Neil Clerehan

Neil Clerehan (29 December 1922 – 10 November 2017) was an Australian architect and architectural writer

Neil Clerehan was born in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton on 29 December 1922. He developed in interest in architecture at an early age, encouraged by his parents who bought him a subscription to Australian Home Beautiful as his eleventh birthday present.

Matriculating from St Patrick's College, located on the fringe of central Melbourne, he enrolled in 1940 in the architecture program at the Melbourne Technical College (RMIT University). After a stint in the army, where he met Robin Boyd, he resumed his course at RMIT University in 1945, transferring in 1946 to the night-class Atelier course at Melbourne University. For most of 1946, he also worked in the office of Martin & Tribe. He then transferred to the new Bachelor of Architecture at Melbourne University, graduating in 1950, having already registered as an architect in 1949.

In 1946 he took over the editorship of Smudges, the monthly news sheet of the Architectural Students Society of the RVIA, from Robin Boyd, carrying on the championship of modern design. In 1947 he assisted Boyd with the seminal publication Victorian Modern, and the establishment of The Age's Small Homes Service, which provided low cost modern house designs, promoted through the newspaper.

Clerehan helped provided house designs from the beginning, and ran the service in 1950-51 while Boyd was overseas. In 1949 he designed his first built project, a simple skillion roofed north facing house for a Brighton neighbour. He returned in early 1953, and took over directorship of the Small Homes Service from Boyd again, and restarted his solo architectural practice.

He married Sonia Cole in 1955, their first home for a few months being one of the units behind Roy Grounds's house in Hill Street, Toorak, before moving to the glass-walled house he designed for his family in Fawkner Street, South Yarra.

Clerehan described his style as that of "an unreconstructed Modernist". In 2010 he wrote that "architecture is a system rather than a style. I don't have a social conscience on the question of sustainability. I regard our building habits, especially of housing, as the antithesis of environmental empathy."

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