Hot Modernism

Hot Modernism
Queensland Architecture 1945-1975

25 x 17 cm | 6 x 9 cm
356 colour and b/w ills | 224 pages
Paperback

This thematic presentation of the history of modernist architecture of Queensland, Australia provides a fascinating case of the interrelation of climatic design and an aspiration for distinct cultural identity for a region. As international modernism swept the world after the Second World War it confronted differing landscapes, climates, and building traditions. The case of Queensland is exemplary in this regard Queensland provided the challenge of heat and humidity that the theorists of modernism expected would be a scientific rationale from which regional variations of the movement would grow as Western progressive architecture was taken up in the developing world. But Queensland was a relatively wealthy society with a sophisticated architectural culture and a well established discourse on the climatic determination of building form that had already given it a distinct regional identity.

Hot Modernism is a thematic history that traces the conflicts and felicities that occurred as international modernism met a strongly developed regional cultural identity.In nine essays written by a group of international scholars and organised into four thematic sections (Foundations: Modernism and its Critique; Influences; People, Firms & Networks and Building Programmes), Hot Modernism highlights the foundation and growth of modern architecture in Queensland, as well as issues that are common to post-war architecture internationally, such as urban form and transport, art and education, civic pride and the rediscovery of history.