An Antipodean Attica

Jane Franklin’s Greek temple in Van Diemen’s Land, the role of the architect James Blackburn, and the reaction of Hardy Wilson Read more

Asbestos Cement in Australia

The controversial history of the importation, the local manufacture, and use of asbestos cement, up to the time when its tragic effects became evident. Read more

Building in the Docklands

This deals with the site of John Batman’s house and Batman’s Hill more generally, the Yarra wharves, the West Melbourne Swamp, the early railway buildings and the Queen’s Warehouse. Read more

Composite Vernacular Constructions

Vernacular building is the building for ordinary people, constrained by the practicalities of environmental conditions and physical materials, and influenced by traditional culture, but not mediated by professional architects and engineers. Read more

Secret History of Victorian Modernism

These twenty-three letters and fragments are a sort of cross-section of the architectural world of Melbourne in 1952, but not so much a clinical microscope slide as a sort of cheerful, scurrilous laceration. Read more

The Barwon Park Aesthetic

Barwon Park is a gaunt and graceless hulk of a building, quite divorced from the mainstream of Victorian villas and mansions, and this is in fact its great point of interest. Read more

Brunswick Street Lost and Found

Studies of settlement and life in the heart of Melbourne’s first suburb. Read more

The Settler’s Cottage

The house at 1070 Mount Alexander Road was possibly built in about 1860, of recycled materials, including panels which may be part of a prefabricated structure. Read more

Wright, Griffin and Natco

This paper clarifies the origins of Walter Burley Griffin's 'Knitlock' construction and its putative relationship to Wright's "Textile Block". Read more

The Postwar Housing Solution

The housing crisis in Australia after World War II gave rise to local prefabrication and to the importation of buildings on a massive scale. The local industry drew partly upon experience gained during the war. The importation was from Britain and a number of European countries, but not at all from Asia or America. Read more

Lehmwickel

Lehmwickel, or earth wrapping, is a traditional German and northern French building technique of medieval or earlier origins, which was taken by German settlers to Latvia, Hungary, Rumania, the United States, Brazil and Australia. Read more