Paul Ritter

For other uses, see Paul Ritter (disambiguation).

Ore Obelisk (1971-72) in Stirling Gardens with Council House behind. Designed by Ritter and Ralph Hibble.

Paul Ritter (1925–14 June 2010) was a Western Australian architect, town planner, sociologist, artist and author. As the first city planner of the state's capital, Perth, and as a long-serving city councillor, he is credited with having prevented the construction of an eight-lane freeway on the Swan River foreshore and with saving historic buildings at a time when Perth's elegant architectural heritage was being almost entirely destroyed for redevelopment. His later career was blighted by a controversial 3-year prison sentence for inappropriately receiving federal-government export incentive grants.

Early life

Ritterr was born in Prague in 1925, the son of Carl Ritter and Elsa (née Schnabel). At the age of 13 in 1939, Ritter was evacuated from Czechoslovakia to England. He graduated as a Bachelor of Architecture and Master of Civic Design from the University of Liverpool. In 1946 he married a fellow-graduate Jean Patricia Finch BSc, DipEd. with whom he eventually had five daughters and two sons (the last born in 1971 in Western Australia). In 1953, the couple combined their various talents and shared idealism in an enduring professional partnership which they named 'The Planned Environment and Educreation Research (PEER) Institute'. They also adopted a family motto: Everybody silly sometimes. One of his grandchildren is the actor Ian Meadows.^{[citation needed]}

Early publication

Between 1954 and 1964 he edited and published ten volumes of the journal Orgonomic Functionalism through his own Ritter Press imprint, dedicated to the ideas of Wilhelm Reich about orgone energy, a field now considered to be psuedoscience. After Reich's death in 1957, he published a memorial volume that included a contribution from the educator A. S. Neill.

Career in Western Australia

In 1965 Ritter moved to Western Australia to become Perth's first City Planner and Architect. Whilst City Planner, he was responsible for ensuring that a six-lane highway was not built along Riverside Drive between the City of Perth and the Swan River on which the city lies. He was also responsible for ensuring the preservation of several historic buildings including The Cloisters and the Barracks Arch. Ritter was dismissed from his post as City Architect of the Perth City Council in 1967. A committee including Sir Walter Murdoch, Mary Durack Miller, Stella O'Keefe, Professor E.K. Braybrooke, Professor G.C. Bolton, Thomas Wardle and Dr. R.B. Lefroy was formed to inquire into the dismissal. He later successfully sued for wrongful dismissal. Ritter served as a councillor from 1968 to 1986.

Imprisonment

In the 1980s Ritter served a 16-month prison sentence for fraudulently attempting to obtain Commonwealth export grants; he maintained that he had been framed.

Awards

• Man of the Year, Architects' Journal, London 1962
• Runner-up, Citizen of the Year, Western Australia, 1974 and 1976

Memberships

• Founder Director, International Traffic Segregation Research Office, 1953
• Member of Advisory Committee of the Civic Trust
• Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects
• Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects
• Fellow of the Royal Town Planning Institute
• Member of the Royal Australian Planning Institute, Perth (now the Planning Institute of Australia)
• Member of the Metropolitan Regional Planning Authority, W.A.

Bibliography

ENVIRONMENT

• Planning for Man and Motor Oxford: Pergamon Press 1964, 1970
• Humanizing Concrete Ritter Press 1967
• Kids and Concrete Ritter Press 1979
• Concrete fit for people: Towards a Bio-functional Eco-architecture: a Practical Introduction Down to Earth Bookshop/Pergamon Press 1980
• Concrete Renaissance Down to Earth Bookshop/Pergamon Press 1982
• Bio-Building Down to Earth Bookshop/Pergamon Press 1983

SOCIOLOGY

• Housing and Social Patterns Ritter Press, Nottingham 1957
• Deck Housing Ritter Press, Perth 1965
• Faces of Perth Ritter Press 1967

EDUCATION

• The Free Family, Paul and Jean Ritter, Gollancz, 1959
  • Translated into German by Rowholt, 1972 & 1978;
  • Translated into Dutch by Nelissen and Bloemendaal, 1973;
  • Translated into Hebrew by Massada, 1973;
  • A later edition, The Free Family and Feedback, Gollancz, 1975, had a large additional section with comments from the children, now young adults, on their upbringing.
• Educreation, Paul Ritter, Oxford Press, 1966
  • Educreation and Feedback, Pergamon Press, 1979
• A Fascinating Record—25 Years (1958-1976) PEER Institute

BIOGRAPHY AND PHILOSOPHY

• Orgonomic Functionalism (Periodical) Edited by Paul Ritter, Ritter Press, 1954–1964
• Universal Manifestations of Orgone Energy in Spirals Ritter Press, Nottingham 1954
• Some New Formulations in Orgonomy Ritter Press, Nottingham 1955
• Wilhelm Reich; Memorial Volume, Edited by Paul Ritter, Ritter Press, 1958
• The Ten Taboos Down to Earth Bookshop Press, Perth 1981
• Prison Poems, Karnet 1986
• Prison Poems, Karnet 1987
• Curses from Canberra PEER Institute, Perth 1989

Other work

In Nottingham and later in Perth, he and Jean Ritter ran several exhibitions called "The Child's Eye View", where everything was built 2.5 times normal size to show adults what it was like to be a child.

Ritter designed a housing development, Crestwood Estate, on Radburn principles (see Clarence Stein) in Thornlie, Western Australia. Every house sits on the edge of a park, and movement on foot through the development is possible without encountering vehicles.

In the Supreme Court Gardens in central Perth, his sculpture "The Ore Obelisk" (1971) symbolises the diversity of mining industry from which Western Australia's wealth is largely derived.

References

The books listed above plus

• A Fascinating Record: 25 Years 1953-1978, Peer Institute Perth, Paul and Jean Ritter, PEER Institute, 1978.

Further reading

• Gregory, Jenny City of light: a history of Perth since the 1950s Section: Paul Ritter - career of Perth's first City Planner, controversies and achievements and his work as a Perth City Councillor - pp. 134-152. City of Perth, 2003. ISBN 0959463240