Modern in Melbourne Melbourne Architecture 1930-75 David Godsell David Godsell Architect
[based on a text by Mrs. Ursula Godsell] David Godsell was born 4/10/30 in Portsmouth England the son of an Australian naval officer studying at the Portsmouth Naval College and an English mother. After several short visits the family eventully settled permanently in Australia in 1943. He was educated at Caulfield Grammar School, matriculating in 1947. Intending to pursue a military career he attempted to enrol in the Duntroon Military College but was rejected because of slight deafness [which gradually became more serious].
A vocational guidance counsellor with the Victorian Government recommended that Godsell study either engineering or architecture but, based on drawings presented by him, thought architecture might be preferable. Godsell's father favored engineering and arranged a position for his son as a trainee engineer with the Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works.
The young Godsell, having decided that he wished to study architecture, enquired about enrolling to study architecture at the Melbourne Technical College. He was advised that he lacked the pre-requisite qualification in high school physics and that he should study this at night and seek work with an architect during the day. He obtained work with the architect Marcus Martin "in an apprenticeship capacity" and studied physics at night. He enjoyed working for Martin who took him on site visits and the office manager Stephen Darling taught him to draft. In later years he greatly appreciated the basic experience he gained in Martin's office.
Having completed his pre-requisite subject he studied architecture part time at the Melbourne Technical College [later RMIT] which at that time included night classes at the university in "what looked like a tin shed but was called the Atelier". When Godsell was in about the third year of his course he was offered a job by Guilford Bell who had seen his student work while acting as a guest reviewer in the school.
Godsell accepted the offer, left Marcus Martin's practice and took a responsible position in Bell's practice. The conservative aristocratic Bell, had just established himself as a sole practitioner with his office in his apartment in Washington Street Toorak. There seems to be some doubt over when Godsell actually joined Bell's practice. Acording to Goad, Godsell joined Bell as a graduate in 1955. According to Ursula Godsell he joined Bell's practice in 1953, apparently as a senior student rather than a graduate. Whatever the truth of the matter, Godsell documented a number of Bell's significant domestic commissions during this period and Goad notes that after his arrival in Bell's practice the influence of FLW, whom Bell already admired, became noticably more pronounced.
In 1960, encouraged by the successul completion of his own house and chafing to pursue his own architectural goals rather than those of his autocratic employer, Godsell left Bell's practice to commence private practice in his own right. An architect of conviction with a strong sense of vocation he once vowed that he would rather dig ditches to support his family rather than compromise his architectural integrity. He regretted the division of the spiritual and material which he felt characterised modern life and the restriction of the term 'vocation' to a religious calling when traditionally, he felt it might have applied to a very wide range of occupations. His architectural philosophy he summarised as ' to embrace and enhance the beauty of the site on which the building stands for both occupier and viewer. ' Fortunately he never had to dig ditches but he never established anything like the extraordinary client base of his former employer Guilford Bell. Commissions, mainly domestic, came in gradually, mainly via personal contacts. For twenty years he remained a sole practitioner until he died prematurely and tragically of cancer in 1986.
David Godsell was a talented member of a group of Melbourne architects during this period heavily influenced by the contemporary architecture of the West Coast of the United States, especially but not exclusively, Frank Lloyd-Wright. The architects in the group generally acknowledged to be most influenced by FLW included David Godsell, David Chancellor and Rex Patrick, Geoffrey Woodfall, Kevin Knight and Charles Duncan. Godsell's talent and debt to FLW is clear, not least from his own (1960) house, and is particularly evident in a number of his unbuilt schemes. That his creative endeavour was not limited by Wright's seeming omni-presence is indicated by the sweeping plan of the interesting Kennedy house which has much in common with the formalist concerns of Godsell's Melbourne contemporaries Robin Boyd and Roy Grounds.