The sculpture garden at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra is his design, as is the landscape setting of the High Court. Together they form one of the great works of 20th-century landscape architecture in Australia and are a fitting memorial to Harry Howard, who has died in Sydney. He was 69.

Born in Sydney, Harry Stanton Howard grew up in Gordon, where the bush gullies in which he played influenced his life's work. He described this landscape as incredibly sculptural, fully exercising the eyes, ears and touch and developing the sixth sense. The architecture of this environment was created by a framework of huge angophoras, blackbutts and turpentines set against the valley walls, high cliffs and caves, both often massive, the spaces always different and identifiable.

Educated at Gordon Public School and North Sydney Boys High, he graduated in architecture from the University of Sydney and completed a diploma of town and country planning. When he first went to Sydney University, the architecture faculty was still in the main quadrangle, in the attic studios of the western range terminated by the impressive bulk of the old Fisher Library. This major work of the Gothic Revival had been supervised by his maternal grandfather, Arthur Stanton Cook (1857-1932), as First Assistant Government Architect to Walter Liberty Vernon in the first decade of the century.

As a student and throughout his career, Howard was a convinced modernist – a devotee, as he described himself, of Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies Van der Rohe and Harry Seidler in Sydney, whom he met in 1950. They remained life-long friends. Seidler recalls that in the early 1950s Howard stood out above other students of architecture in that he recognised and understood in depth the changes that had taken place in architecture in the rest of the Western world.

His passionate engagement with modern painting and sculpture was considered by the teaching staff in architecture, other than the freehand drawing masters Lloyd Rees and Roland Wakelin, to be radical and dangerous. During this period, he was also drawn to left-wing politics, tempered by the critical thinking and libertarian spirit of the Sydney Andersonians. His work always evoked a sense of freedom in its spatial qualities and play of light. Howard worked briefly in the office of the pioneer modernist Sydney Ancher, and then for many years with the progressive firm Edwards Madigan Torzillo.

He made his own contribution to 1950s modernism with his first commission, an abstract composition of elegant, flat-roofed pavilions, a House for a Young Couple and a House for a Retired Couple on a double lot in East Gordon. This work was exhibited at the arts festival of the Olympic Games in Melbourne in 1956.

The command of site design evident in this project combined with his love of Australian plants and the spatial freedom of the bush to direct his interests towards the emerging field of landscape architecture. At this time he met Bruce Rickard, who had recently returned from graduate studies in landscape architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, and Bruce Mackenzie, who was beginning his career as an independent landscape consultant in Sydney.

Each contributed in his own way to the creation of a distinctive form of landscape expression using Australian plants, Howard being the master of spatial integration. He worked on the site design and landscape development of many schools during this period, both for the Public Works Department and Parents & Citizens groups. For one of the latter, he created the superbly scaled amphitheatre among towering turpentines and eucalypts at the Bush School, Wahroonga, in the 1960s.

In this period, he taught design part-time in the School of Architecture at the University of NSW in its most creative period. He was one of a highly talented group which included Rickard, Bill Lucas and Neville Gruzman, who were committed to creating an inspired response to the Sydney landscape.

The camaraderie and shared sense of purpose of that era found expression in the unique physical environment and social milieu of 7 Ridge Street, North Sydney, a building conceived by Howard and Rickard as a series of professional studios and designed by Ian McKay. At one time, 7 Ridge Street accommodated the offices of Seidler, Mackenzie, Rickard, Howard, Peter Myers and the studios of designer Gordon Andrews and photographer David Moore.

This one building encapsulated the idealism and energy of the Sydney School, which sought to express in all aspects of Australian design the uncompromising commitment to principle that Joern Utzon had brought to the city. This campaign was carried to the Council of the NSW Chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, on which Howard served from 1970 to 1984, and the NSW Board of Architects, on which he served as an elected member in the 1970s.

A foundation member of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, Howard made outstanding contributions to this field. For 20 years he was retained as consultant landscape architect to the Lane Cove Council, guiding the creation of a municipal landscape in harmony with the ecological and aesthetic values of the indigenous bush. In 1978 he received his greatest commission, the design of the landscape setting of the High Court and National Gallery in Canberra. He produced a series of truly Australian, human-scaled spaces around these great institutions.

The design transformed a devastated building site into a subtle, unfolding sequence of spaces. In the sculpture garden, the collection assembled by James Mollison has been sited and contained in a public park, open to all, in which the culture of the world is integrated on equal terms with the bush. Howard produced other major works in the past 20 years. In association with Barbara Buchanan, he designed Sawmillers Reserve at McMahons Point, a model for the creation of foreshore parkland on Sydney Harbour, the landscape of the Film & Television School, Ryde, and the courtyards at NIDA.

In 1996, he received the Australian Award, the highest accolade of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects, for his lifework, described as gentle, simple, unforced, useful, enjoyable, romantic, relaxing and Australian.

Howard, a distinctive personality, worked in a truly anarchic environment but his mind was sharp, focused and organised; he was meticulous about details and uncompromising in his beliefs.

He is survived by his partner, Bev, his former wife, Libby, and their children, Joe, Ben, Anna and Tom.

James Weirick
SYDNEY MONING HERALD
07/10/2000