ABSTRACT
To date, histories of Australian architecture have avoided clear definition of what has come to be termed Brutalism and the complex, diffuse nature of its supposed appearance in Australia from the late 1950s until the late 1970s. In 1968, J. M. Freeland’s Architecture in Australia: A History was relatively silent on the matter, apart from the inclusion of a series of buildings within a mini-photo essay of contemporary Australian buildings inserted to accompany the text in the last chapter of his chronologically ordered account1 (Figs 1 and 2). The first of these buildings, the off-form concrete Hale School Memorial Hall at Wembley Downs, Western Australia (1961), later celebrated as one of Australia’s early Brutalist buildings,2 was included as one of a set, all marking a stylistic shift from the 1950s Fabrications, 2015 Vol. 25, No. 2, 176-213, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10331867.2015.1046412 2015 The Journal of the Society of Architectural Australia and New Zealand
into the 1960s, and to be read in parallel with Freeland’s text, which spoke of the development of an Australian architecture that “might at last be going Australian”:3
Freeland’s story of Australian architecture appeared to fold into so-called Brutalism, but without ever naming it as such and without asking why. For Freeland, despite the “often rough, brutal quality the style was, in its roots, a slightly romantic reaction in the best manner of William Morris to the anaemic, spiritless sophistication and the smooth transparent emptiness of the work of the preceding decade”.5 It was as simple as that. Photographer Harry Sowden’s Towards an Australian Architecture (1968), albeit not an architectural history, followed the same route. Its cross section of contemporary Australian architecture was a compelling, un-posed, everyday visual expose´ of buildings, almost all of which would later be described as Brutalist. But in 1968, there was no mention of the term. Its message was, like Freeland’s, that here was a collection of contemporary buildings from the hands of:
In 1972, Jennifer Taylor was bolder, prepared to delve deeper and look for sources. She headed a section entitled “Neo-Brutalism” in An Australian Identity: Houses for Sydney 1953-1963, citing the “brut” aspect of Le Corbusier’s Jaoul Houses outside Paris (1952-53) as being influential, as well as “indirectly through the ‘Neo Brutalism’ of the Smithsons and their followers in England”.7 Taylor’s subsequent description of a series of Sydney houses, their architects and design sources was comprehensive, and while detailing diverse influences upon each (Neo-Brutalism, for example, is listed as just one amongst many), she did not elaborate upon the term Neo-Brutalism nor dissect its terminology.8 Her aim instead was to codify what had already become known as “The Sydney School” – a convenient label (used by Milo Dunphy in 19629 and Robin Boyd in 196710) to summarise the appearance of a group of important houses in Sydney that arose from a complex set of sources, but which visually could be categorised as possessing a family likeness.11 In 1986, in Australian Architecture since 1960, Taylor was more expansive. Using British architectural historian Reyner Banham’s 1955 three-part definition of New Brutalism, she highlighted the importance of Banham’s concept of the “memorable image” for a number of young Sydney architects, especially those like Peter Johnson, who were part of The Architectural Society, which had formed in 1961,12 and whose own house at Chatswood (1963) epitomised the Sydney School’s defining features13 (Fig 3). In a chapter entitled “The Rational and the Robust”, Taylor gave the most comprehensive account to date of Brutalist architecture in Australia. Importantly, she acknowledged: “These buildings had in common the display of structural
materials and a certain heroic presence but their broader, ideological bases were often diverse.”14
