Architecture with Soul...Moonbah Ski Lodge — Art and I by Richard Crebbin

Moonbah Ski Lodge

The warm and cold souls of buildings

Moonbah Ski Lodge in Thredbo has soul, a warm heart, a life which it shares to its guests—skiing bushwalking, cycling , or just enjoying the Australian alps around Thredbo.

Architects, builders, developers have designed good, bad, average buildings, urban spaces, green spaces and more. Some of these have soul, they enrich us; the Sydney Opera House is a living part of Sydney; it gives space and life to opera, cafes, watching the harbour, concerts, its sails are giant projection screens.

The Dawn Reflection artwork, Australia Day, 26 January 2023. "Diyan Warrane” by Kamilaroi woman Rhonda represents the important role of First Nations’ women around the waters of Warrane (Sydney Harbour).

Other buildings suck joy from us — Mies van Der Rohe’s Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, a perfect square modernist box of steel and glass, raised above the street modernist form over function, hubris over humility. When opened it remined Berliners of a service/petrol station, as a museum, it has always been a disaster, awkward display spaces its subterranean galleries, beneath the impractical grand hall, for the permanent collection have the dreary feeling of a windowless office complex.

The curse of Mies van der Rohe: Berlin’s six-year, £120m fight to fix his dysfunctional, puddle-strewn gallery Oliver Wainwright @ollywainwright The Guardian Online Mon 30 Aug 2021

Moonbah

Moonbah Ski Lodge was designed in 1959 by Bill Lucas and Marion Hall Best for her family.

Marion Hall Best

Marion Hall Best was one of Australia’s most innovative interior designers of the 1950s - 1970s. An adventurous and sophisticated use of colour was always the hallmark of Best’s work which was influenced by Henri Matisse, the Fauves and, specifically, the colour wheels of the Australia colourist and abstract painter Roy de Maistre.

It is it not an overstatement to state she was a radical influence on Australian interior design. Her designs were influenced by 1920s Modernism and1970s Minimalism alongside The Bauhaus.to She introduced Australia to the now ubiquitous designs of Marimekko, Herman Miller, Eero Saarinen, Noguchi, McGuire and Jim Thompson and championed local designers — Gordon Andrews, Clement Meadmore, Roger Maclay and Leonard French

Marion Best, Best, Marion Esdaile Hall (1905–1988) Catriona Quinn in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 17 , 2007

Bill Lucas

Bill Lucas was an architect idealist who, often through unconventional means, sought to bring about social and environmental change to make the world a better place. His early career, working with his wife Ruth, was spent designing and often instigating, projects, furniture and community developments. As shown by Moonbah he would meticulously refine a design informed by cost, materials and construction, to reach the optimum solution for the client and site. (www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/tin-sheds-gallery/past-exhibitions/bill-lucas-architect-utopian)

Moonbah

Moonbah, a simple A frame Thredbo ski lodge, built in 1959, enriches you, it shares its soul its joy, its life with whoever spends time there. The lodge lives — wakes, sleeps, it becomes an active member of any group staying time there — more than any other building I have spent time in.

Its front wall is glass looking straight up Mount Crackenback, the glass is not covered during the day, covered by at two bright red canvas curtains at night which meet in the middle of the A. This curtain punctuations the day. In the morning a guest pulling cotton ropes threaded through each curtain opening the curtains wakes the lodge, the mountain comes into focus, light floods into the large communal space and kitchen. At night the ropes are released, the canvas pulled almost closed and then finally closed as Moonbah is tucked-up asleep, warm behind its bright red wall of canvas.

Moonbah is a ski lodge that lives, it wakes and sleeps, it becomes an active part of a group of guests who stay, as they physically interact with it, yet also passive.

Its large communal ground floor space with a towering ceiling to the peak of the A — excluding some bedrooms and services behind the common space — is where guests spend their days or evenings to cook, eat and socialise. Yet even without walls Moonbah allows you space for private time, games, conversation, work at one end of the large refectory table, nooks and crannies where the sloping wall/ceiling meets the floor.

This is a building you must connect with as it connects with you. You must manually open and close the canvas curtain deciding to wake it or put it to sleep. You decide to spend time with the group or more private time in the same space.

Moonbah guests will depart tired from skiing, walking, cycling but as the lodge gifts their soul their heart will be rested.