33:1 Editorial

An Open Issue of Fabrications is an opportunity to witness the breadth of scholarship in architectural history in our region, and this issue is no exception. We have a great variety of papers from across the spectrum of topics and approaches, with authors also ranging from some of our most experienced, to some of our most freshly minted scholars, an exciting dynamic which unfolds through this issue.

The cover image for this issue comes from the first paper by Catherine Townsend, Philip Goad, and Paul Walker, “Magnifying the terrace: David Saunders and the cross street co-operative housing development” which examines the contribution of the Society of Architectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand Founder, David Saunders, to student housing in Melbourne in the 1970s. It is a timely reminder of the repeating challenges facing cities to provide affordable, well-located housing for communities beyond the elite—in this case students—and the lessons architectural history can provide in illuminating such challenges. The paper also reminds us of the impressive activism and practice of Saunders and others in this era, enacted while he was on staff at University of Melbourne, and their lasting legacy. While the paper is a close examination of this particular case, there are salient links to housing movements from this era globally and lessons that resonate today.

Seth Dias, with his paper “Urban counter-place within the 1988 Sydney invasion day convergence” examines the ways in which protest during the official Australian Bicentennial events were conducted by First Nations people seeking to voice their various agendas during this celebration of the foundations of colonisation. Dias closely maps the planning, pre-protest organisation at La Perouse, and the protest route itself, giving an important counter-reading of the Sydney CBD during these events. This paper is the latest in an increasing set within recent issues of Fabrications that investigates the mechanisms of colonisation, its contemporaneous and ongoing effects in Australia and across the region. This is an important area of scholarship that we are pleased to see developing evermore depth within the journal.

Tim Reeves takes us back to much earlier events, embedded within this early colonial period, examining “Australia’s first architectural competitions, 1826-27”. Reeves explains in meticulous detail how the competition for the building of some of the colony’s first Anglican Churches, and Sydney’s Government House, were conducted, and the problematic conflicts of interest and insider knowledge that circulated around these competitions. Reeve’s close examination of the characters involved in the Government House competition—for example Governor Darling, his wife Eliza, and her brothers Henry and William Dumaresq—brings to life the human ambitions and flaws in these competitions, and sheds light on why these building projects were so delayed and failed to commission the professional architects of the era in Sydney.

Remaining in the colonial era, this time in Tasmania, Miles Lewis’ “An antipodean Attica” is a careful study of the motivation for, design of, and afterlife of Lady Franklin’s Museum at Ancathe near Hobart. Lewis uses the case study to examine the reception of classicism in the colonial era, and some of the key actors promoting these ideas. The building lay in disrepair as a fodder and then apple store, in the early twentieth century and Lewis goes on to discuss its rediscovery, repair, and re-inclusion into architectural history.

In Lisa Daunt and Janina Gosseye’s, “From hilltop landmarks to suburban place Makers: Brisbane’s post-war religious territories and communities” there is a continuation of Daunt’s ongoing consideration of Queensland’s twentieth-century church architecture. In this paper, Daunt and Gosseye examine the role church architecture played in developing communities within suburban settings that lacked other civic facilities and the designs that responded to this challenge.

Keeping within the twentieth-century, Sanja Rodeš and Mirjana Lozanovska in their paper “The politics of the visual: Immigrant architecture in Melbourne’s tourist brochures”, and Philip Nobis, Ursa Komac, and Kerry London, with their paper “Form, function and monumentality: A critical analysis of Jørn Utzon’s late work on the Sydney Opera House” both set about examining the reception and ongoing life of place-identifying architecture in Melbourne and Sydney. Nobis, Komac, and London examine Utzon’s work on the Sydney Opera House in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, which they argue exemplify an expansion of his original vision, and a willingness to accept that the building had become a joint work with Hall, Todd, Littlemore, and Ove Arup. In particular, they use the Recital Room (Utzon Room), the Western Foyers and Colonnade, and the as-yet unbuilt New Opera Theatre proposal, to bring a fresh perspective on this much-studied building.

In contrast, Rodeš and Lozanovska examine individually anonymous but collectively significant immigrant architecture in Melbourne, and how these buildings—often cafes and restaurants, and their ethnic developers and proprietors—are incorporated, or not, into the image Melbourne projects of itself as a multicultural tourist city. Using brochures aimed a variety of audiences, from domestic tourists to international students, they argue that biases towards whiteness and colonial narratives still imbue the presentation and reading of the architectural image of the city.

Andrew Murray’s paper expands the breadth of topics within this issue, examining student architectural publications in Western Australia in the mid-twentieth century. His paper “Tee Square Journal, Phi, Aspect, and Aedicule: The publications of the Architectural Students Association of Western Australia” paints a picture of the educational and social context of these publications. Its choice of era coincides with change from informal to institutional architectural education within Western Australia, reflected in lobbying and satirical takes within the publications. The publications also reflect the student architectural organisations of the time and their waxing and waning successes.

Within this issue, we have a rich selection of books reviewed: Values in Cities: Urban Heritage in Twentieth-Century Australia, by James Lesh, review by Fiona Gardiner; Karl Langer: Modern Architect and Migrant in the Australian Tropics, edited by Deborah van der Plaat and John Macarthur, review by Tanja Poppelreuter; After the Australian Ugliness, edited by Naomi Stead, Tom Lee, Ewan McEoin, and Megan Patty, review by Wouter Van Acker; The Architecture of Confinement: Incarceration Camps of the Pacific War, by Anoma Pieris and Lynne Horiuchi, review by Cathi Ho Schar; and Architectural Drawings: Collecting in Australia, by Miles Lewis, review by Luke Tipene. The final contribution to this issue, is a report by David Nichols on Ngā Pūtahitanga/Crossings: The 39th Annual Conference of SAHANZ and 16th Conference of Australasian Urban History/Planning History. We thank Review and Reports editor Isabel Rousset for this fulsome collection.

Keen-eyed readers of Fabrications online will have noticed that, as per our new “online first” approach to papers, some of the papers in this issue have been available for online some weeks and months, along with the book reviews and reports which are faster to reach publication than our peer-reviewed papers. This practice enables a more steady stream of papers available as soon as they are ready; such papers are available through the “latest articles” section of the Fabrications website through our publishers Taylor & Francis. As ever, we appreciate the contribution of reviewers to Fabrications, and thank them for their selfless work in reviewing papers.