The Reading of Modern Dutch Architecture by a Queensland Architect
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“Moderately Modern”: The Reading of Modern Dutch Architecture by a Queensland Architect Paul Dielemans University of Queensland This paper examines the reception and understanding of the work of Dutch architect Willem Dudok (1884-1974) and modern architecture by Australian architect, Frank Cullen (1909-91). They were separated from each other spatially and temporally. It is argued that Cullen’s understanding of Dudok’s architecture was mediated mostly through the work of other Australian architects, including Queenslanders Robert Cummings (1900-89), Charles Fulton (1905-81), and Frank Costello (1903-87), who all had first-hand knowledge of Dudok’s work. It is contended that Cullen’s interest in Dudok, and that of his contemporaries, was motivated by a desire to identify an architectural practice that was “moderately modern.” This modernism eschewed ornament and was functional, efficient and ahistorical. It walked, however, a middle path between the hard abstraction and the rigid functionalism associated with European architects such as Le Corbusier and Gropius and the psychological comfort and stability that was linked to a continuing use of traditional materials and forms. This paper will demonstrate that Cullen accessed the latter via a British reading of Dutch modernism conveyed to Queensland by lectures, writings and architects , edited by Victoria Jackson Jackson Victoria by , edited coming out of the Architecture Association, London, during the 1920s-30s. In this instance, distance (Queensland) looked back (to Dutch modernism), but the image received was tempered and modified by sources that were both geographically and temporally displaced from the original. Ultimately, a “softer modernism” that was compatible with Queensland tastes was produced by successfully blending new materials and technologies with that of the traditional. , Distance Looks Back Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Historians, Proceedings of the Society of Architectural 36 Keywords: Frank Cullen; Dudok; functional building; modern architecture in Queensland Australia; moderately modern; middle path Australia and New Zealand and New Australia 2020), 138-49. SAHANZ, (Sydney: Andrew Leach and Lee Stickells Wyatt, 10, 2019. for publication November Accepted Paul Paul Dielemans, Architecture Dutch of Modern The Reading Modern’: “‘Moderately a Queensland Architect” by in 138 The major building type that sustained the practice of Queensland architect Frank Cullen (1909-91) was schools for the Catholic Church, of which 128 were erected between 1936 and 1980. Cullen registered as an architect in June 1935, in the middle of the Great Depression, and apart from a brief partnership from 1937-41 with Desmond Egan (1906-41), worked mostly as a sole-practitioner. He gradually took on assistant architects from the mid-1950s until he expanded the practice into a multi-partner firm in 1961, working until he retired in 1982. Cullen’s early schools employed traditional styles common to the Catholic Church in Queensland such as the Romanesque brick schools of St Sebastian’s, Yeronga (1937) and Holy Spirit, New Farm (1937), or plain conventional styling for small timber schools. In the late 1930s, Cullen and Egan introduced new stylistic elements into their school designs that included geometric art deco brickwork motifs on façades, stepped parapets, and vertical rectangular panels of glass bricks on 1 1 These include three designs by Cullen & stairwells. Egan for St Patrick’s, Gympie (1938), St Joseph’s, Chinchilla (1938), and St Mary’s, During 1941-53, Cullen produced a set of fifteen schools that Beaudesert (1939). were stylistically distinct from the rest of his work and not characteristic of Catholic Church architecture of the inter-war period.2 These were all ahistorical, functional designs that 2 This encompasses a group of fifteen schools including: Mt St Michael’s College, Ashgrove employed minimal ornament. They were constructed in most (1941); Our Lady Help of Christians, Hendra (1946); St Patrick’s, Pomona (1947); St instances, with light-to-medium coloured orange or brown- Mary’s, Ipswich (1948); Our Lady of the Assumption, Norman Park (1948); St orange brick and displayed asymmetric massing of simple Joseph’s, Childers (1948/51); St Vincent’s, Surfers Paradise (1949-55, demolished); St interlocking cubic forms with a strong horizontal expression Luke’s, Buranda (1949, demolished); Marist Boy’s College, Rosalie (1949); Star of the Sea (fig. 1). This horizontality was accentuated with continuous School, Gladstone (1950); Soubirous College, Scarborough (1951), St Anthony’s, Kedron cantilevered concrete window awnings, horizontal banks of (1951); St Joseph’s at Kangaroo Point (1951); windows and parapet copings. Guardian Angels, Wynnum (1952, altered); Villanova College, Coorparoo (1953 & 55). These schools represent groups with flat-roofs These school designs were superseded by a preference for more or hipped-roofs, or both. Villanova College was the only school to be symmetrically massed contemporary styling from 1953-80 resulting from Archbishop and to have a strong vertical motif in the form James Duhig’s dissatisfaction with modern architecture for of a centrally placed tower. church school designs in 1953, and the design influences of architects who had gradually joined Cullen’s practice from the 3 Archbishop James Duhig, Letter to Frank 3 mid-1950s. Cullen, Architect, November 20, 1953, Brisbane Roman Catholic Archdiocese Visually, the minimalist aesthetic of these fifteen schools recalls Archives. the work of modern Dutch architect, Willem M. Dudok (1884 -1974). Dudok was known for his distinctive use “of vertical and horizontal volumes, the masses of walls set against voids and bands of windows ... floating roof planes” and the dramatic juxtaposition “of hollow spaces and volumetric elements” and 4 4 Yukio Futagawa and Wilhelm Holzbauer, yellow glazed brick for “the unifying skin.” Dudok was a Willem Marinus Dudok Town Hall, Hilversum, Netherlands, 1928-31 (Tokyo: A.D.A. Edita significant inter-war influence on three architects working in Tokyo, 1981), 3, 5, 7. 139 Queensland, who had travelled to Europe and gained first-hand Figure 1. Selection of Cullen’s functionalist schools. (Photograph of Mt St Michael’s experience of his works. This was reflected in the functionalist College, Ashgrove, 1941, (top left), courtesy of Sisters of Charity Congregational Archives building designs of Robert Cummings (1900-89), Charles 2019. All remaining photographs by author, 2014-17.) Fulton (1905-87) and Frank Costello (1903-87). Examples include: the 1937 Masel House at Stanthorpe, by Charles Fulton 5 “Doctor’s Residence, Stanthorpe, Queensland,” Building, December 24, 1937, (for J.P. Donoghue & C.W.T. Fulton); the 1938 Second Church 25; “Masel Residence (former)” Queensland Heritage Register, accessed March 8, 2019, Christ Scientist in Clayfield, Brisbane, by Bruce Lucas & Robert https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/ detail/?id=601552; “Buildings Which Have Cummings; the 1938 Nudgee Junior College at Indooroopilly, Won Awards For Architects,” The Courier- Mail, October 10, 1940, 5; “First Church Brisbane, by Donoghue & Fulton; the 1940 First Church Christ of Christ, Scientist, Brisbane,” Queensland Heritage Register, accessed March 8, 2019, Scientist, Brisbane, by Lucas & Cummings; the 1941 Fulton https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/ detail/?id=650017; Australian Institute of residence, Indooroopilly, Brisbane, by Charles Fulton; and from Architects Queensland Chapter, “Application 1942 to 1951, various electrical substations and pump stations for Entry of a State Heritage Place in the Queensland Heritage Register,” 2015, accessed 5 designed by Frank Costello, Brisbane City Architect. March 8, 2019, http://www.architecture.com. au/docs/default-source/qld-policy-advocacy/ qld-heritage-register-submission---first- As these buildings were erected in Queensland and were well church-of-christ-scientist-10-september-2015. pdf?sfvrsn=0; Margaret Therese Lawrence- publicised and known, there is little doubt that Cullen would Drew, “Lucas and Cummings Architects” have been familiar with them. However, as Cullen left no records (BArch thesis, University of Queensland 1986), 50 & 185; “Fulton Residence,” to explain his influences and interests, this paper will instead Queensland Heritage Register, accessed March 8, 2019, https://apps.des.qld.gov.au/heritage- consider the more general question of what architectural values register/detail/?id=602208; Scott Chaseling, “Frank Costello: City Architect 1941-1952, City and ideas Dudok represented for those Queensland architects Planner 1946-1952” (BArch thesis, University of Queensland, 1997); Carole Hardwick, “The who had travelled to see the new architecture in inter-war Dissemination and influence of Willem M. Dudok’s work in the climate of modernism in Europe, and how these values were transferred to influence and architecture in Australia 1930–1955” (PhD diss., University of Sydney, 1998), 171, 229- inform their contemporaries who had stayed in Australia. 33; Ivan McDonald, “Early Modern Brisbane: Some Aspects of the Development of Modern Extensive studies documenting Dudok’s influence on Australian Architecture in Brisbane Before World War Two” (DipArch. thesis, University of architecture have been undertaken including the PhD thesis Queensland, 1983), 33, 58, 88. by Carol Hardwick, (1998), publications by architect historian, Donald Langmead (1996) and the undergraduate thesis