Call for papers​

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Universal ideals/underexplored /one building case study /connections to Modernism worldwide /ecological and sustainable design /social justice and common good/ Australian and New Zealand Case Studies 

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Modernism in Australia and New Zealand has too often been portrayed as peripheral to practice elsewhere because of our remote location in the world. Yet the world has been well connected for centuries rendering the idea of centre and periphery, as well as one-directional flows of ideas, not only outdated, but incorrect. Recent historical scholarship that explores transnational exchange has clearly demonstrated that most cultural concepts result from a dynamic exchange of ideas across national and international boundaries. New concepts arise because of this dialogue so that unsurprisingly, ideas are often probed in many different locations worldwide simultaneously. The third symposium hosted by the Modernism Collaborative seeks to explore planetary trajectories of modernism expressed in architectural projects in Australia and New Zealand whose innovations reflected aspects of universal ecological ideals. 

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 Not only have Indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand had a highly developed ecologically sensitive approach to design for thousands of years, but the ecological turn in Australia and New Zealand predates 1960s and 1970s alternative architecture movements by decades. Already by the 1920s, architects like William Hardy Wilson were convinced that building performance had to be tied to sensitive design responses to local climate and geography. After the Second World War, heightened sensitivity to the importance of place brought these issues back to the forefront in works by well-studied architects like Ruth and Bill Lucas in New South Wales, Karl Langer, Edwin Hayes and Campbell Scott in Queensland, and Ian Athfield and Graeme North in New Zealand. Today, ecologically sensitive design and design that considers Indigenous perspectives are considered best practice. From the beginning, modern architects were concerned with a series of issues they perceived to be universally important – design for social good, design for climate and place, design for resource economy – which found productive points of intersection with prevailing conditions and building traditions of Australasia and the Pacific region. 

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 We welcome papers that consider the broad planetary trajectories of modernism and bring to light lesser-known and under-studied works whose investigation can generate new understanding and lines of inquiry examining a single project through the lens of universal modernist values to highlight innovations produced by architects in Australia and New Zealand. 

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 We expect to publish longer versions of the research presented at the symposium in either a special journal issue or as an edited volume. 

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