Antipodean Modernity
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Aussie Architecture: modernity revisited
Gevork Hartoonian, The University
of Sydney
What does it take to discuss modernity in Australian architecture,
a country that enjoys strong historical and cultural ties with Western
civilization? My own experience of contemporary Australian architecture
is short, even minimal. But swimming in uncharted waters produces knowledge.
Most accounts of Australian modern architecture follow the tradition
of architecture unfolding in Europe or on the West Coast of the United
States, and for two good reasons: This includes their historical ties
and their geographic similarities, if not a style of everydayness that
is motivated by climatic conditions. I have no intention of providing
a historical review of Australian modern architecture. I wish to present
a paradigm in order to view Australian’s contemporary architecture
from a different perspective. This is an important project if one is
concerned with the state of academe and architecture in this country
at the dawn of new millennium.
The argument presented here entails three types of investigation:
the state of architecture in the period between the Second World War
and the present, the state of knowledge in postmodernity and, finally,
the dialogue between model and type. An argument could be made for three
main tendencies: First, there is critical regionalism, an amalgamation
of Miesian tectonic that is merged with the modernist tradition developed
in California. Second, there is a sense of universalism that was first
motivated by brutalist architecture and is currently being reiterated
via computer-generated forms. Finally, there is the permeation of a
cynicism that forms part of the postmodernist failure to assess the
critical relevance of the project of modernity since the 60s.
Building "le nouveau Congo": fifties-architecture in Leopoldville
and the emergence of the modern cityscape in the Belgian colony
Johan Lagae, Architecture and Urban
Planning, Ghent University
If the literature on architecture and urbanism in the former colonies
has significantly expanded over the last decades, research on 20th-century
architecture in Central Africa has remained limited. Studying the important
built heritage of the colonial era in this region, however, can contribute
to a better understanding of the world-wide diaspora of architectural
modernism.
In this paper, I intend to illustrate how in the late 1940s and the
early 1950s a context emerged that was particularly favourable for the
introduction of architectural modernism in the Belgian colony and especially
in the capital Leopoldville. The post-war economic boom and the official
Ten Year Plan for the Economic and Social Development of the Congo induced
large building programmes. By focussing on the internationally acclaimed
tropical modernism of the architect Claude Laurens, I will show how
this architecture produced a new urban image that was propagated in
the contemporary media as an exemplary representation of the introduction
of modernity in post-war Congo through colonisation. This propagated
modern cityscape (high-rise buildings along large boulevards full of
American cars), however, was restricted to the European part of the
town. Despite its modern looks, even in the so-called cités indigènes,
it should not be forgotten that Leopoldville remained a colonial city
throughout the 1950s.
Efficient and modern - CWT Fulton and the development of the modern
hospital in Australia
Thom Blake
CWT Fulton was a prominent Queensland architect, who is credited as
a pioneer of modernism in Queensland. Fulton was responsible for the
design of a number of hospitals throughout Queensland between 1936 and
the late 1950s. His work reveals a thorough understanding of the principles
of ‘modern hospital’ planning and a mastery of functionalism.
The influence of Dudok and Aalto are evident in his work.
Fulton’s contribution to the development of the modern hospital
in Australia has been largely ignored. Stephenson and Turner have been
credited as the pioneers of the modern hospital in Australia. Fulton
was as accomplished, if not more so, as Stephenson and Turner as evident
in buildings such as the Townsville, Kingaroy and Roma Hospitals.
“I see a warehouse and I want to paint it black”
Michelle Hamer, The University of
Melbourne
Bernard Joyce is the better known partner of the largely unknown and
understated architectural practice of Joyce Nankivell Partnership; established
in 1964. One of the early practices to work with builder developers
their work and practice pursue the British post-war Modernist ideals
of their education and upbringing; notably an interest in systems and
its ethic of anonymity. Prior to the partnership, however, Bernard Joyce
worked as a designer on prominent buildings for Melbourne firm Bogle
and Banfield before proceeding to receive several of his own design
commissions. Between 1952-1964, prior to entering into practice with
Bill Nankivell, Joyce built several houses -speculative and private-
in Hawthorn, won the Tasmanian Timber Association competition, as well
as designing several other unbuilt projects. These early works demonstrate
the beginning of an important, yet previously unresearched, body of
work of both an individual and collaborative nature. The works of Joyce
Nankivell are important because of their connection to postwar Britain
and their subsequent influence on Melbourne speculative town housing,
in particular courtyard and medium density apartment typologies.
The Imaging of Government 1918-1945: modernity, tradition or progress?
Julie Willis & Philip
Goad, Faculty of Architecture, Building & Planning, University
of Melbourne
Government architecture between the two World Wars had to address an
evolving idea of nation, and changing economic and social circumstances.
Caught between the competing ideals of the politically progressive nation
and the traditional position of government as secure stalwart and image
of authority, new government commissions during the 1920s and 1930s
faced the push and pull of conservative and progressive tendencies.
In the United States the search for independent national identity was
unfettered by former imperial ties. However, Commonwealth nations like
Canada, India, New Zealand and Australia were placed in a particularly
fraught position, where imperial allegiances fought against local and
global interests. For much of the 1920s, these nations continued to
grapple with modernised versions of orthodox images of government authority,
and it was not until the 1930s that they began to overtly embrace architectural
modernity. What did this shift mean for government architecture? Empire
and modernity were for the most part seen as opposites. In Fascist Italy
and Nazi Germany, there was occasion in the 1930s for a reversal of
this process, there were aspirations to Empire and the expedient adoption
of architectural modernity and its association with progress. This paper
will place Australian government architecture within such a global context.
Interpretations of Japan in Australian Architecture: an overview
Eugenie Keefer Bell, University of
Canberra
The use of Japanese themes after WWII was part of a complex positioning
of Australian architecture both in an international context and in a
developing discourse of regionalism. Prior to WWII, this discourse had
often been mediated by European and American sources, such as by proponents
of modernism as a stylistic preference, or through the example of works
as highly profiled as Frank Lloyd Wright's. This reconsideration of
Japanese sources as relevant and appropriate for Australian architecture
emerged with a new clarity in the 1960s and 1970s, which saw a re-negotiation
of themes inspired by the example of Japan.
This paper presents an overview of the history of interpretation of
Japan in Australian architecture to the 1970s. Its themes and sources
share the general problem of appropriation in culture, issues which
are critically explored by Paul Ricoeur in Hermeneutics and the
Human Sciences, and takes as a working hypothesis Ricoeur’s
observation that interpretation necessarily embodies appropriation.
It seeks to identify issues and conditions that stimulated a reframing
of cultural borrowings into the Australian built environment. It is
further informed by Ricoeur's speculations on the paradox of how to
both “become modern and return to sources.”
Kevin Borland and the Two Strands of Melbourne Modernism
Doug Evans, School of Architecture
and Design, RMIT University
Kevin Borland who, died in 2001, is generally acknowledged as a pivotal
figure in the development of post-war Melbourne architecture but [to
my knowledge] no serious attempt has been made to locate or theorize
his considerable body of built work. This paper is a first attempt at
this task. It locates Borland squarely at the intersection of mainstream
international modernism and the local version of regional modernism.
Borland's output oscillates between the expression of the culturally
specific and the expression of Australian capacity to participate in
the global modernist project on an equal footing with architects in
the cultural heartlands of the northern hemisphere.
The Plywood Exhibition House: an investigation of local idiom
Elizabeth Musgrave, Department
of Architecture, The University of Queensland
This paper is part of a wider study exploring the potential of the
edge of the building envelope for disclosing formal, material and experiential
aspects of architecture. The wider study involves the analysis of a
selection of significant Queensland houses. This paper focuses on The
Plywood Exhibition House. Analysis of the material fabric of the Plywood
Exhibition House will reveal something of how architects at the end
of the 1950s reconciled the idioms of late modernism with local circumstances.
The Plywood Exhibition House (1957) by Dalton and Heathwood was the
outcome of a competition seeking proposals for a small house demonstrating
the use of ply products. In keeping with the spirit of the day, the
competition-winning proposal extended the design brief to consider the
problem of living in a sub-tropical climate. The design is an expression
of the style of the times. Investigation also reveals the architects’
interest in material and experiential aspects of the local Queenslander.
In addressing issues of climate, the design realises an opportunity
for adapting and extending existing idioms.
An Unselfconscious Architecture the work of Robert Dickson
Rachel Hurst, Louis Laybourne-Smith
School of Architecture and Design
University of South Australia
In a joint essay by Robert Dickson and University of Adelaide client,
which chronicles the Union Redevelopment project of 1967–1975,
it emerges that the design process, while focussed on accepted modernist
criteria of ‘real and practical needs’ also involved close
and critical collaborations. Some of these are expected liaisons–Dickson’s
partner, Platten, associates within the office and the structural consultants
with whom he worked on a number of projects. Others are less usual and
indicate his attitude to the nature of architecture and building. His
dealings with builder and client were such that, in the precise resolution
and implementation of the architectural program, their roles were redefined
to that of collaborators.
One of the first South Australian post war practices to be producing
high quality work inspired from its inception by modernist ideals, Dickson’s
approach to collaboration is interesting. The problematic issues of
posthumous attribution and gender that pervade much of the literature
on collaborative process are only peripherally relevant. Dickson generously
acknowledges the nature and extent of his collaborations. More salient
is the manner in which he embraced the complexity of collaboration as
a means to enriching the architectural program, yet remained clearly
intent on producing essentialised and direct solutions.
This paper uses archival, oral and analytical research and, in considering
a number of major works, interrogates typical collaborations within
Dickson’s practice.
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