The Australian Ugliness (36 page)

Today, he would regret that such portents of change in our culture have been forced upon Australia as a reflection of changes in the world rather than of our own volition. Boyd's strategy was to focus on the word ‘ugliness'—an idea that almost all Australians would agree on, or at the very least have a strong opinion about. If he'd called the book
The Australian Beauty
, his project of critique would almost certainly have been a flop. As it was, his literary ploy was clever and is still clever. By the time Boyd died, in 1971,
The Australian Ugliness
had been reprinted four times and had become a national bestseller. There hasn't been a book like it since.

At the heart of Boyd's concept of ‘featurism' is a history of unwillingness on the part of Australians and Australian governments to spend appropriate money on the built environment, almost as if there was a deep suspicion of it, an ongoing spartan belief in the make-do mentality of early European settlement. No better example of this was the folly and fortune of the Sydney Opera House, under construction at the time of Boyd's writing, an ambitious building that aesthetically and economically has more than paid back its construction costs in tourism, urbanity and national identity. In the end, what Boyd is asking for in
The Australian Ugliness
is not that we make everything aesthetically palatable but that we increase our awareness of the impact of the built environment, that it becomes a pervasive issue in our national consciousness, that the values and benefits of good design are brought to the attention of—and made available to—all Australians. His book exhorts us to take a considered position about aesthetics and to celebrate our exemplary buildings and places. Boyd was a champion of his own definition of good design. Our definitions have expanded but our responsibilities and our capabilities are greater. The risk is that without the kind of vigilance Boyd provided, we might create an even greater Australian ugliness.

UNDERSTANDING DESIGN:
THE ROBIN BOYD FOUNDATION

Sir John Betjeman, in his foreword to Penguin's 1963 edition of
The Australian Ugliness
, saw the book as a ‘symbolic unremitting biography of Australian tastes and fears in visible form'. Robin Boyd was discussing how patterned veneers, plastic facsimiles and borrowed ideas—colonial, unworldly, amateur—were all too evident in the public realm. But it was deeper than that; more profound issues had to be grappled with, as Betjeman alluded to.

Australians, victimised by two world wars and the Great Depression, needed to grasp their post-war opportunities with confidence. In belief and temperament Australia was a second-hand show, Boyd asserted, an imperialist Edwardian affectation fast-forwarded to a Hollywood-derived ersatz Americana. The veneer was the mimetic Austerican sensibility, where ‘not too bad' also meant ‘not too good'— and housing developments were matched accordingly.
The Australian Ugliness
was about this lack of ideas: about how best to occupy a stimulating cultural landscape where buildings and land come together with greater presence and identity.

Desperate to get Australia out of its inferiority rut, Boyd challenged the cultural lag. He wanted Australians to experience success on their own terms; to lead rather than follow in designing and planning the newly expanding cities; to write their own agenda, distancing the patronising cult of derived urban mediocrity.

Aesthetic intention and universal imagination—vision followed by sensible action—were fundamental to the process, as were progressive education and politics. Government conservatism, whichever the party, was stultifying: ideas went missing.

The Australian Ugliness
took aim, with exceptional wit and irony, at culpable public ignorance at one level, and the overbearing pomposity of officialdom at another. Both were sins of carelessness, and subverted research and knowledge instead of fostering an informed community consciousness from which sound urban and environmental judgements could emerge.

Boyd interpreted modernism not as a style but as a way of thinking, advancing a proposition: design was a composite affair. He sought ways of building a city, suburb or house that were expressive and sustaining. Social history, urban design, economic form, city planning and geographic dependency—not just architectural monuments— were equally important to him in developing a unifying idea underpinning Australian architecture and culture. This was the starting point for his imagination, and was soon to be complemented by a movement to create original Australian music, films and literature.

*

As a rare public intellectual Boyd was concerned with both public and professional education. He created the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects Small Homes Service with Melbourne's
Age
newspaper in 1947 and was its founding director. His professional critiques were published regularly in the UK, US and Australia, and read widely for their perceptive observations about the importance of culturally significant architecture that expressed modern, progressive identity and serious individual authorship.

As a patriot Boyd challenged orthodoxies, and despaired that Australian initiatives were gagged unless tested elsewhere. He believed that an independent stance in the arts and sciences, in the city and its suburbs, was essential. His preoccupations as a critic went beyond architecture or design to strike at the public consciousness— the connections that bind, that structure the way we educate ourselves to build, and in turn define, the urban form.

Today, Boyd's desire for a more confident Australia is somewhat assuaged, yet remains relevant. The significant gains in educational and social opportunity achieved in the 1970s and '80s Boyd would value, but he would be disappointed by the unresolved plight of outback Aboriginal Australia, and by the form and character of the Australian suburb, its awkward, anti-urban town centres where shopping is the principal aspiration.

*

This fiftieth-anniversary edition of
The Australian Ugliness
is a collaboration between Text Publishing and the Robin Boyd Foundation, which is based at 290 Walsh Street, the house in South Yarra, Melbourne, that Boyd designed for himself and his family in 1958.

The Foundation was created in 2005 in co-operation with Robin Boyd's family to celebrate Boyd's unique analysis of Australian progress—the establishment and evolution of the urban conditions that now house eighty per cent of the country's population. It conducts exhibitions, seminars and open houses for the public and for professional designers, planners and architects.

The Foundation solicits membership that appreciates Robin Boyd's original, inspirational ideas as a purposeful way of thinking about urban life, a continually expanding consciousness at every level of public and private endeavour. Informed architects and planners, government agencies and development professionals are involved. So too are individuals who want their cities and suburbs to be significant, to nurture the aspiration for a civilising, healthy society where care and safety are paramount.

The Robin Boyd Foundation exists ultimately to promote the importance and benefits of design education in Australian society.

Daryl Jackson
Robin Boyd Foundation Director

Daryl Jackson, AO, is a Melbourne-based architect with offices in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. Internationally he works in India, China and the UK. He is a Gold Medallist of the AIA, a Professor at the University of Melbourne and at Deakin University, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ballarat.

For more information about the Robin Boyd Foundation go to
www.robinboyd.org.au
.