The works of William Hardy Wilson
Hardy Wilson (1881-1955),
India, 1951, pencil and French crayon, nla.pic-an2812810
William Hardy Wilson, or Hardy Wilson as he styled himself, is best known for his wonderful series of drawings of Australian colonial architecture undertaken at the beginning of his career, and for his increasingly ‘visionary’ statements about the future of humanity towards the end of his life. Born in 1881, he trained as an architect in Sydney , before pursuing his career and aesthetic education in London with time spent touring Europe and North America.
His return to Sydney in 1910 filled him with horror at the unimaginative and inappropriate building styles. Only a renewed awareness of beauty, he felt, would stimulate the creativity so clearly lacking. He began his studies of Colonial architecture to reawaken an interest in Australia ’s heritage, in part to preserve it from further loss, and to reveal the qualities of the past that might enrich modern practice. The inspiration he gained from the past was crystallized in a number of the houses he designed, in particular