Bringing it all home: Robin Boyd and Australia’s Embrace of Brutalism, 1955–71

Abstract

The emergence in late 1950s Australian architecture of what has come to be known historically as Brutalism was complex, diffuse and, across a vast continent, regionally split. This was due partly to Australia’s geographic isolation and long-standing Commonwealth ties, partly to the arrival of British and European émigré architects already steeped in modernist critique and partly to local architect–critic Robin Boyd’s reflections on Brutalism in his buildings and writings, both of which explored the implications of New Brutalism from an international perspective and were complemented by his two books on Japan, Kenzo Tange (1962) and New Directions in Japanese Architecture (1968). It was diffu..