Background
Dirk Bolt was born in Groningen in 1930.
Dirk Bolt was born in Groningen in 1930.
He commenced his studies in architecture at the Delft University of Technology, but moved to Australia in 1951, and finished his qualifications as an architect and town planner at Hobart Technical College.
His most notable buildings include the Sandy Bay Campus buildings of Christ College at the University of Tasmania and the Murray Street State Offices in Central Hobart. He designed many innovative residential and commercial buildings in Hobart and Canberra. In Canberra, where he worked between 1964 and 1971, he also consulted to the National Capital Development Commission, providing advice on planning of the growing capital.
The Australian Institute of Architects (ACT) is in the process of publishing a monograph on his architectural and town planning work in Canberra.
In the 1970s, he worked for international development organisations in Africa and Asia, including the United Nations Office of Technical Cooperation. He consulted to many agencies and governments on planning, development and sustainability.
He was appointed Senior Lecturer in Urban Design at the University of Auckland, where he received a Doctor of Philosophy in town planning in 1984. His thesis was concerned with sustainable, equitable and humane town planning.
This is also reflected in his later work that includes low-energy aspects of planning, providing tools for planning in mega-cities in developing countries, and affordable residential modular construction using timber.
In 1987, he returned to the Netherlands and later became professor and head of Urban Planning at the University of Twente. Dirk Bolt is an honorary fellow of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects and past president of the ACT division of the Australian Planning Institute. Currently, he lives in Scotland.
The college building could be regarded as a Japanese inspired design combined with Dutch pragmatism using sliding doors and windows similar to shōji screens, recessed horizontal fenestration, and a restricted palette of materials.
