The Australian Ugliness

The Australian Ugliness PDF Author: Robin Boyd
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921656220
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Fifty years after its first publication, Robin Boyd's bestselling The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd rallied against Australia's promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American. 'The basis of the Australian ugliness,' he wrote, 'is an unwillingness to be committed on the level of ideas. In all the arts of living, in the shaping of all her artefacts, as in politics, Australia shuffles about vigorously in the middle - as she estimates the middle - of the road, picking up disconnected ideas wherever she finds them.' Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago. Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome anniversary edition is complemented by Robin Boyd's original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.

The Australian Ugliness

The Australian Ugliness PDF Author: Robin Boyd
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921656220
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fifty years after its first publication, Robin Boyd's bestselling The Australian Ugliness remains the definitive statement on how we live and think in the environments we create for ourselves. In it Boyd rallied against Australia's promotion of ornament, decorative approach to design and slavish imitation of all things American. 'The basis of the Australian ugliness,' he wrote, 'is an unwillingness to be committed on the level of ideas. In all the arts of living, in the shaping of all her artefacts, as in politics, Australia shuffles about vigorously in the middle - as she estimates the middle - of the road, picking up disconnected ideas wherever she finds them.' Boyd was a fierce critic, and an advocate of good design. He understood the significance of the connection between people and their dwellings, and argued passionately for a national architecture forged from a genuine Australian identity. His concerns are as important now, in an era of suburban sprawl and inner-city redevelopment, as they were half a century ago. Caustic and brilliant, The Australian Ugliness is a masterpiece that enables us to see our surroundings with fresh eyes. This handsome anniversary edition is complemented by Robin Boyd's original sketches for the book and a new afterword by major contemporary architects.

Robin Boyd

Robin Boyd PDF Author: Christine Marie Phillips
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780648435594
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 108

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Book Description
Robin Boyd: Late Works unveils the urban and public architectural projects designed by Robin Boyd, one of Australia's most iconic mid-century modernists, in the final decade before his untimely death in 1971. One of the few architects in Australia's history to have become a household name, Boyd rose to prominence as a public intellectual after the release of his book The Australian Ugliness in 1960, a biting attack on what he saw as the debased quality of Australia's cities and design culture. Upon its release, the book drew both condemnation and praise in Australia's media, but in the process gave Boyd a national platform from which to campaign throughout the 1960s for the betterment of Australia's built environment. Concomitant with his public pronouncements during this time, though, Boyd was hard at work attempting to prosecute his vision of a more coherent and contemporary Australian urban environment and culture. This work took the form of building and planning designs, at sometimes vast scales, that run counter to Boyd's reputation as an architect of polite modernist private houses.Robin Boyd: Late Works considers these important but largely forgotten architectural projects alongside his exhibition work, multimedia designs and his writing. Bringing to light material buried deep in the archives of several national institutions, this book documents Boyd's ambitions and struggles to shape Australia's understanding of itself as an urban nation during this time. For Boyd, the 1960s was a turbulent decade of architectural practice that, by the time of his death, had come with thwarted ambitions and high personal cost.

Living in Australia

Living in Australia PDF Author: Robin Boyd
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780500500385
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Originally published in 1970 Living in Australia provided Boyd with an opportunity to describe his own approach to design. This new edition, co-published with the Robin Boyd Foundation, includes new colour photographs by John Gollings and essays by renowned architects Kerstin Thompson and Rachel Neeson reflecting upon the importance of Boyd's work.

Robin Boyd

Robin Boyd PDF Author: Geoffrey Serle
Publisher: Miegunyah Press
ISBN: 9780522872989
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Robin Boyd, gifted architect, writer, teacher and social commentator, was the leading Australian propagandist for the International Modern Movement in architecture. In partnership with Roy Grounds and Frederick Romberg, he was noted for his innovative domestic buildings. Indeed the suburban home was often a focus of Boyd's thinking, writing and criticism, and in Australia's Home (1952) he provided the first substantial interpretation of Australia's architectural history. But the most popular and controversial of Boyd's nine books was The Australian Ugliness (1960) in which he scourged prevailing tastes in both architecture and popular culture.The sentiments he expressed here made him one of Australia's liveliest social critics. But his criticism sprang from patriotism and ambition for his country. Boyd was a very private man who left few personal letters or records. In this highly acclaimed and beautifully-illustrated book Geoffrey Serle writes predominantly about Boyd's work and public activities, allowing key selections from Boyd's writings to reveal the inner man.

The Australian Ugliness: Text Classics

The Australian Ugliness: Text Classics PDF Author: Robin Boyd
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1921921994
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Brilliant, witty, scathing, The Australian Ugliness is the classic postwar account of Australian society, how we live in the environments we create, and the consequences of our failure to think about how we live.

That Deadman Dance

That Deadman Dance PDF Author: Kim Scott
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408829282
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Throughout Bobby Wabalanginy's young life the ships have been arriving, bringing European settlers to the south coast of Western Australia, where Bobby's people, the Noongar people, have always lived. Bobby, smart, resourceful and eager to please, has befriended the settlers, joining them as they hunt whales, till the land, and work to establish their new colony. He is welcomed into a prosperous white family and eventually finds himself falling in love with the daughter, Christine.But slowly - by design and by hazard - things begin to change. Not everyone is so pleased with the progress of the white colonists. Livestock mysteriously starts to disappear, crops are destroyed, there are 'accidents' and injuries on both sides. As the Europeans impose ever-stricter rules and regulations in order to keep the peace, Bobby's Elders decide they must respond in kind, and Bobby is forced to take sides, inexorably drawn into a series of events that will for ever change the future of his country.That Deadman Dance is haunted by tragedy, as most stories of first contact between European and native peoples are. But through Bobby's life, this novel exuberantly explores a moment in time when things might have been different, when black and white lived together in amazement rather than fear of the other, and when the world suddenly seemed twice as large and twice as promising.

First Knowledges Design

First Knowledges Design PDF Author: Alison Page
Publisher: Thames & Hudson Australia
ISBN: 1760761850
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Aboriginal design is of a distinctly cultural nature, based in the Dreaming and in ancient practices grounded in Country. It is visible in the aerodynamic boomerang, the ingenious design of fish traps and the precise layouts of community settlements that strengthen social cohesion. Alison Page and Paul Memmott show how these design principles of sophisticated function, sustainability and storytelling, refined over many millennia, are now being applied to contemporary practices. Design: Building on Country issues a challenge for a new Australian design ethos, one that truly responds to the essence of Country and its people. About the series: Each book is a collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous writers and editors; the series is edited by Margo Neale, senior Indigenous curator at the National Museum of Australia. Other titles in the series include: Songlines by Margo Neale & Lynne Kelly (2020); Country by Bill Gammage & Bruce Pascoe (2021); Plants by Zena Cumpston, Michael Fletcher & Lesley Head (2022); Astronomy (2022); Innovation (2023).

A Life in Architecture

A Life in Architecture PDF Author: James Birrell
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
ISBN: 0702254320
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In A Life In Architecture James Birrell reflects on his life in architecture: the influence of architect Roy Grounds; his respect for Walter Burley Griffin's original Canberra plan and his emphasis on the value of incorporating the landscape in its entirely into building design and planning; and his own significant contribution to Australia's post-war architecture. Birrell writes candidly about Queensland's lacklustre approach to town planning during the 1950s; the iconic buildings he designed in his years as Chief Architect for Brisbane City Council; and the revolutionary planning schemes he developed at The University of Queensland and James Cook University, in Papua New Guinea and regional Queensland. Now, at the age of 84, Birrell comments on Robin Boyd's 1960 book, The Australian Ugliness. While acknowledging the influence Boyd had on Australian architecture, he prompts readers to take a moment to consider their built environment in the light of the architectural legacy and lineage created by Griffin, Grounds and others.

Hayes & Scott

Hayes & Scott PDF Author: Andrew Charles Wilson
Publisher: Univ. of Queensland Press
ISBN: 9780702235061
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
Hayes & Scott: Post-War Houses is the first commercial publication on the work of Edwin Hayes and Campbell Scott. These influential Queensland architects were principals of architecture firm Hayes & Scott in the post-World War II period when Australian architecture was experiencing the influences of the German Bauhaus movement, Californian architecture and the need for affordable housing. Featuring scattered black and white photographs of Hayes and Scott's distinctive city and beach houses, this important architectural history book features essays and interviews by key experts including Angela Reilly, Igea Troiani, Alice Hampson, Julian Patterson and Elizabeth Musgrave.

The Puzzle of Architecture

The Puzzle of Architecture PDF Author: Robin Boyd
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Architecture, Modern
Languages : en
Pages : 204

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Book Description