ABSTRACT In January 1940, the British writer John Langdon-Davies travelled to Finland to report on the Winter War with the Soviet Union (November 1939–March 1940). On his return he wrote a book entitled Finland: the First Total War in which he proposed that it was the ability of the Finnish people to adapt to their environment that enabled the determined defence of their country from forces far greater

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

ABSTRACT Among the handful of architectural histories charting the architectural development of the Indian Subcontinent after the decisive rupture of the 1950s, few have explored the modernist Indian interior. This paper examines the self-conscious curation of the modern domestic interior within the repertoire of four prolific and cross-culturally positioned Indian architects — Aditya Prakash (1924–2008)

ABSTRACT In 2020, Mexican architect Frida Escobedo (1979–) designed the exhibition “Lina Bo Bardi: Habitat” at Museo Jumex in Mexico City. Lina Bo Bardi (1914–92) was an Italian émigré who became one of Brazil’s most important — and few female — modernist architects. Escobedo, too, is one of few Latin American women architects whose work is recognised internationally. Using the exhibition as touchpoint

ABSTRACT This essay presents a series of discursive and performative events extending from 1988 to 2016, where the contributions of feminist theories and practices in the architectural humanities are celebrated. An editorial written for the Melbourne-based Transition journal in 1988 by Harriet Edquist and Karen Burns offers a point of departure by directly placing two terms into critical negotiation:

Published in Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (Ahead of Print, 2022)

Published in Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (Ahead of Print, 2022)

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

Published in Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (Ahead of Print, 2022)

Published in Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (Ahead of Print, 2022)

(2021). Editorial. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 303-305.

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

ABSTRACT A meeting of architects in Melbourne at a popular comedy venue in 1978, ended in disarray. It should be no surprise, after all John Pinder’s Collingwood venue, which opened in 1976, was called, “The Last Laugh Theatre Restaurant and Zoo.” There were fisticuffs, yelling, hoodlum activity, violence, and a huge amount of drunkenness. The meeting was to establish an alternative to the conservative

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

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

ABSTRACT This article examines how complex food production systems developed by Kulin Nation people over centuries in the physical landscape around Emerald, in the Dandenong /Koran Warrabin Range/s east of Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) were transformed in the late nineteenth century, through colonisation and, especially, the operations of C. A. Nobelius’ Gembrook Nurseries, into the largest commercial

(2021). Le Corbusier in the Antipodes: Art, Architecture and Urbanism. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 455-457.

(2021). Balkanization and Global Politics: Remaking Cities and Architecture. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 457-459.

(2021). Review of: Valuing Architecture: Heritage and the Economics of Culture. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 459-461.

(2021). One Continuous Line: Art, Architecture and Urbanism of Aditya Prakash. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 462-463.

(2021). Capturing a Cabinet of Curiosities: 3D Scanning a Building Heritage Collection. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 464-471.

(2021). Post-war/Cold-War in the Region. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 147-152.

ABSTRACT Radomes, the iconic structures protecting sensitive radar antennas from wind, weather, and the prying eyes of adversaries, marked and maintained the geographic boundaries of America’s Cold War. The radome’s unique architecture, most commonly a rigid geodesic dome, captured the essential tensions of the Cold War, instantly recognisable but inaccessible; transparent (to radio waves) but opaque

ABSTRACT This article examines patterns of human habitation in the South Korean border following the Korean War. Focussing in Daema-ri frontier village in Cheorwon abutting the Demilitarised Zone, I analyse how architecture was used by the state as a versatile territorial mechanism for spreading and concentrating populations; its efficiency as a spatio-political device governing selected populations

ABSTRACT Through his work for the first Labour Government in Wellington, Austrian-born émigré architect Ernst Plischke (1903–92) was directly involved with New Zealand politics in the 1940s. While he has appeared to others as a not outwardly political person, his professional life in New Zealand was directly tied to governmental decisions of the time. Particularly his duties in the town planning division

ABSTRACT To date, Australia’s architectural histories have been silent on the Cold War politics of post-war modernism. For the most part, historians have documented production without considering the broader geo-political moment in which the nation found itself after World War II. Recent transnational architectural histories focus on relationships that the United States and the former USSR forged between

(2021). Forum: Cold War Architecture Historiography. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 279-294.

(2021). Cold War and Architecture: The Competing Forces that Reshaped Austria after 1945. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 296-299.

(2021). Contested Space Revisited: George Town, Penang Before and After UNESCO World Heritage Listing. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 2, pp. 299-302.

(2021). Opposite/Apposite: Exchanges between Australasia and Iberoamerica. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 1-3.

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the impact on Glenn Murcutt’s architecture of his 1973 meeting in Barcelona with José Antonio Coderch (1913–1984), one of the most internationally celebrated Spanish architects of the twentieth century. It uncovers details about their initial meeting and explores buildings designed by Coderch that Murcutt visited in person. The paper then analyses the impact of this meeting

ABSTRACT In 1933, Antonio Salazar established the so-called Estado Novo in Portugal. Six years later, Francisco Franco set up a right-wing totalitarian regime in Spain. The heavy traditionalism of both regimes and their rejection by western democracies after the Second World War kept them not only politically isolated, but also intensely invested in the revival of past national symbols. In architecture

ABSTRACT In 1948, en-route to Australia from the United States, young Viennese-born architect Harry Seidler spent just over six weeks in Brazil. There, he worked briefly for Oscar Niemeyer and visited numerous examples of Brazilian modernism. Settling in Sydney, Seidler became one of Australia’s foremost modernist architects. His output quickly shifted from deference to the work of his mentors Walter

(2021). Ugliness and Judgement: On Architecture in the Public Eye. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 139-142.

(2021). Sovereignty, Space and Civil War in Sri Lanka: Porous Nation. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 144-146.

(2021). American Autopia: An Intellectual History of the American Roadside at Midcentury. Fabrications: Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 142-144.

(2020). Editorial. Fabrications: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 295-297.

(2020). Other Spaces of Quarantine. Fabrications: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 416-429.

(2020). Southeast Asia’s Modern Architecture: Questions of Translation, Epistemology and Power. Fabrications: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 430-432.

(2020). Report: “Distance Looks Back”: 36th Annual Conference of SAHANZ. Fabrications: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 433-435.

(2020). Report: 2020 SAHANZ PhD Colloquium. Fabrications: Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 436-437.

ABSTRACT From its 1994 conception to its 2002 realisation, Federation Square generated an intense public dispute between groups associated with architecture and conservation. Created by London-based LAB Architecture Studio following a design competition and located at the southern gateway to central Melbourne, Federation Square was a notable example of late-twentieth-century public architecture. It

ABSTRACT In 1899 the American journalist Henry Demarest Lloyd was one of many social reformers who travelled to New Zealand to witness the social programmes instituted by the Liberal government. For Lloyd and other Progressives, New Zealand represented a model industrial democracy. His book Newest England (1900) describes Public Works Department projects built under the direction of the Department’s

ABSTRACT Partially hidden by bushland in the Sydney suburb of Georges Heights sit five unassuming, prefabricated timber houses. Saved from demolition in 2003 and now restored, these houses were manufactured in the early 1950s in Sweden by Åmåls Sågverks Aktiebolag (ASA). They were erected in 1951 for the Australian Navy and are some of the last remnants of thousands of prefabricated houses imported

ABSTRACT When Italian architect Enrico Taglietti landed in Sydney for the first time in 1955, he had no idea he would become one of the most acclaimed architects of Australia. The reason for his first trip to Sydney was the invitation to curate a commercial display of Italian design to be held at the country’s most famous department store, David Jones. Taglietti decided to set up his career in Australia

ABSTRACT Group Architects are New Zealand’s best-known practitioners of regional modernism. They are associated with the search for New Zealandness in architecture, even as international interests are acknowledged. In 2003, Group member Bruce Rotherham (1926–2004) distanced himself from much of this commentary, emphasising his own early focus on “space formed by building”, not New Zealandness. Of interest

ABSTRACT Fragility allows a deep development and understanding of the tie between the self and the outer surrounding. It softens the friction on the threshold between the known and the unknown. The paper elaborates three manifestations of fragility: Tarkovsky’s weak man [sic] presents meekness as a silent receptivity of the world; Vattimo’s weak thought demands a desire to search for the farthest Other

This editors’ issue of Fabrications is primarily concerned with the anxieties aroused by migration. Aesthetic Anxiety, as described and dissected in this issue, refers to both the prevalent anxieties connected with migrant experiences of inhabitation, as well the anxieties of state protection. The theme may at first invoke aesthetic theory or critical theories related to the rise of postmodern anti-aesthetics

ABSTRACT A permit for a Buddhist place of worship in suburban Melbourne was rejected by the local Planning Committee. The application by the Mirror of the Dhamma Society to hold small religious gatherings in a semi-detached single storey house in an area zoned General Residential was deemed inappropriate. The paper focuses on this event that circulated contagious global white affects of anxiety and

ABSTRACT Migrants’ houses not only offer shelter and a setting for everyday life, but a platform from which to maintain a migrant identity. Migrants’ efforts to express their culture can be reflected in the appearance of their houses, where aesthetic differences spark “aesthetic anxieties” towards an ethnic-looking artefact from non-migrant neighbours. In this paper, we extend the category of “aesthetic

How can aesthetics be understood from the perspective of the ethnicminority migrant subject or the ethnic-minority migrant community? The mainstream paradigm of migrant settlement is one of deprivation, conditioned by hardships, financial struggles, and bare functionality. But migrant aesthetic production transcends this narrative of thrift and survival. It is underscored by desire and agency, beauty

ABSTRACT Since the nineteenth century a physically distant Metropolis has been invoked to determine the validity of Australian architectural projects and their ideas, and the assumption is this Metropolis sends out resolved principles to a provincial culture. This view assumes that actual immigration to Australia equals cultural erasure. It assumes Australia’s architectural culture is infantile or

ABSTRACT Although Muslim migration to Australia’s new world settler society has a long pedigree, their population and civic presence have grown in recent decades. New generations of Muslim migrants require the nation to engage with their histories and post-secular religious pluralism. Part of their history can be traced through their places of worship. This includes temporary structures along the inland

Paul Oliver’s 1997 “Encyclopaedia of Vernacular Architecture of theWorld” (EVAW) was the first comprehensive compilation of Southeast Asia’s and Oceania’s vernacular houses, and work on the second edition (EVAW 2) has been under way since 2015 under the editorship of Marcel Vellinga at Oxford Brookes University. EVAW 2 will continue the outstanding scholarship on the region’s rich and diverse vernacular