Margaret Pitt Morison: Architect

Margaret Lillian Pitt Morison was the daughter of renowned Australian artist George Pitt Morison, educated at Girls’ High School (now St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls) and Perth Modern School. Architect Leonie Matthews’ article ‘My Brilliant Career’ in The Architect of March 2009 describes how Margaret matriculated at 16 and had aimed for a career in medicine, but her parents could not provide the financial support required.

It was in 1920 that a chance meeting with Reg Summerhayes, son of architect Edwin, changed
the course of Margaret’s life. She had spent her life, to that point, learning how to be a wife and
homemaker but after much persuasion her father relented and Margaret began her training with
Edwin Summerhayes.

She finished her training with Summerhayes in 1924 and became WA’s first female architect. After a year off, and another working and studying in Melbourne, she returned to Perth. In 1929 she started working for Frederick George Brudenell Bruce Hawkins and worked on the designs and detailing for the Atlas Assurance Company building.

Retrenched from Hawkins’ firm in around 1931 at the height of the Depression, Pitt Morison was then invited to join Poster Studios with fellow unemployed architects Colin Ednie-Brown, Harold Krantz and John Oldham. With Krantz she designed the Myola Club in Claremont in 1934 and with Harold Boas, the designs of Lawson Apartments. She went on to work for Oldham, Boas, Ednie-Brown undertaking the interior design of the Adelphi Hotel (demolished), the Emu Brewery (demolished) and the redesign of the Karrakatta Club, then at 186 St George’s Terrace (demolished).

In 1940 she worked in partnership with Heinz Jacobsohn, a refugee from Nazi Germany. During WWII she worked as camoufleur, designing military camouflage, before moving to Melbourne
where she worked for architect Hugh Vivian Taylor, a specialist in acoustic architecture. She returned to Perth in 1948 and taught architecture at Perth Technical School until the early 1960s.

From 1967-1971 Margaret worked in Planning at the City of Perth. Then, well beyond the usual
retirement age but with skills and plentiful knowledge to impart, she moved to UWA’s School
of Architecture and Fine Arts as a lecturer and researcher. She was still working at UWA when she died on 12 December 1985, aged 85. In honour of her legacy, there are several annual
architectural awards UWA established the Margaret Pitt Morison Memorial Prize, which is
awarded annually to outstanding environmental design students.

The Margaret Pitt Morison Award for Heritage, presented by the Australian Institute of Architects in 2016, was awarded to the State Buildings. Together they designed several residences, the Ruse flats in Kanimbla Road, Nedlands, and Marginata Flats on the corner of Goderich and Hill Streets, Perth.