Current and past projects
In addition to supporting enquiry by external researchers, the
Architecture Museum seeks funding for projects which focus on utilising the
Museum’s collections and can be managed and undertaken by its staff.
____________________
Sample projects include:
South
Australian Architects and their Works, 1836-2006
Funded by the SA Department for Environment and Heritage
Christine Garnaut, Julie Collins, Susan Collins, Alison McDougall and
Christine Sullivan
A comprehensive single list of SA-based and trained architects compiled from
a variety of sources.
Coming soon
Concise biographies and works of selected 19th and 20th century architects to be made available via a web-based database.
Image: Water colour of Mr Harris over his drawing board with
Esther Legoe’s table in the foreground at the architectural office
of Woods, Bagot, Jory and Laybourne Smith, sketch by d’Auvergne
Boxall c.1917, Walkley collection S293 (click
for enlargement)
____________________
‘How to build a good home cheaply’: a history of the South
Australian Home Builders’ Club
Funded by the History Trust of South Australia
Christine Garnaut and Julie Collins
The South Australian Home Builders’ Club Incorporated (SAHBC) operated between 1945 and 1965. A relatively unknown South Australian organization, its members built about 400 houses in metropolitan Adelaide thus making a critical contribution to the state’s post World War 2 housing shortage. Organised as a cooperative and run on collaborative lines, the SAHBC offered a unique means of obtaining a house in the face of postwar building restrictions and constraints. Club members were not skilled in design and building but learnt on the job and taught each other. They bartered their labour by banking their individual hours and using accumulated credit to advance the construction of their own dwelling – no money was exchanged. Hence the Club’s suggestion on its promotional literature that it offered a means to ‘build a good home cheaply’.
The project will complete research previously commenced and consolidate the outcomes into an illustrated monograph.
Image: South Australian Home Builders’ Club pamphlet, c.1950s,
South Australian Home Builders’ Club collection S284 (click
for enlargement)
____________________
Behind the Image: the cultural significance of architectural
drawings
Funded internally by a DEASS DRPF grant
Christine Garnaut, Julie Collins and Susan Collins
Literature on the appraisal and management of architectural collections
points to the need for a common, grounded approach to assessing the
significance of architectural drawings. In the absence of a guiding
rationale to determine which drawings to keep and which to discard,
collecting institutions are faced with a dilemma, and potentially
significant records are placed at risk. Adding to the problem is the fact
that, due to the rise of Computer Aided Design (CAD), hand drawing has been
superseded and, potentially, historical architectural drawings (i.e. hand
drawn) may be regarded as valueless. Hence it is timely to take stock of
their significance.
This projects aims to:
(1) examine the cultural significance (heritage value) of architectural
drawings,
(2) determine a methodological approach to the assessment of the cultural
significance of architectural drawings
(3) propose preliminary guidelines for retention schedules for architectural
drawings.
The project team ran a workshop related to this project at ‘In History We
Trust’, the 15th State History Conference, May 2006.
Image: Elevation and plan of house at Linden Park, by Harold
Griggs, 1941, Griggs collection, S167/789 (click
for enlargement)
____________________
Growing up: the rise of the multi-storey building in interwar
Adelaide
Funded internally by a DEASS DRPF grant
Christine Garnaut, Julie Collins, Alexander Ibels and Susan Collins
The first multi-storey buildings were built in Adelaide during the 1920s and
1930s. They contributed to the city’s physical growing up and its
psychological coming of age. This project examined the international tall
building phenomenon and the impetus for, and rationale behind, their rise in
the City of Adelaide. It identified their location, clients and functions.
Additionally, the project examined their morphology (layout), materials, and
construction methods, as well as their streetscape and skyline impact,
influence on the City of Adelaide’s spatial form and their relationship with
the original plan of Adelaide.
Collins, J., Ibels, A., Collins, S. and Garnaut, C. (2004) ‘Growing up: the
rise of the multi-storey building in interwar Adelaide’, in Town Talk,
Proceedings of the 13th State History Conference, History Trust of South
Australia, Adelaide, summarised early findings of the research.
A second paper, based on the project’s major findings, is under
consideration by a scholarly journal.
Image: Blueprint of AMP Building, King William Street, Adelaide by
Woods, Bagot, Laybourne Smith and Irwin, 1934, Hurren Langman and
James collection, S248 (click
for enlargement)
____________________
Years of Significance: South Australian Architecture during
World War 1
Funded internally by a DEASS DRPF grant
Christine Garnaut, Julie Collins and Alexander Ibels
This project addressed the absence of scholarly studies of Australian
architectural history in relation to the years of the Great War, 1914-1918,
and questioned the conventional wisdom that the period was one in which
architectural activity was suspended while architects either went to war or
grappled with the constraints of wartime shortages. It drew on journals of
the period notably The Salon and its successor, Architecture, and Building,
as well as primary archival materials – architects’ drawings,
correspondence, notebooks, photographs – held in the Museum’s collections as
well as newspapers and other published sources. Items identified as being
designed and/or built in South Australia during the study period were
compiled in a database available in the Museum.
Findings from the research are published as:
Collins, J., Ibels, A. and Garnaut, C. (2005) ‘Years of Significance: South
Australian architecture and the Great War’, Journal of the Historical
Society of South Australia, no 33, 25-39.
Image: Pencil sketch of War Memorial, North Terrace, Adelaide by
Harold Griggs, c.1930, Griggs collection S197/64 (click
for enlargement)
____________________
Centre for Settlement Studies projects
The Museum comes under the ambit of the Centre for Settlement Studies (CSS),
a research group within the LLS School, and is used as a resource by CSS
members.
____________________
External clients’ projects
External users’ research topics are numerous and include individual architects, builders, engineers, buildings, building types, building materials, and house histories.
Historian, Bill Stacy, undertook a major study into the life and career
of Frank Hurren using the Museum’s extensive collection of Hurren, Langman
and James engineering drawings and related records. He subsequently
published:
Stacy, B. (2005) ‘“A Mad Scramble”: Frank Emery Hurren, consulting
structural engineer’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia,
no 33, 87-101.