Hamish Lonergan awarded the 2023 David Saunders Grant

The 2023 David Saunders Founder’s Grant has been awarded to Hamish Lonergan for his project “‘A First Place,’ Queer Identity, and Brisbane Architecture since the 1980s: On the architectural receptions of David Malouf”.

Architectural designers, educators and critics in Brisbane have often drawn on David Malouf’s autobiographical descriptions of the city, particularly in “12 Edmondstone Street” (1985) and “A First Place” (1984). This project traces an architectural reception history of Malouf’s writing. It surveys how, and in what contexts, his texts has been interpreted since their publication: in the writing, teaching and designs of figures including Brit Andreson, Peter O’Gorman, Ian Sinnamon, and others. Through interviews, archival research, and close reading of published reviews and essays, the project considers how discourses such as place, materiality and phenomenology were reflected in these architectural readings of Malouf. At the same time, the project remains attentive to the absences in these receptions. Queer and literary theorists have noted queer undercurrents in Malouf’s work, who grew up gay in Queensland before homosexuality was decriminalised in 1991. Ultimately, this project frames these receptions—and omissions—as a lens to consider architectural culture in Brisbane since the mid 1980s while also adopting an operative position by offering missing queer counter-narratives.

Image: View towards Victoria Bridge and South Brisbane ca. 1940, described by David Malouf in “12 Edmondstone Street.” Image credit: State Library of Queensland, negative number 55918, https://collections.slq.qld.gov.au/viewer/IE337043.