Vale Rodney Wulff AILA FRLA
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Rodney Wulff AILA FRLA, a founding Director of Tract. The Australian Institute of Landscape Architects’ Victorian Chapter offers our condolences to Rodney’s family, friends and colleagues.
Fifty years ago today, Rodney became a member of AILA. He championed our profession, practice, and community every day following, including serving as president of AILA Victoria from 1980-1981. He was awarded an AILA Fellowship for his distinguished contribution to our profession and landscape architecture throughout Australia.
Rodney’s life and impact has been beautifully captured below by Deiter Lim RLA, Managing Director, Tract Consultants.
We will keep the community informed of events to commemorate and share Rodney’s life and legacy on this page.
AILA Victoria
A true giant among men, a father, a grandfather, an Olympian, a Doctorate, an artist, a landscape architect, a pioneer and a founding Director of Tract.
Sketching the world around him was always a passion for Rodney and was his way of distilling that sense of place, of recording and marking the personal meaning of that place. It is a passion that he nurtured well before he embarked on his own design journey as a landscape architect. A passion that drove an evolution in his sketching technique over time and one that has had a direct impact on his long standing and significant professional career. A career that spanned over 50 years in which he not only shaped a company, but one in which he shaped a profession and directly affected the lives of millions of people through the significant award winning landscape environments he has created.
From humble beginnings in Wagga Wagga, it was the competitive and team based nature of basketball that led Rodney to the USA to play college basketball for University of Oregon but more importantly to study Landscape architecture. Rodney represented Australia in basketball in 1968 in Mexico alongside Australian basketball icons Lindsay Gaze and Ray Tomlinson. In terms of Landscape Architecture, Rodney went on to complete a Masters at Harvard and ultimately a PhD at Cornell in 1977.
In 1974 Rodney had returned to Australia after 10 years of both studying and professional experience. It was then that the late David Yencken AO, founder of Tract, sought Rodney out to team up with planner and architect Howard McCorkell to focus on landscape architecture, urban design and planning. It was two years later in 1976 that Steve Calhoun joined Tract for 1 year, though he never left, whilst Rodney finished his PhD. These 3 raconteurs as Founding Directors, then established Tract as a stand alone consultancy out from under the auspices of the award winning Merchant Builders, although continuing to work closely with them on projects. The close ties that Tract maintained with Merchant Builders saw significant innovation in housing development design with the creation of the innovative Cluster housing projects of Vermont and Winter Park which lead to legislative change and creation of the Subdivisions Act in Victoria.
It was a pioneering time for landscape architecture and urban planning in Australia. The 1970s was a period of surging population growth and accelerating urban development with the resultant issue, requiring design solutions to improve the quality of large-scale landscape and urban development outcomes. The time was ripe for the establishment of a professional urban planning and landscape design practice, not just to work on the numerous projects, but to develop a new direction for Australian urban planning and landscape architecture.
Pioneering projects of the time saw Tract change the face of St Kilda with its redesign of the St Kilda Foreshore. The winning of the national competition to redevelop Newcastle Foreshore saw the project opened by the Queen in 1988 at the Australian Bi-Centennial celebrations. This led to other city shaping projects around the country including the masterplan of the Queensland Government Precinct in Brisbane, the development of the Forrest Chase precinct in Perth and the landscape, siting and design guidelines for the Parliamentary Triangle in Canberra. In Melbourne, Rodney was involved with renowned architects Denton Corker Marshall and Godfrey Spowers in changing the face of Southbank from an industrial area into the vibrant riverfront area it is today.
Rodney was not just content with Tract as business but also in establishing Landscape Architecture as a profession in Australia. He was a member of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects (AILA) for 50 years having joined in 1974 and chrisAILA Victoria President from 1980-1981. He and Steve Calhoun also established and ran the Graduate Diploma in Landscape Architecture at RMIT from 1976 to 1981. RMIT still maintains the course today as a University and industry accredited Bachelor degree. In establishing a professionally accredited course Rodney ensured that there was a ready pipeline of talented designers available to Tract as it grew its workload and influence over the urban environment.
In 1995 Rodney took over the role of Managing Director of Tract, maintaining this position for over 10 years guiding Tract out of the 1990’s recession and successfully transitioning the company into a national business. He then handed over the role to Stephen White in Brisbane, ushering in the next generation. His desire to guide the next generation in their understanding of landscape architecture and urban planning was something he maintained throughout his career. He reveled in his role as a mentor to many, in not just design but in understanding and caring for people, place and culture. It was a role he maintained to the end, mentoring both the wider Tract team and its leadership, highlighted by his address at the 2023 Tract Forum in Kingscliff, NSW.
Over the course of his life and career, Rodney’s artwork and sketching has been the representation of his vision of the world and directly translated into his design work as a landscape architect - the light touch on the page, the efficient line work, the distillation of the sense of place - are represented in the landscapes he designed in his over 50 years at Tract. It was this ethos of the representation of a place, its people, its spirit, its context, its genus loci that drove the design and creation of the many award winning landscaped environments he presided over.
It was an ethos he brought to bear at Tract in caring for people and the environment and in educating and nurturing its staff. An ethos drawn from his humble but authoritative manner that saw him engage, inspire and draw allegiance and respect from people, even those that may not have initially agreed with him. He was a true collaborator, who saw the outcome as more important than any individual self-interest.
He was a pioneer in all respects, full of spirit and determination with a passion for design, culture and the environment, who strove to make the world a better place in whatever way he could.
Rodney will forever remain a part of Tract, and his legacy and vision live on in his projects and in those he has taught and mentored throughout his career.
Vale Rodney
Deiter Lim RLA
Managing Director, Tract Consultants
Newcastle Foreshore competition team including Kevin Taylor (back middle), Chris Dance (front middle), Steve Calhoun (front row, 2nd from right) and Rodney (front row, far left). Photo supplied by Tract.