Edward Robert Taylor
Edward Richard (Dick) Taylor was born in Hobart on 21 January 1921. He attended primary school in Hobart between 1926 and 1931 but progressed too fast and was forced to repeat a year because of age. He felt that this caused him to lose interest in schoolwork.
His next school was a technical high school and this was very influential through his life. He became involved in building trade, made lots of things and found this an interesting exercise in understanding building and in actually building things. He felt this gave him a sympathy for building detail that was important in later life. Once again at the end of Technical High School he was considered too young to go on to further education and had to repeat a year. He found this very hard.
Then he went to an academic High School and studies languages, mathematics, physics and chemistry. He didn't fit into the academic work as well as he expected. This was a shock to him, as was also that the school was a co-ed school.
He left the school, but there was no chance to go to university due to the depression times, but he did manage to get a job as a laboratory assistant in an electrical laboratory. He didn't "feel close" to electrical work, but the experience put him in good stead when he joined the army and trained as a radar technician. The training he received in the army was very much learning by rote and the assembly etc. of radar sets.
He volunteered for active service and was sent to New Guinea and joined anti-aircraft units and searchlight units. He noted that all the radar equipment had aerials called Yagi aerials- the Japanese inventor's name and felt that this was ironic!
He recalled a raid at Milne Bay where much damage was done to Japanese aircraft. The Japanese at same time went to Lae, and Port Moresby, but by this stage, the code of the Japanese was understood so the Australians knew what to expect. He recalled sitting near an air force radar unit listening to a radio set receiving information from a coast watcher in New Britain on the total assembly of Japanese planes being put to air from their location. He thought the coast-watchers were brave men because the transmission was a give-away of their location to the Japanese. They also ran the risk that native people may give them away. They knew the terrain because they were Copra people who had been working there in the 1930s.
At Milne Bay, he went for a boat ride with an American military man and it turned out that he was surveying the coast for the American Navy's arrival. From that time the Japanese were under attack. He recalled the Japanese failure to take Milne Bay, the Kokoda Track, and the strategy of the allied forces in leading an attack that led the Japanese further and further from their sources of supply and noted that the Australian troops were supplied by air which put them at an advantage, for the Japanese were supplied via land. He noted that as the Kokoda extended further from Buna and Gona the Japanese were in trouble, and the bravery of the Australian troops. They were just boys between 18 and 20 years.
When the Japanese were overwhelmed, his job became redundant around 1944, but he stayed in New Guinea until the end.
Being involved in the war caused huge problems of adjustment back to ordinary life. He thought his lack of influences of social maturity was like a hermit being thrust into civilised surroundings. The first part of his university career wasn't very happy. He moved back to Tasmania and lived with his parents while studying - he was 26 years old. He studied civil engineering because of his experience.
The last two years of university were part-time because the subsidy he received stopped after 3 years and by then he had married Jean Monckton. Eventually they had four children. He got a job as laboratory assistant and lived frugally and had a bike to get around on. When he finished his course he was unsure about which direction to take, as he hadn't done outstandingly academically and that made him uncomfortable. He looked for a job doing outside work and secured a job as an Area Engineer with Wollongong Council and stayed there a year but was unsatisfied because it wasn't very demanding, Looking after minor construction, culverts, bridge repair, road work etc. He decided to go to England to look for work and visit family, so he stayed with relatives initially and then found a job with Costain Concrete on the strength of some knowledge of and interest in the techniques prestressed concrete gained through a university project and his interest in the work of Magnel, an engineer/mathematician on prestressing.
Taylor worked for Costain's for 18 months doing element design and field construction and then moved over to an architect/engineer firm. At that stage, 1953/54, coal fire could not be used any longer in London after the huge fogs in London in 1952/53, when it was so dark with the fog that people had to feel their way along the kerb, so Taylor was involved in building new flats had no fireplaces.
He also worked on the new BBC buildings. Although he was only there for 18 months, he found that the architects were interested in what he wanted to do, and he realised that he could go into business himself. The chief engineer of the firm was fairly traditional in his approach. Another senior engineer in the firm was interested in building in concrete rather than steel.
In earlier times, the 1930s buildings were built with a steel frame mainly, with some exceptions, for example, Mark Foys with a concrete framing system. The concrete frame system gives a warehouse like construction and was devised in the US. It is a very intriguing method. This was revolutionary and in London he didn't have a chance to use the method for he was doing brick loadbearing flats, as in those days there was a lot of post war residential reconstruction. When working with Costain the reason for so much interesting work was that they had a licence to build from structural steel as materials were scarce and prestressed concrete was economical.
The cost of living in England was high and Taylor had the fortunate circumstance of getting a paid passage back to Australia to take up a position with the NSW Government Architect. Otherwise, it would have been hard to save in England.
The Government Architects offices were then in the old Chief Secretary’s building on the corner of Bridge and Macquarie Street. It was a lovely building with windows specially designed so all you could see was the sky! Most notable about working there was getting to know the younger generation of architects at the office and also Harry Rembert - the keystone of the design freedom that came out of Public Works at the time. He got along well with Andrew Andersons, Ken Wooley, Lionel Glendenning, Glen Murcutt.
Taylor was very involved in projects from the outset, liked to be able to contribute early in the design process. Usually, an architect would make the drawings and then pass them on to the engineers, but that led to problems where the necessary or desirable engineering structure may mean a redesign by the architect. His concern to provide a sympathetic structure early in the process struck a chord with architects.
In 1958 he decided to leave and start out on his own as the income at the Government Architect’s Office was barely enough in the early days. One of his first projects was the engineering work for buildings at Armidale University and consequently Taylor continued collaboration with the Government Architect’s people.
After only a couple of years he was joined by partners Alan Whitting and Jock Thompson to create Taylor Thompson Whitting (TTW), the well-known consulting engineering firm.
In 1961 TTW was asked by Harry Rembert to consider working on the State Office Block. The structure was a composite, a reinforced concrete shaft lift system which provided the main stability of the building. At the time it was to be the tallest building in Sydney, 400 odd feet above street level.
Over the next decades TTW was involved in too many projects to list here, but Taylor discusses them in the Oral History, and the log of that taped interview, linked below.
Dick Taylor retired in 1980 and was created a Member of the Order of Australia in 1982. He had a lifelong interest in sailing including the design of yachts.
Dick Taylor died on 20 March 2018, aged 97.
To access an appreciation of the life of Dick Taylor by the Architecture Association of Australia please use this link:
https://www.architecture.org.au/news/864-in-memory-of-dick-taylor
To access an oral history interview with Edward Robert Taylor please use this link:'
https://heritage.engineersaustralia.org.au/wiki/Oral_Histories_Sydney
