ABSTRACT
As well as his 1930s to 1950s achievements in commercial art, furniture and interior design and communications, Douglas Snelling produced one of Sydney’s most significant post-World War II oeuvres of residential and commercial architecture. For his 1950s and 1960s buildings and environmental designs, detailed later in this chapter, he interpreted American (Wrightian) and Scandinavian (Aalto-influenced) organic modern themes and precedents, often including motifs inspired by traditional structures in the western Asia-Pacific longitudes (see Figures 5.8. 5.9, 5.14, 5.15, 5.18, 5.20 and 8.1).1 Although he was not an international architectural genius of the calibre of Jørn Utzon, and was eclipsed in the late 1950s by younger modernists in Sydney, notably Harry Seidler and Peter Muller, Snelling later was praised for achieving ‘some moments of near genius’2 and (more patronizingly) for being ‘the last of the gifted amateurs’.3 Two of his early house concepts were published in the influential California journal Arts and Architecture (see Figure 3.16);4 his largest residence of the 1950s won a national award;5 and he built two of Sydney’s finest office buildings of the mid-1950s,6 two of Sydney’s innovative apartment buildings in the early 1960s,7 two of Sydney’s exceptional mid-1960s ‘Tiki-style’8 or ‘indigenous modern’ residences,9 and Australasia’s first ‘infinity’ (spill-edge) swimming pool (see Figures 5.7 and 8.2).10 All of his known architectural projects are explained later in this chapter and most primary research documents are archived in Sydney, with the State Library of New South Wales or the Snelling Estate.11 Although his architectural achievements were overlooked by many notable antipodean historians after his practice closed in the early 1970s,12 he was one of Australasia’s most prescient and talented midtwentieth century interpreters of California modern architecture.13
