Author(s): John MacArthur

Architecture

This thematic presentation of the history of modernist architecture of

queensland, Australia provides a fascinating case of the interrelation

of climatic design and an aspiration for distinct cultural identity for

a region.

As international modernism swept the world after the Second World

War it confronted differing landscapes, climates, and building

traditions. The case of queensland is exemplary in this regard.

queensland provided the challenge of heat and humidity that the

theorists of modernism expected would be a scientific rationale from

which regional variations of the movement would grow as Western

progressive architecture was taken up in the developing world. But

queensland was a relatively wealthy society with a sophisticated

architectural culture and a well established discourse on the climatic

determination of building form that had already given it a distinct

regional identity. Hot Modernism is a thematic history that traces the

conflicts and felicities that occurred as international modernism met

a strongly developed regional cultural identity.

In nine essays written by a group of international scholars and

organised into four thematic sections (Foundations: Modernism and

its Critique; Influences; People, Firms & Networks and Building

Programmes), Hot Modernism highlights the foundation and growth

of modern architecture in queensland, as well as issues that are

common to post-war architecture internationally, such as urban

form and transport, art and education, civic pride and the rediscovery

of history.

The regional flowerings of mid-twentieth century modernism in

Europe and the Americas have in recent years been meticulously

dissected and widely published, and Hot Modernism contributes

to the emerging understanding that modernism, despite its

internationalism, was not a monolit hic cultural movement, nor

one that can be understood at a national level. The vastness of

the Australian continent, along with its rich climatic, geographic

and cultural diversity, necessitates a more nuanced, place-based

approach. Hot Modernism zooms into this finer grain as it investigates

and expounds the idiosyncratic, regional building practice that

emerged in queensland in the decades following the Second World

War. Based on substantial oral history and archival research, this

publication offers engaging first-hand accounts and vivid illustrations

of significant buildings and their under-acknowledged designers.