It was at party I didn\'t want to go to but my girlfriend Gabrielle was adamant - her sister was in town and it was my duty to present a happy face. The gathering was a bit too intellectual for my mind - vapid voices and ideas waffling out windows into the exclusive foliage of Double Bay. But a few words peaked my interest; a teenager was talking about being a first year student of architecture at the University of New South Wales (in Sydney, Australia). I told him I\'d been a student there myself a few years back, so he asked me my name. His eyes grew black and wide with wonder. \'Wow, you\'re really him! Did you you know you\'re famous?\' Huh? Famous? My name was well known to students and faculty alike he said. I was mystified, having voluntary left the school before my attendance was officially listed as a failure, and I\'d done so quietly.

Like all brigands who evoke perverse admiration from the disgruntled or the anti-authority which thrills the young, my attendance at the school of architecture had become enshrined in the annals of brigandry. In the foyer of the main faculty building was a large glass case with shelves, the type that usually display the ghostly white cardboard models that are the work of students; but now replaced, including the shelves, with a grand display of my architectural drawings (a major project for the year I was at the school). The huge sheets were arranged carefully (and, no doubt, architecturally), the student told me, under a large sign reading, HOW TO FAIL FIRST YEAR ARCHITECTURE. The sign was meant to grab the attention of all who entered the building.

\'Oh the shame,\' one of the party group cried \'but what delicious ignominy and infamy to have one\'s failure...enshrined!\' Yes, it was that type of party. Suddenly I was the centre of attention and the student was overjoyed to have discovered me. Questions abounded which should have been embarrassing; but there was a different reason for my drawing methods, quite different to the monumental ridicule the faculty had obviously decided to bestow upon me. So I told them my story.

The drawings had taken over 6 months of hard work in a curriculum that had no room for art or design, save what the faculty had decided: a minimalist style theory as sterile as a hospital waiting room. This discovery had been at odds with my earlier decision to become an artist, but my mother freaked at the thought of my starving in a garret somewhere, and after a long onslaught I\'d decided to \'get a degree\' just to keep the peace. It would afford me, in her words, an income to indulge my desire to paint, and art and architecture were a good compromise she added, convinced by having spent her youthful years living in and absorbing all the culture of Europe. So, now in the fold, I did my prescribed work, often lasting late into the night under the constant barrage of assignments from teachers. By rote like parrots they continually announced the fact that very few students ever made it to their final year and, I\'m now sure, delighted in an over-prescription of study just to preserve their precious statistics of which they seemed overly proud.

In that year for me architecture\'s greatest proponent was Frank Lloyd Wright. I had read the Fountainhead by Aynn Rand and absorbed everything else I could about him. I was not a visionary - Wright was already regarded as perhaps the greatest architect of the 20th Century. Reading an interview he\'d given, I was inspired to adopt his schematic drawing methods for my own project; imaginary plans for an imaginary house in Centennial Park. Mostly devoid of native fauna in the Victorian \'Wish I was in England\' style, the old sun drenched park seemed more American Rural than Australian or British, so Lloyd Wright easily came to mind. But before I explain his methods, let me quickly introduce some basic concepts in the process of drawing architectural plans. Various \'views\' have to be made, each on a separate piece of paper: front, side, top, rear, subsections etc. Paramount is the discipline of exact attention to detail and measurement, enabling builders to obtain their measure and placement for construction. Plans also allow the costing of materials e.g. the cost per cubic volume of concrete pours. Many structural collapses can be traced (no pun intended) to minute errors in their schematics. And an architect must be able to calculate structural pressures, forces such as gravity and wind. As you might imagine I was under no delusion as to how precise my drawings had to be if I was to achieve a passing grade.

Plans are made in pencil first and must be exact. This is the most difficult part, and once achieved, a fine black ink is then applied over all by pen and ruler, minutely adjacent to the pencil lines. Frank Lloyd Wright found, since only the pencil lines needed to be exact, the final inking could be done carefully by hand and not by using the ruler. He claimed this method gave the drawings more life but still enabled the engineer or builder to take precise measurements. Inspired, I tried it out on a small drawing and liked the results - boring skeletal lines became loose with life, a little jitterbug dance on paper, so I proceeded to ink all my drawings this way despite the extra time it required.

On the prescribed day I finished my assignment and raced off to the university. My instructor was unhappy because I had missed the deadline by an hour and stated that he would have to fail me. I explained the simple truth: I had fallen asleep at my desk around 6 a.m. due to total exhaustion, and slept through the alarm. He seemed inclined to forgive me but then saw my drawings, \'It doesn\'t matter - with those drawings I\'m going to fail you anyway.\' I was shocked and quickly explained the F. L. Wright method I had adopted, convinced he would understand - I was sure, as an instructor, he would know all about Wright\'s methods and even praise me for my enthusiastic purpose. But it didn\'t make a difference (no doubt there were precious statistics to protect). I often think too that some, losing their youth and regretting it, take their melancholy out on those just experiencing it - for he perked up considerably announcing my failure. \'But what about art?\' I cried, already scratching the sides of a sinking ship. \'Architects aren\'t artists!\' he replied in disgust. My naive belief that art and architecture were close cousins quickly disappeared under this cloud of pig-headedness. I had failed, but now I understood all those ugly buildings that had defaced and corrupted the city\'s shores, and which now spread outwards across the land. This school was their factory. Undoubtedly the Sydney Opera House was the thorn in their side - it\'s design by foreign architect Jorn Utzon had been discarded (rumour was that it had been dragged out of a garbage bin) and a shortlist made of the most mediocre entries to present to the judge, another foreigner Eero Saarinen. Unimpressed, he asked to see the discarded designs and then awarded the prize to Utzon. Poor Jorn, he would eventually flee the country under a dogged interference by Australian architectural \'experts\' (including politicians and a biased media) and would never see his building again. No doubt these same \'experts\' had become my teachers.

At the party the student was excited to hear my story - he couldn\'t wait till Monday to tell the tale to the whole school. I didn\'t know what effect this might have, if any, but a few weeks later I found out. The students had reacted with anger and disbelief to discover that architecture had no place for Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright. It was as if the master himself, not I, had been expelled; exposed to the same narrow minded ridicule he\'d endured throughout his life. The drawings took on a whole new meaning, a cause celebre that made the faculty look ridiculous and eventually forced them to remove my shrine of failure. Their intentions had backfired indeed for Wright had reached out through the mists of time and, quite Frankly, made them look like the failures.