculp-crete” designs and his collaborations with school children as a starting point to reflect on the architect’s position in the civic realm and in non-professional education.