A WORD FROM PENELOPE SEIDLER AM LFRAIA

The houses that feature in the following pages, as selected by Karen McCartney, represent the grand variety that flourished in Australian post-World War II architecture. It is heartening that the first edition of the book was treasured by so many to warrant the demand for another printing, bringing it to a wider audience.

For the most part, the houses here are simple family homes, with timeless design integrity, happily lacking the pretension and pseudo stylistic features that characterise much contemporary design. They are each a time capsule of their era. They also have a connection, in one way or another, with the landscape. Perhaps more than anything else, this is what identifies that period. With the end of the war came the breaking down of many boundaries and an awareness and engagement with the outdoors: you’ll see many large glass areas, blurring the edges between inside and out, along with large balconies for outdoor living. Interiors were opened up, with space flowing between the interior and exterior, as well as between rooms, rather than the boxed rooms and corridors that were present in earlier architecture. Of the fifteen architects included in the book, all are males, and four are immigrants who were educated overseas. All of the houses, however, are Australian.

It is unfortunate that many houses of the era have been demolished or grossly altered, only to be replaced by overbearing mansions with fake columns and arches and no design integrity. It is to be hoped that with the community’s increasing awareness of the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act of December 2000, any owners wishing to ‘upgrade’ their property will need to do so in consultation with the original architect or their estate, thereby maintaining the architectural integrity.

Harry Seidler, writing in the Bulletin in October 1989, said of the Australian style that it is the successful response to the climate and our informal way of life, rather than an identifiable ‘style’. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in the diverse range of houses depicted in this book. Karen McCartney is to be congratulated for gathering these houses together in this beautiful book, sharing the enjoyment that they bring with a wider audience and preserving them in these pages.

A cantilevered cabinet in a bedroom of Hugh Buhrich’s house in Sydney’s Castlecrag.