COMPLIANCE, SUBVERSION AND THE AUSTRALIA-BRITAIN NEXUS: Theoretical Dilemmas for Australian Architecture and Urbanism

Abstract

Despite the appeal to and attraction of decorum as a principal aesthetic theme of British-inspired Colonial and Victorian heritage in most Australian cities, for several generations now there has been a drift away from British ties towards an aesthetic understanding based either in an American or in a generalised ‘international” sensibility. This shift has resulted over the past fifty years in a numbing, non-aesthetic across many Australian towns and cities, relieved only occasionally by artful individuality. This 'modem' aesthetic sensibility has operated at all scales of urban development and reflects an independence from ties to history and locate that is now conventional wisdom. Attempts to reinstall local and regional aesthetic qualities via a “postmodern” sensibility have elicited criticism declaring them either vacuous, trivial, or scary-for-the-future, depending upon the degree to which memory, nostalgia and good manners are upheld or derided. Notwithstanding such intercessions, recent Australian architecture seems to have detached itself from British and European antecedents and from American influences as well, and seems to be mapping out its own directions and forms. Beyond the control of any charismatic individual, visionary politician or civic-minded committee, yet still driven by corporate forces; the outcome for Australian architecture and urbanism is incomprehensible. Drawing on interviews with architects educated in the thirties and forties, this paper reviews such shifting aesthetic sensibilities in contemporary Australian architecture and presents some theoretical difficulties arising out of issues of compliance and subversion in relation to the dynamics of change.