Architecture of Western Australia
The architecture of Western Australia has been influenced by the legacy of being an English colony in the late nineteenth century.
Colonial architecture remains scattered through the capital city Perth,[1][2] and regional centres.[3]
Despite the separation from the rest of Australia by distance, the influence of Australian styles was marked upon building and designing in Western Australia.
Notable architects include those who were Principal architect:
- 1884 - 1905 {James William WRIGHT]
- 1891 – 1897 George Temple-Poole
- 1897 – 1905 John Harry Grainger
- 1905 – 1917 Hillson Beasley
- 1917 – 1927 William Hardwick
Perth redevelopment (1960s–1980s)
British businessman and property developer Alistair McAlpine (1942–2014) was critical of the tone of development in Perth, especially along the "once-beautiful" St Georges Terrace, noting how: "Where once the architects of Western Australia benefitted from their isolation and built small new buildings in scale with their town, in the 1980s they started to read glossy architectural magazines and build glossy buildings".[4]
See also
References
- ↑ Oldham, Ray; Oldham, John (1962), Western heritage : a study of the colonial architecture of Perth, Western Australia, Paterson Brokensha, retrieved 31 March 2019
- ↑ Hare, Timothy G (1979), Vanishing ink : vanishing architecture of Western Australia, Creative Research, ISBN 978-0-908469-01-7
- ↑ "TYPES OF BACK BLOCKS ARCHITECTURE. WESTERN AUSTRALIA". Western Mail. Vol. XXIII, no. 1, 160. Western Australia. 21 March 1908. p. 25. Retrieved 31 March 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
- ↑ McAlpine, Alistair (1999). Bagman To Swagman - Tales of Broome, the North-West and other Australian Adventures. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. p. 6. ISBN 1-86508-104-3.
Perth is a great city, its people different from those of other great cities–Perth should have been proud of that difference. Sadly, for some years, it lost its way, seduced by the idea of being modern but ending up being much the same as everywhere else. Where once the architects of Western Australia benefitted from their isolation and built small new buildings in scale with their town, in the 1980s they started to read glossy architectural magazines and build glossy buildings. In the depths of the recession of the 1990s, the emptiness of these buildings stared through shiny glass that once reflected the greed of the men who owned them. Their concrete piazzas, emptied of people, had concrete pots and windswept trees–the main street, the once-beautiful St Georges Terrace, became a wind-filled canyon.
