This book addresses the work of architect John Dalton (1927-2007), an important voice in mid-century modernism in Australia whose work, despite his being exhibited and published internationally and also winning several awards for his designs, is woefully little known.
Published as part of the Bloomsbury Studies in Modern Architecture series, which brings to light the work of significant yet overlooked modernist architects, the book draws on previously unpublished archival documents, including Dalton’s drawings and paintings, transcripts of lectures, letters and articles, plans and photographic images of built works, to characterize the architect not only as a very talented designer, but also as a pioneer of environmentalist thinking in Australia.
The book reveals how Dalton’s architectural preoccupations parallel a transition in mid-century modern architecture globally from functional efficiency and material rationalism, to a concern with being in dialogue with the environment, confirming a wider ‘environmental turn’ that involved the integration of environmental with cultural considerations through relational thinking, and which preceded and transcends the discipline’s fascination with theoretical paradigms such as Critical Regionalism.
John Dalton: Subtropical Modernism and the Turn to Environment in Australian Architecture is thus not only an important contribution to the existing scholarship on 20th century modernism, but also to the current renewed interest in environmental design across the globe.
List of Illustrations Series Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Introducing John Dalton and the Landscape of Post-War Australia 2. Discovering the Idiomatic: Detail in Art & Architecture 3. Form and its Experience: Designs for 'Sunlight, Shade and Shadow' 4. Environment as Provocation and Narrative: Dalton the Activist 5. Ecologies in Practice: Structuring the Interactions of Individual and Community 6. Synthesizing Environmental and Architectural Perspectives Conclusion: Legacies of 'Sunlight, Shade and Shadow' Bibliography Index
Elizabeth Musgrave is an Architect, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, and Honorary Fellow of the School of Architecture at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Reviews for John Dalton: Subtropical Modernism and the Turn to Environment in Australian Architecture
In an age where the history of architecture must respond to concerns over the environment, Elizabeth Musgrave’s important and engaging account of John Dalton brings to light the innovations of one of 20th-century Australia’s pioneers of climatically sensitive design. * G. A. Bremner, University of Edinburgh, UK * This book carefully unearths the fragile and divergent roots of an environmentalist discourse on the eve of a period often referred to as the age of ecology. Rigorously reconstructed by piecemeal evidence, Elizabeth Musgrave’s work significantly contributes to the ‘minor historiography’ of an exemplary modernist architect who geared his practice towards Queensland’s subtropical climate and the vernacular. * Elke Couchez, University of Hasselt, Belgium *
