13 Sep The half-centennial Norman Eaton Memorial Lecture

The inaugural Norman Eaton Memorial Lecture was presented on the occasion of the launch of the Pretoria Institute for Architecture in 1995, Pretoria, by Prof Roger Fisher. The half-centennial Norman Eaton Memorial Lecture will be presented by Marguerite Pienaar, student of Prof Fisher, who recently finished a post-graduate Masters Degree on the work of Norman Eaton (1902-1966).

Her study had documented the legacy of Norman Eaton as preserved at the University of Pretoria, which provided the material for a contemporary analysis and extrapolation of his domestic oeuvre through the construction of a biographical-disciplinary context and chronology. Why and how Eaton’s domestic architecture expressed its lineage of forms, space, material, and detail were explored in her study.

Through the systematization of his records, she was able to set up a biography within context in order to capture the critical moments in Eaton’s development and his designer’s mind. The chronological study of his domestic drawings further allowed for the tracing of African and other influences in relation to his travels and their translation into architectural expression. Typological plan compositions and motifs emerged with clarity to aid in providing a critical appraisal of his domestic work.