Indigenous architecture of Queensland

Abstract

IntroductionThe subject of this thesis was chosen as the cumulative effect of several incidents. Firstly, my own migration to a country and particularly to a State in which its indigenous architecture is unique to that particular area of the world . Secondly , a lecture by Dr . Burchard , a visiting American professor from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in which he state that after a cursory examination of Queensland’s present day domestic examination of Queensland’s present day domestic architecture, he was forced to wonder if a further development of this architecture method of planning and construction might not have been preferable to the promiscuous importation of overseas ideas, techniques and cliches, many of which are totally unsuited to Queensland’s sub-tropical and tropical climate. Thirdly, self-made alterations and renovations in a seventy-year old house in which I live at present, have revealed seemingly unorthodox methods of construction, and theories of planning totally foreign to me. These and numerous other incidents caused the development of my interest in this typical Queensland house, and, on attempting to learn more about it, I discovered that there is very little material available at present on the subject. Most references were useless for my purpose and the greater part of the information contained in this thesis has been obtained by discussions with builders, either retired or currently engaged in the alterations of this type of house. In choosing material for this thesis, I have restricted my investigation to the well-known but rapidly becoming extinct “house on stilts” of timber construction because I feel that it alone is unique among the various types of building during the past century. This type of house, commonly called “T and G” construction, has been built in all part of Queensland and in many forms. Of these many forms I have made an effort to exclude the variations that are uncommon and have tried to confine the analysis of types to which have been repeated many times and so proved their suitability for the conditions under which they were built. In compiling the following information I hope to be able to shed more light on the “whys and wherefors” of this forgotten method of construction and planning and perhaps show where our present methods might have gone astray from the basic problem of housing of Queensland’s individual problems.