Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2022.2061647
Catherine Townsend, P. Goad
By focusing on the interplay between the fields of design, architecture, exhibitions and curatorial practices, the authors in this special issue of Fabrications have uncovered new historical connections, shed new light on iconic buildings, and furthered new methodologies and theoretical approaches. As guest editors, our methodological provocation for this issue was the critical examination of the shared and overlapping influences, approaches and practitioners within design, architecture, exhibition and curatorial practices. Too frequently these fields are siloed from each other, reciprocal knowledge ignored and methodological exchange eschewed. Yet all share a lineage as Kulturwissenschaft — cultural histories of material objects — and in Australia they have been significantly shaped by the scholarship of Professor Emerita Harriet Edquist. The aims of Looking inside Design are threefold. Firstly, to foreground the entwined histories and the traversing of professional boundaries between the fields of design, architecture, exhibition and curatorial practices. Secondly, by connecting these disciplines, richer and more complex cultural histories can be unearthed, thus broadening the conceptual framework for the discipline of architectural history. In seeking to explore the possibilities of enlarging the scope of architectural history we tap into a rich and well-established agenda in Fabrications’s special issues, and a broader turn in architectural history as epitomised by the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, active since 2006 and dedicated to fostering innovative scholarship from multidisciplinary perspectives. Finally, this special issue commemorates Professor Edquist’s career as she retires from an academic position at RMIT University and as director of the RMIT Design Archives, though not from scholarship itself. Edquist’s work as historian, editor, commentator, curator, and archivist has animated architectural, design and exhibition studies for decades. She leaves a significant legacy of influence and scholarship which this issue attempts to mark. Dominating many of the papers, such that it constitutes a parallel theme of the issue, are women’s voices and those outside the discipline of architecture. This is entirely fitting in a festschrift for an art historian turned architectural and design historian, and exhibition curator. FABRICATIONS 2022, VOL. 32, NO. 1, 1–5 https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2022.2061647
{"title":"Looking inside Design: Crossing and Connecting the Disciplinary Boundaries of Architecture, Design, and Exhibition","authors":"Catherine Townsend, P. Goad","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2022.2061647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2022.2061647","url":null,"abstract":"By focusing on the interplay between the fields of design, architecture, exhibitions and curatorial practices, the authors in this special issue of Fabrications have uncovered new historical connections, shed new light on iconic buildings, and furthered new methodologies and theoretical approaches. As guest editors, our methodological provocation for this issue was the critical examination of the shared and overlapping influences, approaches and practitioners within design, architecture, exhibition and curatorial practices. Too frequently these fields are siloed from each other, reciprocal knowledge ignored and methodological exchange eschewed. Yet all share a lineage as Kulturwissenschaft — cultural histories of material objects — and in Australia they have been significantly shaped by the scholarship of Professor Emerita Harriet Edquist. The aims of Looking inside Design are threefold. Firstly, to foreground the entwined histories and the traversing of professional boundaries between the fields of design, architecture, exhibition and curatorial practices. Secondly, by connecting these disciplines, richer and more complex cultural histories can be unearthed, thus broadening the conceptual framework for the discipline of architectural history. In seeking to explore the possibilities of enlarging the scope of architectural history we tap into a rich and well-established agenda in Fabrications’s special issues, and a broader turn in architectural history as epitomised by the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, active since 2006 and dedicated to fostering innovative scholarship from multidisciplinary perspectives. Finally, this special issue commemorates Professor Edquist’s career as she retires from an academic position at RMIT University and as director of the RMIT Design Archives, though not from scholarship itself. Edquist’s work as historian, editor, commentator, curator, and archivist has animated architectural, design and exhibition studies for decades. She leaves a significant legacy of influence and scholarship which this issue attempts to mark. Dominating many of the papers, such that it constitutes a parallel theme of the issue, are women’s voices and those outside the discipline of architecture. This is entirely fitting in a festschrift for an art historian turned architectural and design historian, and exhibition curator. FABRICATIONS 2022, VOL. 32, NO. 1, 1–5 https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2022.2061647","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"32 1","pages":"1 - 5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47416323","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2022.2053274
Stuart King
ABSTRACT Colonial homesteads occupy a pivotal place within Australian architectural historiography: claiming country, adapting to the continent’s environmental conditions, and as pastoral and agricultural enterprises generating wealth they were a focus of self-conscious architectural endeavour. Their making was supported by diffuse networks of financial, cultural and social capital comprising the British Empire, which Harriet Edquist has observed can be belied by “popular representations of Australian homesteads as isolated objects within an abstract landscape.” This article presents a reading of Ratho, an early homestead in Tasmania, from the perspective of its occupants and, especially, one daughter, Jane (née Reid) Williams, whose own story points to the complex webs of Empire that informed colonial experience and homestead building. It uses personal letters, diary entries and reminiscences to highlight the incremental design of the homestead in social settings, over water and on land, and to contextualise apparent allusions to originary architectural thinking in the building’s idiosyncratic Grecian colonnade which comprises knotted tree trunks fashioned as Ionic columns. The article explores a mode of architectural history attentive to the lived experiences of a colonial Tasman world.
{"title":"The Architectural Imagination and the Colonial Tasmanian Homestead","authors":"Stuart King","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2022.2053274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2022.2053274","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Colonial homesteads occupy a pivotal place within Australian architectural historiography: claiming country, adapting to the continent’s environmental conditions, and as pastoral and agricultural enterprises generating wealth they were a focus of self-conscious architectural endeavour. Their making was supported by diffuse networks of financial, cultural and social capital comprising the British Empire, which Harriet Edquist has observed can be belied by “popular representations of Australian homesteads as isolated objects within an abstract landscape.” This article presents a reading of Ratho, an early homestead in Tasmania, from the perspective of its occupants and, especially, one daughter, Jane (née Reid) Williams, whose own story points to the complex webs of Empire that informed colonial experience and homestead building. It uses personal letters, diary entries and reminiscences to highlight the incremental design of the homestead in social settings, over water and on land, and to contextualise apparent allusions to originary architectural thinking in the building’s idiosyncratic Grecian colonnade which comprises knotted tree trunks fashioned as Ionic columns. The article explores a mode of architectural history attentive to the lived experiences of a colonial Tasman world.","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"32 1","pages":"31 - 53"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47210400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2022.2047452
Macarena de la Vega de León
{"title":"Activism at Home. Architects Dwelling between Politics, Aesthetics and Resistance","authors":"Macarena de la Vega de León","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2022.2047452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2022.2047452","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45193751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-01-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2022.2087271
Catriona Quinn
ABSTRACT In 1947 in Victorian Modern, Robin Boyd named a group of leading modern architects, including many who had trained at Geelong’s Gordon Institute. Yet Boyd omitted successful graduates whose work did not fit his narrowly defined parameters of modern design. Significant amongst these was Noel Coulson, RAIA, whose architecture and interior design practice made him highly desirable to Jewish immigrant clients. Like many whose work traversed both aesthetic and professional boundaries, Coulson has been overlooked by an Australian historical field profoundly shaped by Boyd’s preferences. Via a detailed study of Loti and Victor Smorgon’s Toorak house designed by Coulson in 1953, this paper argues that previously under-researched client histories have value in contesting such historiographical limitations. Client-centred methodologies reveal interior designers’ roles as hybrid practitioners — both cultural producers and mediators — supporting an understanding of modernity determined by the home as the locale of modern life rather than prescriptive aesthetic values. This paper proposes a re-assessment of post-war interior design historically marginalised within hierarchies of cultural production; and the role of the client as integral to a more inclusive understanding of the modern interior in post-war Australia.
{"title":"Re-evaluating Post-war Interior Design Practices through Client Histories: Loti Smorgon and Her Architect/Decorator Noel Coulson","authors":"Catriona Quinn","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2022.2087271","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2022.2087271","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT In 1947 in Victorian Modern, Robin Boyd named a group of leading modern architects, including many who had trained at Geelong’s Gordon Institute. Yet Boyd omitted successful graduates whose work did not fit his narrowly defined parameters of modern design. Significant amongst these was Noel Coulson, RAIA, whose architecture and interior design practice made him highly desirable to Jewish immigrant clients. Like many whose work traversed both aesthetic and professional boundaries, Coulson has been overlooked by an Australian historical field profoundly shaped by Boyd’s preferences. Via a detailed study of Loti and Victor Smorgon’s Toorak house designed by Coulson in 1953, this paper argues that previously under-researched client histories have value in contesting such historiographical limitations. Client-centred methodologies reveal interior designers’ roles as hybrid practitioners — both cultural producers and mediators — supporting an understanding of modernity determined by the home as the locale of modern life rather than prescriptive aesthetic values. This paper proposes a re-assessment of post-war interior design historically marginalised within hierarchies of cultural production; and the role of the client as integral to a more inclusive understanding of the modern interior in post-war Australia.","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"32 1","pages":"54 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2022-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46452673","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2021.1979778
N. Mullumby, Meher Bahl
The use of 3D technologies in architectural research has long centred on capturing building sites and structures, however at the University of Melbourne a unique collection of heritage building materials has been the focus of an ambitious 3D scanning project. Conceived by Naomi Mullumby in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage, the project team consisted of University staff and professionals with architectural backgrounds. Ben Waters and Belinda Yang of S-I projects undertook the 3d scans and Meher Bahl from Restore Conservation Services created the metadata, videos and forthcoming website. The objects in the Heritage Building Materials collection were accumulated by Professor Miles Lewis during his professional career and donated by him to the Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) Faculty (Fig. 1). The collection consists of over 300 objects ranging from small nails to large iron roofing sheets, categorised under five broad headings: bricks, cement & plaster, ironmongery, decorative finishes and roofing. These objects were collected by Lewis or were gifted to him by his colleagues and students. The physical objects have been used to complement teaching of built heritage within the Faculty where they enable students to gain an understanding of the evolution of construction materials and their use in Australia, and of global influences on Australian architectural methods. The physical objects are held in glass cabinets within the Faculty, with limited curation, visibility and accessibility (Fig. 2). Their digitisation as 3D objects, with highly descriptive metadata and accompanying video interviews with Lewis, has been significant in opening up a specialised and largely unknown collection to a potentially global audience of researchers who can now visually interrogate the objects and understand their historical and environmental context.
{"title":"Capturing a Cabinet of Curiosities: 3D Scanning a Building Heritage Collection","authors":"N. Mullumby, Meher Bahl","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2021.1979778","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2021.1979778","url":null,"abstract":"The use of 3D technologies in architectural research has long centred on capturing building sites and structures, however at the University of Melbourne a unique collection of heritage building materials has been the focus of an ambitious 3D scanning project. Conceived by Naomi Mullumby in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage, the project team consisted of University staff and professionals with architectural backgrounds. Ben Waters and Belinda Yang of S-I projects undertook the 3d scans and Meher Bahl from Restore Conservation Services created the metadata, videos and forthcoming website. The objects in the Heritage Building Materials collection were accumulated by Professor Miles Lewis during his professional career and donated by him to the Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) Faculty (Fig. 1). The collection consists of over 300 objects ranging from small nails to large iron roofing sheets, categorised under five broad headings: bricks, cement & plaster, ironmongery, decorative finishes and roofing. These objects were collected by Lewis or were gifted to him by his colleagues and students. The physical objects have been used to complement teaching of built heritage within the Faculty where they enable students to gain an understanding of the evolution of construction materials and their use in Australia, and of global influences on Australian architectural methods. The physical objects are held in glass cabinets within the Faculty, with limited curation, visibility and accessibility (Fig. 2). Their digitisation as 3D objects, with highly descriptive metadata and accompanying video interviews with Lewis, has been significant in opening up a specialised and largely unknown collection to a potentially global audience of researchers who can now visually interrogate the objects and understand their historical and environmental context.","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"31 1","pages":"464 - 471"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48941107","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2021.1971367
Elizabeth Grant
{"title":"One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash","authors":"Elizabeth Grant","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2021.1971367","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2021.1971367","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"31 1","pages":"462 - 463"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42428677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2021.2006429
J. Willis, Katti Williams
ABSTRACT For Australian architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the pull to centres of architectural culture was significant. Travel to further one’s architectural education and experience was out of reach for many Antipodean architects because of geographical distance and costs. For others, particular circumstances enabled a period of international travel, having a transformative effect on their subsequent architectural outputs and careers. Not all architectural travel is the same: it has different modes and outcomes, and can be instigated through means as diverse as a reward for years of practice to enlisting in military service. This paper examines the changing role of travel for Australian architects prior to the Second World War. Six distinct modes of travel emerge: the grand tour; the commercial enterprise; the roaming adventure; accidental tourismthat Kilburn took through the United States saw him directly influenced; educational imperative; and finally, as a rite of passage. While the impetus differed, all modes allowed architects to experience places and structures first-hand: to see architecture differently. This increasing role of travel in the careers of architects vastly truncated the distance between the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and Australia, building educational and professional engagement and networks. These opportunities brought multi-valent benefit to individual architects, as well as new ideas that transformed Australian architecture.
{"title":"Travel à la Mode: Australian Architects and the Changing Nature of the International Tour","authors":"J. Willis, Katti Williams","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2021.2006429","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2021.2006429","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For Australian architects of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the pull to centres of architectural culture was significant. Travel to further one’s architectural education and experience was out of reach for many Antipodean architects because of geographical distance and costs. For others, particular circumstances enabled a period of international travel, having a transformative effect on their subsequent architectural outputs and careers. Not all architectural travel is the same: it has different modes and outcomes, and can be instigated through means as diverse as a reward for years of practice to enlisting in military service. This paper examines the changing role of travel for Australian architects prior to the Second World War. Six distinct modes of travel emerge: the grand tour; the commercial enterprise; the roaming adventure; accidental tourismthat Kilburn took through the United States saw him directly influenced; educational imperative; and finally, as a rite of passage. While the impetus differed, all modes allowed architects to experience places and structures first-hand: to see architecture differently. This increasing role of travel in the careers of architects vastly truncated the distance between the United Kingdom, Europe, North America, and Australia, building educational and professional engagement and networks. These opportunities brought multi-valent benefit to individual architects, as well as new ideas that transformed Australian architecture.","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"31 1","pages":"357 - 397"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42375676","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2021.2006430
Michael Davis, J. Gatley, Gina Hochstein
ABSTRACT The house that Peter Middleton designed for himself and his family in the Auckland suburb of Grafton (1960–61) has an established place in the published record for its reintroduction of traditionalist and populist references, most famously, a finial above one gable end. In 1968, the Grafton Road site was cleared for an extension of the city’s motorway. A period publication records that the Middleton House was cut into pieces and relocated. It gives no details about its new site. Historians of New Zealand architecture believed the house to have been lost. Recently, however, it was found in Waiatarua, on the western outskirts of Greater Auckland. This article explores the history and significance of the house, and the impact of relocation on it, both physically and culturally. It shows that it was the outcome of a carefully considered design practice. With relocation, the context changed from urban to semi-rural, but in both locations the house has been enjoyed as a family home and as a haunt for members of Auckland’s architecture and design communities. The article concludes that the relocation of the Middleton House was the best outcome for it, introducing a new layer of life, significance and value.
Peter Middleton在奥克兰郊区格拉夫顿(Grafton)为自己和家人设计的房子(1960-61)因其重新引入传统主义和民粹主义的参考而在出版记录中占有一席之地，其中最著名的是一个山墙末端的顶部。1968年，格拉夫顿路遗址被清理，用于城市高速公路的扩建。一份时期出版物记载，米德尔顿之家被切成碎片并重新安置。它没有透露新网站的细节。新西兰建筑历史学家认为这座房子已经丢失了。然而，最近，它在大奥克兰西郊的怀阿塔鲁瓦被发现。本文探讨了这座房子的历史和意义，以及搬迁对它的物理和文化影响。这表明这是经过仔细考虑的设计实践的结果。随着搬迁，环境从城市变成了半农村，但在这两个地方，房子都是家庭住宅，也是奥克兰建筑和设计社区成员常去的地方。文章的结论是，米德尔顿之家的搬迁是最好的结果，引入了一个新的生活层，意义和价值。
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Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2021.2006431
Sven Sterken, L. Daunt
ABSTRACT The Austrian émigré architect Karl Langer (1903–1969) was a major figure in the Queensland architecture scene after WWII. Among his work were two churches and one chapel for the Lutheran Church – St John’s in Bundaberg (1960), St John’s in Ipswich (1961) and St Peter’s College Chapel in Indooroopilly (1968). This paper sketches how a particular transfer of ideas and forms, across time and continents, informed these designs. Throughout his career, Langer endeavoured to combine the classicist principles he inherited from working with Peter Behrens, with his lifelong fascination for the civic culture of the ancient Greeks and contemporary international modernism. The harsh climate, poor economic situation and construction industry constraints in post-war Australia necessarily tempered Langer’s formal or intellectual intentions, though. This forced him to balance his personal ambitions and the agency of the Lutheran Church – seeking to foster its self-image as a progressive, outward-looking faith – against the scarcity of means and materials. Yet, as his church designs show, Langer managed to overcome these constraints thanks to a particular sensitivity to the spirit of place. This capacity gave his ecclesiastic designs a conceptual richness which made them stand out against the straightforwardness of most church architecture in post-war Queensland.
{"title":"Tempered Modernism: Karl Langer’s Architecture for the Lutheran Church in Queensland","authors":"Sven Sterken, L. Daunt","doi":"10.1080/10331867.2021.2006431","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2021.2006431","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Austrian émigré architect Karl Langer (1903–1969) was a major figure in the Queensland architecture scene after WWII. Among his work were two churches and one chapel for the Lutheran Church – St John’s in Bundaberg (1960), St John’s in Ipswich (1961) and St Peter’s College Chapel in Indooroopilly (1968). This paper sketches how a particular transfer of ideas and forms, across time and continents, informed these designs. Throughout his career, Langer endeavoured to combine the classicist principles he inherited from working with Peter Behrens, with his lifelong fascination for the civic culture of the ancient Greeks and contemporary international modernism. The harsh climate, poor economic situation and construction industry constraints in post-war Australia necessarily tempered Langer’s formal or intellectual intentions, though. This forced him to balance his personal ambitions and the agency of the Lutheran Church – seeking to foster its self-image as a progressive, outward-looking faith – against the scarcity of means and materials. Yet, as his church designs show, Langer managed to overcome these constraints thanks to a particular sensitivity to the spirit of place. This capacity gave his ecclesiastic designs a conceptual richness which made them stand out against the straightforwardness of most church architecture in post-war Queensland.","PeriodicalId":42105,"journal":{"name":"Fabrications-The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand","volume":"31 1","pages":"398 - 426"},"PeriodicalIF":0.4,"publicationDate":"2021-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46417493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2021-09-02DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2021.2019484
C. Logan, Mirjana Lozanovska
For many of us 2020 and 2021 involved a lot of time focusing on what was close at hand, especially the domestic and our local environments. While few would have chosen the constraints that led to this situation, the lockdowns, border closures and travel restrictions did remind us that it is easy to ignore the ground under our own feet and the building just around the corner. For settler colonial societies in the Antipodes this tendency to not look at, or to misrecognise, the local has been a deep cultural norm. There has instead been a tendency to focus on what Conrad Hamann recently described in the pages of this journal as the “misty metropolis” – the imagined centres of (architectural) culture, somewhere in the misty distance. The misty metropolis has typically been evoked to highlight the presumed immaturity or some other inadequacy of the local architectural scene. While we may no longer give credence to an absolute distinction between the local and the global, or the metropolitan and the provincial, the necessity of attending to what is nearby, has in many ways been salutary. Lockdown restrictions no doubt provided a moment for many to dream of distant destinations, but lots of us also welcomed the chance to walk nearby paths and more carefully tend our own gardens on balconies and in backyards. In one way or another, the peer reviewed papers included in this issue of Fabrications all attend to local buildings, places and architectural cultures in Australia and New Zealand. The work that went into these papers was in many cases well underway before anyone had even heard of Covid 19. In that sense, the papers are not a direct outcome of lockdowns. But their attentiveness to places, people and events that are local to the authors, many of the journal’s regular readers and contributors, means that they will resonate with this recent experience of localness. Davis, Gatley and Hochstein recount the fascinating story of the Middleton House (1960–61). Best known for its demonstrative use of traditional domestic details, especially its famous finial, the paper here tells a richer story of the building and its inhabitants. In particular, the authors explore the question how the relocation of the house affected its architectural and cultural value. Originally designed for an inner Auckland site, it was moved in 1968 to make way for a new expressway, and taken to Waiatarua at the city’s western suburban edge. But the authors do not FABRICATIONS 2021, VOL. 31, NO. 3, 303–305 https://doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2021.2019484
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