The Vienna Room: A Melbourne Interior by Maggie Edmond, 2018

Abstract

ABSTRACT The subject of this paper is a living-room designed by Melbourne architect Maggie Edmond for her own use. Labelled on the plan Vienna Room, it forms part of a 2018 renovation of Edmond’s inner-city house in the Melbourne suburb of Carlton. Contextualised within recent studies of Australian interiors that use innovative forms of research and publication – exhibition, house biography, illustration – and referencing the work of Edward Hollis and Mario Praz, the paper employs the methodology of thick description, with some reference to iconology. This mode of research foregrounds the writing of the author/viewer as a locus of meaning, rather than, say, an imposed theoretical proposition. The room is treated as a pictorial device in which, it is argued, the architect’s arrangement of paintings, furniture, books, and decorative objects can be understood as a “family album,” a staging of personal and family heritage. The approach suits the aims of the paper which are, on the one hand, to explore the application of thick description to architectural interiors and on the other, to suggest how the Vienna Room might reflect back on Edmond’s practice as a founding partner of one of Melbourne’s most celebrated architectural firms, Edmond and Corrigan.