And sadly BTW, there will be no architect in the NSW government, as Elizabeth Farrelly got barely a quarter of a quota in her bid for an upper house seat (also one quarter of the informal or blank votes). Name recognition (from years of feisty columns in the SMH) will only carry you so far, when the big parties come knocking. Or perhaps it was because her policies were indistinguishable from the Greens? Or that ten people on a ticket can all be ‘independent’ under one name?
Tone Wheeler
Many know that my favourite book on Australian architecture is Walter Bunning’s
Homes in the Sun, which I’ve referenced in talks and columns (see the Third Wave and the Future after Covid). So why, some correspondents asked, wasn’t it in my list of books for students? Good question. Answer here.
It comes from a time when architects and authors were interested in the
average house, mass and social housing, suburbia and urban planning. A golden era of innovation in the 30 or so years after WW2 when Australia’s population doubled.
The books of that time included Robin Boyd’s Australia’s Home (1952), Hugh Stretton’s Ideas for Australian Cities (1970), Living and Partly Living by Robin Boyd, John Mant et al (1971), and David Yenken and Graeme Gunn’s Mansion or No House (1976). The interest in suburbia and the design of the house was at its height. Now, not so much.