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October 31, 2008
So we do have an avant garde architecture in Australia, judging by this winner of Robin Boyd Award for residential architecture at the Australian Institute of Architects’ National Architecture Awards:
John Gossling, Klein Bottle House, designed by Rob McBride and Debbie Lynn Ryan of McBride Charles Ryan, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
This is more than fashionable style. It signifies the ongoing strength of modernism in Australia architecture as cutting edge design that continues to push the boundaries of a tradition.
John Gossling, Klein Bottle House, designed by Rob McBride and Debbie Lynn Ryan of McBride Charles Ryan, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
However, it is modernism revitalised by a splashes or palettes of rich colour that signifies the redness of the Australia desert:
John Gossling, Klein Bottle House, designed by Rob McBride and Debbie Lynn Ryan of McBride Charles Ryan, Mornington Peninsula, Victoria
So we have a modernism that has become a form of regionalism. Suprisingly, avant garde, as an aesthetic category, is not used much to describe Australian architecture---avant garde is what happens overseas. With this work we need to accept that there is an Australian avant garde in architecture, though not architectural photography as Gossling's photographs here are very much in the modernist tradition of Max Dupain.
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