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Glenn Murcutt, Marika-Alderton house, Yirrkala Community, 1991-94. Photograph by Glenn Murcutt. Courtesy of the Pritzker Prize Jury Media Office 2002.
Architects in Australia have created some of the most unusual and outstanding buildings in the world. Internationally recognised Australian icons include buildings like the Sydney Opera House (architect Jørn Utzon) and the new Parliament House in Canberra (architect Romaldo Giurgola).
Distinctive Australian architecture is also recognisable in the rural icons of 'the Queenslander', the 'wool shed' and the 'beach house' which have developed in response to climate, history, place and identity. Characteristically, these designs used local materials as well as corrugated iron and emphasised space and light as well as a connection to the landscape.
These classic qualities were often sacrificed in the development of the Australian suburbs where 85 per cent of Australians have lived since 1900. Australian architect and critic Robin Boyd once described the Australian suburbs as Australia's worst failing. Australian architects like Boyd and Roy Grounds have argued for the importance of modern Australian architecture as an expression of a local identity which balanced the ideals of art and architecture against local climate and social realities.
Architecture ... one word ... countless possibilities. It can delight or disturb, change our lives, and finally outlive us .. So with a leap of faith, we put our trust in the mind of the architect.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Program Transcript of episode 1 of Keeping the Faith
Early public buildings
Under the dome in the Great Hall, Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne. Photograph by James Lauritz. Courtesy of Museum Victoria.
Many of the first buildings in Australia were constructions associated with the immediate needs of the colonies. Port Arthur settlement and Point Puer (juvenile prison) were designed by the convict architect Henry Laing. The Round House in Fremantle, built in 1831 as a gaol, was the first permanent building in the colony of Western Australia.
In Sydney, one of the first permanent buildings was Fort Phillip, built by Governor Phillip in 1804. Both a military hospital (1815) [later Fort Street School (1850 - 1974)] and also the Sydney Observatory (1858) were later built on this site.
Early public buildings were constructed around the importance of influencing community and civic identity. There was a sentimental attachment to the idea of public space with a city square ringed by great civic buildings 'to the glory of god and humanity'.
In the founding of the first buildings in Australia, a duality of approaches existed: those which dominated the landscape and those designed to blend in. In 1789 Governor Arthur Phillip placed himself firmly in the first group when he wrote:
... there can be few things more pleasing than the contemplation of order and useful management arising gradually out of tumult and confusion ... by degrees, large spaces are opened, lands formed, lines marked, and a prospect at least of future regularity is clearly discerned.
Convict architect Francis Greenway, from the second group, was responsible for the Macquarie Lighthouse on South Head, the forts at Dawes Point (blended into the folds of the landscape) and Bennelong Point (raised on platforms of local sandstone) as well as the large female factory at Parramatta, Hyde Park barracks, the District Courts and St Matthew's church, Windsor.
The Royal Exhibition Building was constructed in 1880 to house Australia's first international exhibition of cultural, technological, and industrial achievements. The design reflected Melbourne's position as a prosperous city basking in the wealth from the richest gold rush in the world. On 1 July 2004 it became the first building in Australia to achieve World Heritage listing.
Residential architecture and discrete climates
Sam Hood (1872-1953), Family with car & Queenslander house, 1920's. Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales. PICMAN PXE 789 (v.10).
Early Australian residential architecture was a response to the Australian landscape and the climate with its unique flora and fauna, intense sunlight and dappled shadows. Early buildings needed to respond to these discrete climatic elements.
Queenslanders, beach houses and wool sheds
The early houses of Queensland were characterised by broad verandas shaded by gracefully curved expanses of corrugated roofing iron, tall stumps, lattice, and roof ventilators. These qualities had the effect of cooling the house, allowing for breezeways, and allowed for the run off of tropical down pours. Shutters were also effective against the rages of cyclones.
Constructions which had fully opening walls were often essential for cooling down the buildings. This was developed in early beach houses. Similarly the pitch of a roof varies according to the latitude and climate of the region. Overlapping layers of roofs are used so that air can move between the layers.
Like lattice-work verandahs on' the Queenslanders', slats can be found in many 'wool sheds' or 'shearing sheds' to prevent the sun heating up the building. In modern day constructions, slats are set at particular angles as screens for sun control allowing for entry of light in winter or cool seasons and excluding it in the heat of summer. Slatted floors used in wool sheds were also used as verandahs in tropical areas to encourage air flow.
Modernist Australian architecture has also used these innovations for their design and practical appeal. They can be seen in sub-tropical and tropical Australia in northern New South Wales and throughout Queensland, the Northern Territory and the Kimberley. The Australian architect, Glenn Murcutt has adopted all these practices 'in building houses that float above the land' - buildings which 'touch the earth lightly'. This phrase, an Aboriginal saying from Western Australia, is used by Glenn Murcutt to convey the idea that buildings should not disturb nature more than necessary. Murcutt was named the Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate 2002, the only Australian to be so recognised.
Federation houses, bungalows and post-war housing development
The ornate Federation house, built mainly between 1900 and 1914, was a sign of prosperity - an Australian version of the English Edwardian house but, detached with gardens, and with Australian motifs and a roof of terracotta tiles with detailed fretwork in the roof gables and windows. Many houses had a sunrise motif in the front gable as a sign of the dawning of a new century. Add-ons and renovations with heritage restraints were a constant experience of living in a federation house.
By World War I (1914-1918), there was a shortage of tradesmen and materials. The cost of houses had to be reduced, so the ceilings were lowered to create 'bungalows', houses which were built between 1915 and 1940. Gone was most of the detail, and a plainer style lead lighting was put into the front windows.
Post-war housing (1950s and 1960s) could be made from anything, varying from either weatherboard, asbestos cement or brick veneer. Redevelopments were anything from three storey, walk-up flats to town houses, villas and dual occupancies. It was this development which the Australian architect and critic, Robin Boyd referred when he described the Australian suburbs as 'the ugliness of bad conscious design'.
Structuring an Australian architecture?
The desire for people to express their identity through a building is very powerful but understanding and describing who we are is never easy.
Mainstream Australia has this problem of its own identity ... what, who are we? They desperately hold on to the English model of housing for example, and this fascination that they have, or obsession with this Federation. (Dillon Kombumerri, architect)
Uluru - Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre. Courtesy of the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Gregory Burgess, architect for the Kata Tjuta cultural centre at Uluru, described his design process as both listening and collecting stories from different Anangu people who each carried a different fragment of the same story and also 'listening to the wind in the casuarinas and ... the desert oaks'. This process continued until one of the elder men said, 'you've got all our stories now, we've rounded them up, got them in the yard for you, you're inside, now do it, draw it.'
Burgess responded by building massive walls that linked the project parts and making all the walls from the sand at the site. ' The columns are small ephemeral shade structures, often made with an upturned desert oak trunk with the roots above.'
You know, if we set out to design an architecture that's Australian we're in trouble ... The important thing is that we address the issues, we address the landscape, we address the brief, we address the place. If we address those things and do them rationally and poetically at the same time, we must be getting somewhere. (Murcutt)
The history and scope of Australian identity can be seen in the range of its buildings - from both the austere and also grand regent style colonial architecture through the practical minimalism of Australian modernism to a post-colonial world which incorporates the Indigenous experience of country.
This is reflected in the 2006 submissions from Australia to the Venice Biennale. These buildings range from 'industrial woolsheds to shipwreck lookouts, from riverside apartments to rural art spaces' - of different scales, types and uses. 'The projects were selected to highlight eight different aspects of our contemporary urban landscape and demonstrate creative architectural responses to Australian conditions.'
Related Culture and Recreation Portal Stories
- Australian Indigenous architecture
- Modern Australian architecture
- Modern residential Australian architecture
- Australian Opera house
- European discovery and the colonisation of Australia
- Convicts and the British colonies in Australia
- Lighthouses - design, construction, preservation and restoration
Colonial architecture
- Henry Laing - convict architect
- Round House
- Francis Greenway
- Sydney Observatory
- Macquarie Lighthouse
- Hyde Park barracks
- Royal Exhibition Building
Colonial architectural history
- NSW Government Architects Office - Government architects since 1816
- Australian Heritage Commission
- Nineteenth century architecture Melbourne
- Historic Houses Trust
Twentieth century architectural history
- The Twentieth Century Heritage Society of NSW
- Twentieth century architecture Melbourne
- Art Deco Buildings of Sydney
- Federation houses
- Living in a federation house
Contemporary Australian architecture references
- Architecture Media: incorporating Architecture Australia, Artichoke and Landscape Architecture
- Indesign
- Monument
- In the mind of an architect - transcripts from the ABC television series
- Headspace - ABC's online monthly arts and culture magazine
- Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate 2002 - Glenn Murcott
- Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA)
- Built Environment Curriculum Context - Year of the Built Environment 2004
- Submissions from Australia to the Venice Biennale
- Our House - Histories of Australian Homes
Architecture departments
- University of Sydney
- University of Melbourne
- RMIT University
- University of Technology, Sydney
- University of NSW
- University of South Australia
- Newcastle University
- Adelaide University
- University of Queensland
- Curtin University
- University of Tasmania
Search over 3,500 Australian websites for information about:
Last updated: 30th April 2008
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