In this follow-up to the design classic 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses, Karen McCartney, founding editor of interiors magazine Inside Out, has compiled a selection of significant examples of Australian houses of the 1970s, 80s and 90s, each brilliantly photographed and with a depth of coverage rarely seen before. Featured architects include Richard Leplastrier, Glenn Murcutt and Wood Marsh. A detailed introduction places the period in social, historical and architectural context, before each of the selected houses is individually reviewed in an informed and engaging style. In each example the relationship between the architect and owner is discussed, as is the linking of the building to its site, materials and architectural detailing. The author has interviewed many architects and owners for their personal insights. Each study includes a feature on the interior decoration and a discussion of designers and manufacturers of iconic furniture, fittings and fabrics. 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses features stunning photography by Michael Wee, both panoramic and detailed, throughout. The homes from these three decades form a significant part of Australian architectural history.

This book tells the story of the architects and buildings that have defined Australia’s architectural culture since the founding of the modern nation through Federation in 1901. That year marked the beginning of a search for better city forms and buildings to accommodate the changing realities of Australian life and to express an emerging, distinctive, and, eventually, confident Australian identity. While Sydney and Melbourne were the settings for many of the major buildings, all states and territories developed architectural traditions based on distinctive histories and climates. Harry Margalit explores the flowering of these many architectural variants, from the bid to create a model city in Canberra, through the stylistic battles that opened a space for modernism, to the idealism of postwar reconstruction, and beyond to the new millennium. Australia reveals a vibrant and influential culture of the built environment, at its best when it matches civic idealism with the sensuality of a country of stunning light and landscapes.

Architect-designed houses of the period 1950-65 proposed an innovative response to the social, economic, and climatic conditions of post-war Australia. At the same time they embraced the aesthetic, technological, and egalitarian aspirations of modern architecture. An Unfinished Experiment in Living traces the emergence of this architectural phenomenon in Australia, documenting the full range of its expression: from the postwar optimism of the early 1950s through to the affluence of the 1960s. It is a catalogue of the most significant houses of the period. It includes comprehensive plans and period photographs of 150 houses from around Australia, dating from a time when the great Australian dream was the single family house. This book puts forward new research founded on the premise that the most significant houses of the 1950s and 60s represent an unfinished and undervalued experiment in modern living. Issues such as the open plan, the changing nature of the family, the embrace of advances in technology, the use of the courtyard, and the orientation of the house to capture sun and privacy, were valuable and critical lessons. This is a compelling reminder of their continuing relevance. [Subject: Architecture, Design, Australian History, Sociology]

Volume 19 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) contains concise biographies of individuals who died between 1991 and 1995. The first of two volumes for the 1990s, it presents a colourful montage of late twentieth-century Australian life, containing the biographies of significant and representative Australians. The volume is still in the shadow of World War II with servicemen and women who enlisted young appearing, but these influences are dimming and there are now increasing numbers of non-white, non-male, non-privileged and non-straight subjects. The 680 individuals recorded in volume 19 of the ADB include Wiradjuri midwife and Ngunnawal Elder Violet Bulger; Aboriginal rights activist, poet, playwright and artist Kevin Gilbert; and Torres Strait Islander community leader and land rights campaigner Eddie Mabo. HIV/AIDS child activists Tony Lovegrove and Eve Van Grafhorst have entries, as does conductor Stuart Challender, ‘the first Australian celebrity to go public’ about his HIV/AIDS condition in 1991. The arts are, as always, well-represented, including writers Frank Hardy, Mary Durack and Nene Gare, actors Frank Thring and Leonard Teale and arts patron Ian Potter. We are beginning to see the effects of the steep rise in postwar immigration flow through to the ADB. Artist Joseph Stanislaw Ostoja-Kotkowski was born in Poland. Pilar Moreno de Otaegui, co-founded the Spanish Club of Sydney. Chinese restaurateur and community leader Ming Poon (Dick) Low migrated to Victoria in 1953. Often we have a dearth of information about the domestic lives of our subjects; politician Olive Zakharov, however, bravely disclosed at the Victorian launch of the federal government’s campaign to Stop Violence Against Women in 1993 that she was a survivor of domestic violence in her second marriage. Take a dip into the many fascinating lives of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.