Introducing Pem Gerner
-a truly renaissance man
Urban Designer, Architect, Musician, Writer, Illustrator, Teacher, Husband and Father
This website distils the remarkable life experiences and creative talents of
Dr Pem Gerner OAM.
Skills and Experiences of Distinction
Each of the three themes below demonstrates and presents key examples of Pem’s skills and achievements – Architecture/Urban Design and Planning, Music, and Writing and Illustration. Click on each of the photos to explore the depth of achievements in each theme. Alternatively, hover and click on the relevant menu items above to discover several layers of sub menus.
Architecture/Urban Design
Pem is a self-made man who has built on his particular motivations to achieve the highest qualifications and gain extensive experience in architecture and urban design in Australia and overseas.
My Love of Music
Music has always been a major part of Pem’s life including playing solo piano, and leading small groups including: duos, trios, and quartets as well as being a section player in Concert and Wind Symphonic bands. He has also had several years of radio broadcasting experience both in Sydney and Canberra.
Writing and Illustrating
In 1974 Pem graduated in his Arts Degree with a major in English Literature, together with a major in politics. He has always loved books and words as well as being a highly accomplished illustrator. He has co-authored books, written many articles and reviews and created numerous drawings and illustrations.
Read more about Pem’s:
Pem – student, scholar, educator
My wartime primary schooling is recollected as overcrowded classrooms with 50 students to a class. Secondary schooling followed on with its seemingly unchanging standard template curriculum of Maths, Physics, Chemistry, English, French and Drawing. At 16, I was glad when it was all over, but of course, I had to decide what I wanted to do. Since I could draw almost anything and was skilled with tools my parents decided I was ideally suited to be an architect. At that stage all I desired was to think about what else was around, and would have loved a ‘gap’ year but that was unheard of then.
I knew that there were some rare spirits who embraced several disciplines, and graduated with three degrees, or more. There was John Monash with degrees in arts, civil engineering and law and Albert Schweitzer with his four or five qualifications, including music and medicine. I thought: now there’s a way to go. So I left school inspired by these few examples of those who had embraced multiple bundles of knowledge and their practice. I wondered if I too might in some way follow such a path.
The journey that followed needed a small handful of full–time years study and many years part–time study but produced what follows. It took an extended period since I had to wait for jazz studies to be admitted to Conservatoriums; for environmental science and studies to be become formal tertiary courses and it was not until late in the 1980s that urban design became a postgraduate study.
It did work out and I greatly enjoyed three vocations, mostly simultaneously, being those of architecture (including planning and urban design), the writing and illustrating of books and thirdly music. As soon as one overcomes silo-type thinking and the rigid compartmentalisation of the branches of knowledge and their containment as professions, everything then starts to stitch up together. I am sure it made me a better teacher.