Australian Architect

Press, Volume C, Issue 29513, 13 May 1961, Page 3

Australian Architect

The Australian Ugliness. By Robin Boyd. Cheshire. 225 pp. Index.

Mr Boyd is an architect, who writes more in sorrow than in anger about the deficiencies of his native land and its inhabitants. The chief characteristic of the Australians. he believes, is their inconsistency—“good and bad muddled together, sophistication and schoolboyishness, toughness and gentleness, so cut up and mixed up that noone can be quite sure which, in the long run, predominates.” This strange amalgam of qualities is discerned by Mr Boyd in what interests him most—building and display and product design. For instance, “a modernistic folly in. multi-coloured brickwork may sit next door to a prim Georgian mansionette on one side and a sensitive work of architectural exploration on the other.”

The first general idea which the author develops in his investigation of the manmade scene in Australia is what he calls Featurism. This he defines as the subordination of the essential whole and the accentuation of separate selected features. For instance, a factory ceases to obtrude itself as such when a spiral stairway in front of the building is featured behind a huge window. In domestic architecture a livingroom may be thrust-for-ward as a feature of the facade, a statuette may be made the feature of the picture window. “The featurist deliberately or proudly destroys any unified entity which comes into his hands by isolating parts, breaking up simple planes, interrupting straight lines, and applying gratuitous extra items, wherever he fears the eye •may be tempted to rest.” Other topics which rouse the author’s indignation are the wanton destruction of trees, the Americanisation of design, the proliferation of metal light-standards and of telegraph poles. His speculations take him a long way; for he concludes that the Australian ugliness, which begins with fear of reality and is expressed by "veneer and cosmetic effects.” wnd in “betrayal of the element of love and a chill near the root of natural self-respect.”