ITHACA, N.Y. -- Glenn Murcutt, an architect from Down Under who has a one-person practice, is billed as an "ecological functionalist" and doesn't use a computer, took the architectural community by surprise last spring when he was named the winner of the Pritzker Prize, a lifetime achievement award that is architecture's equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

Now Murcutt has another surprise: The designer of houses on Australia's rugged promontories and bluffs, who runs his Sydney practice alone and works mainly on private commissions, is coming to Ithaca to deliver a public lecture at the State Theater Thursday, Oct. 24, at 6:30 p.m. The event, which is free and open to all, is part of the Preston H. Thomas Memorial Lecture series sponsored by Cornell University's Department of Architecture in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

Murcutt's talk, "Past, Present and Future: Survival as a Sole Practitioner," kicks off the department's annual symposium Friday and Saturday, Oct. 25 and 26, which focuses on the environmental sustainability debate. Titled "Towards a Well-Tempered Architecture," the symposium takes place in 157 East Sibley Hall on Cornell's campus and is expected to attract some of the best-known thinkers in the international architecture and landscape architecture communities.

An article in The New York Times last April noted that Murcutt's structures have been influenced by Aboriginal designs of shelters with bent bark roofing, among other things. One of his most admired works is a client's weekend house in Australia overlooking the Pacific. The

structure has an enormous veranda with -- as described in The Times article -- a "gently sweeping roof [that] mirrors the shape of the surrounding hills" and offers a weathered sheen that "blends in with the [area's] silvery grasses [and the] gray fur of kangaroos that come by at dusk."

As in other projects, Murcutt used corrugated galvanized iron to dramatic effect. "I love it because it responds to its environment. It reflects the quality of the light of the day and surrounding colors," he told the Pritzker jurors.

The prize-winning architect, whose work also has been influenced by European modernist and Australian vernacular architecture, has designed about 500 houses, including one for an Aboriginal artist, a small-scale local history museum, restaurants and a teaching center for the arts. He currently is working on designs for a country winery and a small hotel on Australia's southern coast, which is known for its climatic extremes.

Noting that the prize usually goes to celebrity names such as Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry, who head large firms and typically take on big commercial projects, The Times article quoted Pritzker juror Jorge Silvetti, chair of Harvard University's architecture department, who said: "Here we have a one-person office that should serve as a role model. It shows that it's possible to have a serious practice that investigates issues important to people's lives but doesn't depend on size or marketing." Other jurors praised Murcutt for creating an identifiably Australian idiom in small-scale domestic architecture.

Murcutt also stands out for his passionate opposition to the computer as an architectural tool in an age when most architects have come to rely on its polished simulations of proposed structures. Claiming it destroys the hand-eye connection and makes buildings look like cardboard, he uses it only to write letters and turn down speaking engagements, according to The Times.

Discussants at the Towards a Well-Tempered Architecture symposium Oct. 25 and 26 come from as far away as Edinburgh, Paris, Geneva, Switzerland and Beijing. They will follow Murcutt's lead and look at whether the movement toward environmental sustainability and other new directions for architecture are possible in the context of globalization and the growing industrialization of cities.

The memorial lecture and symposium are endowed by a gift from the estate of Ruth Thomas and from Leonard B. Thomas, of Aurora, N.Y., and are named in memory of their son, Preston, a former student in the Department of Architecture.

For the full symposium schedule and to register, call (607) 255-5236 or see this web site: http://www.architecture.cornell.edu/welltemperedarch .

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EDITORS: Media are especially invited to attend both the talk and the symposium.