An Oriental Continent: Climatic Determinism, Race and Identity in the Interwar Writings of Australian Architect William Hardy Wilson (1881-1955)

• Published in: Fabrications : the journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 67 - 87
• Main Author: van der Plaat, Deborah
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 02.01.2018
• ISSN: 1033-1867; 2164-4756
• DOI: 10.1080/10331867.2017.1413703

In 1924 the Australian architect Hardy Wilson published Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania. The publication brought together Wilson's drawings of Georgian buildings of the early Australian colonies, specifically the work of the English trained architect Francis Greenway (1777-1837). In 1923 the drawings were exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum (South Kensington) for three months at the invitation of the Board of Education (London). The Queen, who visited the exhibition, accepted an early copy of the book. The aim of this paper is to examine the context of Hardy's book and specifically his concerns relating to tropical and subtropical Australia, architectural agency and the development of a national style. It will be argued that the Georgian architecture of penal Australia represented for the local born architect the peak of Anglo culture in colonial Australia but one, that from the point of settlement, was in dramatic decline. For architecture to develop and thrive in Australia, Wilson argued, the continent had to look to new geographical influences, and specifically the continent of China. It will be argued that Wilson's thesis has its origins in a theory of civilisation common to the eighteenth and nineteenth century which identified geographical properties (including climate) as the determinant of character and architectural form. It will also be argued that Wilson's turn to the Georgian must be seen as a response to the growing influence of a series of acts known as the White Australia Policy, their impact on the perceived role of architecture, and the exclusion of Asia in both.