In April 2007, the Art Deco Society will host the 9th World Congress on Art Deco in Melbourne. The 2007 Congress will be held from Monday 16 April to Friday 20 April, 2007.

A World Congress is held at a nominated city around the world every two years, allowing Art Deco enthusiasts to hear presentations by experts, go on tours of Art Deco highlights around the host city and attend social events.

Details of the Congress can be found at the Art Deco Society website.

A pre-Congress event is being held in Canberra from 12-14 April. Organised by the Twentieth Century Heritage Society of New South Wales, the well-packed three-day program will look at a wide range of Canberra landmark buildings, from East Block (John Smith Murdoch, 1925) and Old Parliament House (John Smith Murdoch, 1927) through to the Academy of Science (Roy Grounds, 1959) and the National Gallery of Australia (Colin Madigan, 1982).

The program will also tour residential areas, passing a number of important modernist houses like the Whitley House in Braddon and the house at 43 Melbourne Avenue, Forrest designed by Malcolm Moir in 1935.

For more details, visit the Twentieth Century Heritage Society of New South Wales website.

24:7 was a series of exhibitions, performances and events linking ACT Government agencies with artists and arts organisations. An initiative of Arts ACT, it was held from 17-25 May 2003.

Exhibition Home was one of these. It saw the work of twenty Canberra craft practitioners, designers and artists placed in one of the Northbourne Housing Group courtyard houses, designed by Sydney Ancher in 1959 for the National Capital Development Commission. Having modern works of contemporary craft, art and design in a heritage setting revealed much about the currency of Ancher’s design, now approaching 50 years old. It also provided a unique opportunity to view these contemporary works in a modernist domestic setting.

I wrote a short essay with Jane Barney for the exhibition catalogue; here it is, reprinted with permission.

24:7

The Northbourne Housing Precinct consists of five types of housing on both sides of Northbourne Avenue: two storey pair houses, three storey maisonettes, three storey flats and the single storey courtyard flats, one of which was used for this exhibition. The housing group is an example of the post-war international style, with its cubiform shape, structural frame expressed, a simplified form of curtain wall, large sheets of glass, overhang for shade and contrasting non-rectangular shape.

The precinct was designed to provide public housing to accommodate the many public servants being transferred to the developing capital. Importantly, it was to serve as a gateway entry to Canberra and was built at a time when there were no architecturally significant buildings along the main entry route to the city outside Civic. To assist in the planning for the entry to the city and the site itself the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) engaged Professor Denis Winston, head of the Department of Town and Country Planning at the University of Sydney. Sir John Overall, then head of the NCDC, considered Winston to be the most important influence in post-war Australian planning. Winston, Overall and Ancher worked together on the project and shared a belief in the importance and correctness of Bauhaus design principles.

The housing group is an important landmark in the development of modern architecture in Canberra and Australia; the location of public housing along both sides of Northbourne Avenue was significant too as a positive statement that Canberra was to be the ‘people’s capital.’

The precinct is also significant for its association with Sydney Ancher. Awarded the RAIA Gold Medal in 1975, Ancher is recognised as one of Australia’s leading architects of the modern movement. His output was not extensive and this project was his only major medium density housing design, which adds to its importance. Ancher graduated from the Sydney Technical College and travelled in Europe during the 1930s, where he experienced and was influenced by European modernism firsthand. When the ‘International Style’ eventually reached Australia, having been delayed by the Depression and World War II, Ancher was one of its first and most important proponents. He designed very few larger buildings and throughout his career his work remained largely domestic in scale—the Northbourne Housing Group project was one of his largest commissions.

The precinct is listed on the ACT Chapter of the Royal australian Institute of Architects Register of Significant Twentieth Century Architecture and the Interim Register of the National Estate. It is probably Australia’s only true example of the rationale of the Bauhaus principles used for public housing, influenced by the German and Austrian workers’ housing, constructed in Europe prior to World War II. A notable example of that style is the Weissenhoff Siedlung in Stuttgart, Germany (1927), designed by leading European architects, many of whom were directly associated with the Bauhaus.

Modernist architects in the immediate post-war period attempted to combine consistency of construction (preferably in modern materials such as concrete and steel) with an optimistic vision of a changing society. As well as providing housing, these architects wanted to use their buildings as models of a better world in the future. What better place to put this into effect than the rapidly expanding planned city of Canberra in the late 1950s?

If you listen to the comments of the residents, some of whom have lived there for fifteen to twenty years, the Karuah Street courtyard apartments are particularly successful as places to live. Perhaps this is due to the almost seamless transition between the indoor living areas and the private outdoor spaces; and their integration with the communal courtyard garden. Or it could be that nearly all of these apartments are north facing, with generous room sizes, high ceilings and floor to ceiling windows.

The Bauhaus School, founded in Germany in 1919, aimed to bring together the various artistic disciplines and to train craftsmen and artists in cooperative effort. Projects and workshops were the main methods of learning and exchange, and a major aim of the school was to elevate the status of the crafts to that enjoyed by the fine arts. Many of the Bauhaus students and teachers left Germany in the 1930s to work in the United States and the Bauhaus influence on modern architecture and design spread throughout the world in the second half of the century.

Canberra didn’t miss out on these developments, as Exhibition Home showed us when it connected Ancher’s Bauhaus aesthetic with the contemporary local arts scene. The craft, art and design complemented the modernist space and the apartment itself gave context to the objects by placing them not only in a domestic setting, but one inspired by and reflecting Bauhaus design principles. If the currency of the architecture was put to the test, so too was the art. No longer protected by the consciously neutral white gallery cube, these pieces were put through their paces by being presented within their arguably final destination—a real life domestic setting. This exhibition presented a coherent idea of how the work could—and would—work in a contemporary home.

The light-hearted and non-functional elements of the toffee chairs (Lyndall Kennedy, Parker Sweet) and garden ornaments (Bev Hogg Sleeping Giant), contrasted with the hyper-industrial design of various kitchen appliances (Fran Mether, Swim; Tom Caddaye Dou Boy & Portable BBQ; Alison Beaton, Fluid Iron; Oliver Smith Pneumatic Vessels & Pump Dispensers. These works were complimented by the small run production line works of Robert Foster, Samurai Teapot, Valkery Vase and Strike Vase, and Elizabeth Kelly, Bowls and Vase).

A range of furnishings presented both traditional designs (Evan Dunstone, Clearwater Chairs) alongside contemporary design (Trout—Jonathan Everett and Scott Mitchell, Apartment Series, Alan Swanson Air Bench and Elephant Stools; Sabine Pagan, Lights). Each room played with different accents and striking visual illusions (Erica Seccombe, Surface for Air; and Alison Munro, Calm Day 1-11; Linda Rice, Guts; Paull McKee, Wagga; Kate Daniels, Polly Series; Christo Kubler, Hanging Planter and Lo Beam) resulting in a different atmosphere in each room.

How would you furnish an exhibition home? A flip through the pages of the furbiture mega-store catalogues shows the same objects re-appearing in different settings, in different rooms. Each page represents a finished look, the ideal domestic setting and by implication, your desired identity. How do you furnish your home? Probably, like most, with an eclectic selection of items that are a reflection and projection of you and your personality. At Karuah Street we enjoyed the rare luxury of a home furnished by artists, with domestic scale work at the most refined edge of craft, art and design.

There were also further subtle surprises and linkages provided by the exhibition. Most of the exhibited artists were from the Canberra School of Art, itself originally modelled on the European and Bauhaus idea of the artisan’s workshop, where a collaborative group studied under the direction of a master craftsman. This provided an interesting resonance between the history of Canberra’s artistic tradition through the School of Art and the Bauhaus architecture of the units.

For Craft ACT, this exhibition was a unique opportunity to place contemporary art and applied arts and design in a modernist and Bauhaus context. The overall effect made one feel that these principles still hold true—functional, modest design is as appropriate now as it was in the middle of the twentieth century. The exhibition was a collaborative effort in another, no less ipmortant sense. Craft ACT, the residents of Karuah Street apartments and ACT Housing brought together the public, historic and private domains to this one point. Architects, artists, residents and the general public all exerienced and enjoyed the exhibition, each from their own perspective. Perhaps reflecting some of the social and functional ideals that might have been on Sydney Ancher’s mind when he designed the Northourne Housing Group—a true landmark of modern Canberra.