Hot Modernism
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Ebitate Deborah Van Der Plaat ndandae sincienis dipiet laborio nsequam conseror re Janina Gosseye milluptatin voloresenem quisto molupta sperum. 1945 – 1975 Andrew Wilson £24.95 / $39.95 Hot Modernism Queensland Architecture 1945 – 1975 edited by John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, Andrew Wilson 4 Hot Modernism Healthy Minds in Healthy Bodies 5 Preface / Acknowledgements Hot Modernism: Queensland Architecture 1945–1975 Hayes and Scott’s Jacobi House, one of Brisbane’s is one of three major outcomes of a large research most iconic mid-century houses. project, funded by the Australian Research Council The editors of this book would like to thank under the Linkage Project grant scheme, which set the various institutions and numerous individuals out to document Queensland’s post-war architecture without whose support this publication would not by building an oral history archive. This research have been possible. We would like to express our was conducted in the ATCH (Architecture Theory gratitude to the Australian Research Council, and Criticism History) research centre at the University the industry partners State Library of Queensland, of Queensland between 2011 and 2014 and owes BVN Donovan Hill, Conrad Gargett Riddel Ancher much to the fruitful conjunction of individual Mortlock Woolley and Wilson Architects for convictions and institutional commitments. The generously providing funding for the research interdisciplinary team of researchers who led this project. Particular thanks are due to the principles project consisted of John Macarthur, Deborah van of these firms, Janette Wright, Phil Tait, Bruce der Plaat, Janina Gosseye and Andrew Wilson, the Wolfe, Robert Riddel and Hamilton Wilson, for editors of this book and all afiliates of the School confidently investing in this research. We would of Architecture, who worked in close collaboration also like to thank the archival institutions The Fryer with Jane Hunter, Craig McNamara and Andrae Library of the University of Queensland, Artspace Muys from the School of Information Technology Mackay, Brisbane City Council Archives, Gold and Gavin Bannerman from the State Library of Coast City Council Archives, National Archives of Queensland. Together, this research team developed Australia and Queensland State Archives as well an interactive online database, the Digital Archive as photographer Richard Stringer for supplying of Queensland Architecture (www.qldarch.net), digital reproductions of the numerous plans and which comprises all research material, eficiently photographs that adorn this book. Finally, we organised and freely accessible for further enquiry. would like to express our immense thankfulness This database is a second significant outcome of the to the long list of individuals who have ofered research project. The third outcome of the research their support and insight at various stages of this project was a major exhibition, curated by Deborah endeavour and who have generously shared their van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, Gavin Bannerman and knowledge and stories with us. A special thanks to Kevin Wilson, held at the State Library of Queensland Donald Watson and Robert Riddel, informants who in Brisbane. Between 10 July and 12 October, 2014 became a vital and active part of the research team more than 18,000 people visited Hot Modernism: and also contributed to this volume. Building Modern Queensland 1945–1975 which — next to numerous scale models, digital models, original John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, plans and films — featured a full-scale reproduction of Janina Gosseye and Andrew Wilson. (previous pages) Post office (opposite) Interior of the Plywood at the Gold Coast, designed Exhibition House, designed by John by Roman Pavlyshyn, 1959. Dalton and Peter Heathwood, 1957. Preface/Acknowledgements 7 Theme INFLUENCES 73 Theme PEOPLE, FIRMS AND NETWORKS 163 Introduction 11 Contents Theme FOUNDATIONS: MODERNISM AND ITS CRITIQUE 13 9 Healthy Minds in Healthy Bodies: Building Queensland’s Community, One Weatherboard at a Time 3 Twentieth-Century (Sub) Tropical 6 Architectural Practice in Alice Hampson and Housing: Framing Climate, Post-War Queensland Janina Gosseye 237 Culture and Civilisation in Janina Gosseye and Post-War Queensland Donald Watson 165 Deborah van der Plaat, Andrew Visual Essay Urbanisation 262 Wilson and Elizabeth Musgrave 75 1 Bringing Architecture to the Image credits 290 People: Defining Architectural Practice and Culture in Post- War Queensland Bibliography 291 Deborah van der Plaat and Andrew Wilson 15 Contributors 296 7 ‘Shabby’ Careers: Women Working in Architecture in Post-War Queensland Index 296 4 The Discovery of Queensland’s Deborah van der Plaat 183 Architectural History Robert Riddel 101 Colophon 304 Visual Essay Lifestyle 200 Theme BUILDING PROGRAMMES 215 Symbols VISUAL ESSAYS (See references in main essays) 2 Angry Young Architects: Counterculture and the Critique of Modernism in Brisbane, 1967–1972 Climate and Regionalism Janina Gosseye and John Macarthur 31 International Influences Visual Essay Climate and Regionalism 46 5 International Influences in Post- War Queensland: Protagonists, Lifestyle Destinations and Models Silvia Micheli and Andrew Wilson 117 8 Civic Visions for Brisbane Urbanisation John Macarthur, Donald Visual Essay International Influences 134 Watson and Robert Riddel 217 Introduction As International Modernism swept the world after the Second World War it confronted difering landscapes, climates, and building traditions. The tabula rasa planning, infrastructural and social engineering originally imagined for the rich northern hemisphere was actually possible in the global south where architecture applied itself to buildings and urban form as a continuous field of operation. The modernisation and urbanisation of large parts of Africa and Asia, implemented by colonial governments, was clearly recognisable in the built form to the extent that in these locales modernisation and Modernism became practically synonymous. In the laboratory of the “Colonial Modern”, Modernism was expected to develop into an increasingly powerful generalisation. The experimental data most anticipated was to test Modernism in hot climates — Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry’s work in Africa and India being an example of the design experimentation that accompanied building science in the programme for a bio-climatic design. Queensland, Australia’s northern state answered the criterion of heat, but few other expectations of a place of tropical torpor waiting for an injection of modernist rationalism. By 1900 British settlers had comprehensively dispossessed the indigenous populations of Australia and established a prosperous economy with a thriving urban culture. Advances in communication and mobility of the professional classes in the late nineteenth century meant that, although on the geographic periphery, Australian architectural culture closely followed and participated in the trends of British and North American architectural discourse. Relatively wealthy, with high labour costs and a good professional and trades skill base, Queensland’s need for, and ability to produce, a “Hot Modernism” was quite diferent to the situation that faced Le Corbusier at Chandigarh, or Michel Échochard at Casablanca. By 1945, Queensland’s architectural discourse was furthermore — contrary to many other emerging colonial realities — already strongly focused on climatic design. In the nineteenth century the need to adapt architectural forms to hot climates, began to distinguish Queensland’s architecture from that of the other British colonies to the south. As a result, Queensland came to be held as having produced First Church of Christ Scientist in Brisbane, designed by Bruce Lucas the only authentically Australian architecture, and Robert Cummings, 1939. both in built form and critical discourse. A strange Introduction 11 mixture of racial and geographic determinism, was institutionalised in Queensland in the early the state’s architecture was seen as a successful twentieth century, spurring the success of Modernism adaptation of ‘white men’ to the tropics. The ability as a doctrine, until both the architectural education Foundations: of architecture to ameliorate the heat and humidity and the modernist dogmas that it proclaimed were was held to assist a physiological adaption on the increasingly criticised by "angry young architects" basis of which a new a vigorous culture would thrive. from the 1960s on. The second theme, “Influences”, Modernism and The grand civic buildings of nineteenth-century examines the forces that have afected Queensland’s Brisbane with their various explorations of the “hot Modernism”, from climate and local architectural classical idiom were shuttered and shaded, with