Constructing Australian Architecture for International Audiences: Regionalism, Postmodernism, and the Design Arts Board 1980-1988

Abstract

In May 2015, a new Australian Pavilion was inaugurated at the Giardini dell Biennale in Venice. Designed by Denton Corker Marshall, it has been described as moving beyond the issues of Australian identity that were the concern of its predecessor, designed by the architect Philip Cox and opened in 1988 to mark Australia’s bicentenary. This paper revisits the work of the Australia Council’s Design Arts Board in the 1980s in promoting Australian architecture through exhibitions, international design journals, and finally the first Australian Venice Biennale pavilion. During this period, a concern with identity preoccupied Australian architecture, manifest in an idiom of exposed steel frames and..