Housing

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Theme Description

The design of the house was a central pre-occupation for the architectural profession throughout the twentieth century. The huge shift of populations into urban areas, the destruction of war and mass global migration created an urgent need for housing in many places. Architecture responded with a sustained, future-directed, often utopian, discourse about the 'ideal' home. In this discourse, ‘house’ and ‘home’ developed a structured metonymy. The concept of 'home' works to circumscribe and define boundaries for the fundamental entities of the self, the family and the nation. Yet it was also used to refer to the physical space of the house, thus 'model' or 'ideal' housing not only referred to the design of dwelling spaces but also attempted to define how 'model', modern citizens should live. A number of the papers in this session examine various proposals for ideal homes, be they interwar Worker's Dwellings in Queensland, postwar high-rise apartments in Belgium or architect-designed project homes of the 1960s and 1970s. This determination of 'how to live' also spilled over into design proposals for the broader contexts of neighbourhoods, suburbs and cities - issues also examined by a number of authors.

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Jo Case
Material Culture in the Relocation of Timber Framed Housing in South-East Queensland

Caroline Denigan
The Self-Build Housing of Men and Others: researching gender and vernacular architecture in Australia

Fredie Floré & Mil De Kooning
Formes Nouvelles and the Communication of Modern Domestic Ideals in Postwar Belgium

Judith O’Callaghan
The New Suburban Dream: the marketing of Pettit & Sevitt project houses 1961-1978

Judy Rechner
Brisbane’s Interwar House Styles and Who was Responsible?

Lee Stickells
Modernism and the Games Village: suburban experimentation at the VIIth British Empire and Commonwealth Games, Perth 1962

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