Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand

Vol. 33

Foreword

Gold, for millennia, has fascinated humanity and possessed extraordinary value amongst most civilizations. It was and remains the favoured ultimate currency in many cultures and it has served as a signal form of capital: both its accumulation and its waste. Gold was the catalyst for wars, and constituted its spoils. Gold is the adjective to describe mythical lands: for Marco Polo, Japan was ‘Zipangu, the Land of Gold’. There have been venerated building types celebrating religious and cultural beliefs like ‘golden’ temples and ‘golden’ houses like Nero’s Domus Aurea. There have been buildings to protect gold, and buildings which openly display it. In art and architectural historiography, there have been ‘golden’ periods and ‘golden ages’. Gold is about luxury, glamour and excess. It also has as it’s direct opposite objects of no value, things that might be described as worthless.

The 33rd Annual SAHANZ Conference, held in Melbourne in July 2016, was devoted to the exploration of architecture and gold. The public announcement in 1851 that gold had been discovered in the newly created state of Victoria changed the course of Australian history. Melbourne, the state’s capital, grew to be one of the world’s great provincial metropolises and gold was its motor. In 1854, the Victorian Gold Discovery Committee observed that “The discovery of the Victorian Goldfields has converted a remote dependency into a country of world wide fame; it has attracted a population, extraordinary in number, with unprecedented rapidity; it has enhanced the value of property to an enormous extent; it has made this the richest country in the world; and, in less than three years, it has done for this colony the work of an age, and made its impulses felt in the most distant regions of the earth.” Melbourne was thus the ideal conference venue for critically examining gold and the history of the built environment.

The conference offered the opportunity to explore the words gold and architecture. Papers examined and reflected upon various aspects and examples of this theme within different cultural contexts. Ideas and concepts explored in the papers included architecture and capitalism; colonial and neo-liberal transformations in Asia and the circulation of people and commodities; veins of gold: colonisation, imperialism and neo-liberalism; Victorian prosperity and the phenomena of gold rushes in Australia and New Zealand; mining towns, their landscapes, foundation and sometime disappearance; gold rushes as triggers for migration and the transfer of ideas, people and technologies; gold diggers: labour migration, mining and casino cultures; golden lands, golden kingdoms and ‘gold’ places like the Gold Coast and Persepolis; buildings and gold – treasuries, golden houses, golden temples, even Gold’s Gym; gold medals as accolades in architecture as in sport; gold and its connotations of ornament, gilding, and the rise of décor; ‘gold’ and architects like Carlo Scarpa, Minoru Yamasaki and Ernö Goldfinger; gold in different cultural settings like Persia and Germany; architectural history and historiography – questions of ‘golden days’ and a ‘golden age’; gold and the idea of preciousness in conservation and heritage; gold, alchemy, materiality and craft; gold and the interior (churches, 1960s glamour and even Rem Koolhaas); penniless: spaces of abjection in new global economies; and the fateful epitaph: “All that glisters is not gold”.

We would like to thank all those who enthusiastically embraced this call to ‘Gold’ and contributed to this conference, be it as authors, referees, organizers and sponsors. It was yet another golden occasion for the Society.

AnnMarie Brennan and Philip Goad

Conference Convenors and Editors of the Conference Proceedings

Proceedings of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand Volume 33

Edited by AnnMarie Brennan and Philip Goad

Published in Melbourne, Australia, by SAHANZ, 2016 ISBN: 978-0-7340-5265-0

The papers in this volume were presented at the 33rd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, held on July 6-9 2016 at the Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne, Australia.

All papers accepted for publication were blind reviewed by two referees; papers not accepted by one of the referees were blind reviewed by a third referee whose decision was final. Papers were matched, where possible, to referees in a related field and with similar interests to the authors. A full list of referees is published at the back of these proceedings.

Copyright of this volume belongs to SAHANZ. Copyright of the content of individual contributions remains the property of the named author or authors.

All efforts have been made to ensure that authors have secured appropriate permissions to reproduce the images illustrating individual contributions. Interested parties may contact the editors.

Other than for fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968 and Copyright Amendment Act 2006, no part of this volume may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of the editors, publisher and author/s.

The Proceedings are a record of the papers presented at the annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ).

Publication of the research documented in these Proceedings underscores the Society’s commitment to academic freedom and academic integrity. Conclusions drawn from this research have been tested through appropriate formal academic review processes. The Society upholds the principle of a member’s ability to express a view or form an opinion based on these conclusions. However, the conclusions and views expressed in the Proceedings do not necessarily reflect the views of the Society

Keynote Speakers

Gold, Power and Architectural Stories in Indonesia

Abidin Kusno

York University

In ancient Java, arguably, gold possesses a more general symbolic meaning than in Europe. Traditional Southeast Asians (both commoners and nobilities) wove gold ornaments into materials associated with rites marking transitions to a significantly different usually higher stage in life. In ancient Java, it was considered as relatively inexpensive even as the island lacked its own gold. It was a material reachable by a relatively large proportion of the population. Today, however, gold has become more an object of distance than intimacy; a signifier not of social relation, but of conflict. Gold has been associated with violence, greed and disputes over who could dig where; Gold retrieves memories of neocolonialism as the US mining giant Freeport owns one of the largest gold mine in the world located in Indonesian’s Papua; Gold has become a major contributor to environmental degradation (due to water pollution by mercury and deforestation to make way for the mines).

How do these two different meanings of gold from the past and present have informed stories of architecture and urbanism? This talk seeks to tease out a series of architectural narrative of gold as the material found itself physically, symbolically and imaginatively in the built environment of the city, such as in the case of a gold topped dome of a mosque; a gold plated flame of the national monument; the naming of Jakarta’s business district as the Golden Triangle and the literary representation of the area associated with golden dream and nightmare, among others.

Biography

Abidin Kusno is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. His research interests, with a focus on Jakarta/Indonesia, include urban/suburbanism, politics and culture, history and theory of architecture. He held a Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture (with University of British Columbia) and currently serves as President of Canadian Council for Southeast Asian Studies. Kusno is the author of several books in English and Indonesian, the most recent of which include, After the New Order: Space, Politics and Jakarta (Hawaii University Press, 2013) and The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2010). Kusno has served on the editorial boards of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Journal of Architectural Education, Journal of Planning History, Pacific Affairs, as well as on the International Advisory Board of the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.

Prof. Kusno's keynote lecture was supported by the Indonesia Forum and the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.

Matters of Extraction: From The Margin of Empire(s)

Alessandra Ponte

Université de Montréal

Canada is home to 75% of all global prospecting and mining companies. Because of such staggering presence of the mining industry, Canada has been named an extraction empire. Nevertheless, the Premier of Québec, Philippe Couillard, guilty of brazenly inviting foreign companies to take advantage of the potentially rich mineral deposits in the North of the Province, has recently been reproached for acting “colonized.” Historically, Canada’s economy has been based on the extraction and exportation of natural resources: beaver pelts beginning in the seventeenth century; fish, timber, pulp and paper, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century; minerals, hydro-power, and oil during the twentieth and twenty-first century. Already in the 1930s, political economist Harold Innis, one of Canada’s greatest thinkers, proposed the “staples thesis” to explain the specificity of Canadian economic development and its heavy dependence on foreign markets and Imperial control. Innis developed the staple thesis when Canadians began to realize that after being subjects to the colonial dominion first of the French and than of British Empire, they were under threat of being crushed by the Empire south of their border: the USA markets and economy now dictating the kind of staple to be extracted and the rhythm of exploitation. One may safely say that Canadians have systematically been confronted with (and reflected upon) relations between centers and peripheries, international market trends, unbalanced system of power, and colonization strategies. Innis’ staple thesis permits to address in rich geographical, historical, political and economic terms the character of the  “matter” extracted from specific locations and distributed worldwide. The paper outlines and explores the complex Canadian experience taking as starting point gold mining in the Abitibi region of Québec.

Biography

Alessandra Ponte is Full Professor at the École d’architecture, Université de Montréal.  She has also taught at the schools of architecture of Princeton University, Cornell University, Pratt Institute, the ETH Zurich, and at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. For the last eight years she has been responsible for the Phyllis Lambert International Seminar, annual events addressing current topics in landscape and architecture. She curated the exhibition Total Environment: Montreal 1965-1975 (Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, 2009) and collaborated to the exhibition and catalogue God & Co: François Dallegret Beyond the Bubble (with Laurent Stalder and Thomas Weaver, London: Architectural Association Publications, 2011). She has recently published a collection of essays on North American landscapes titled The House of Light and Entropy (London: AA Publications, 2014) and collaborated to the project for the Canadian Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Biennale Architecture on the topic of Extraction.

Prof. Ponte's keynote lecture was sponsored by AADR: Art, Architecture, Design Research and URO Media.

Acknowledgments

The convenors of SAHANZ 2016: Gold received 137 abstracts from which 81 papers accepted. In the end, 75 papers were prepared for presentation at the conference and publication in its proceedings. All papers accepted for the conference were blind reviewed by two referees; papers not accepted by one of the referees were blind reviewed by a third referee, whose decision was final. Papers were matched, where possible, to referees in a related field and with similar interests to the authors.

The convenors would like to thank the academics and others who gave their time and expertise to the refereeing of these papers. The convenors would like to thank and acknowledge the support of Naomi Mullumby and Sarah Charing, Architecture Library, University of Melbourne, Mary Lewis, State Library of Victoria, Professor Harriet Edquist, RMIT Design Archives, Tony Lee, Robin Boyd Foundation, Alan and Alison Pert, and Michael Roper. Thanks also to Professor Daryl Le Grew, Acting Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne for his support of the conference.

SAHANZ 2016: Gold was also made possible through the intellectual support of ACAHUCH (Australian Collaboratory for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage), based in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne.

The convenors would like to thank and acknowledge the following sponsors: the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne; the Indonesia Forum, University of Melbourne; Taylor & Francis Group; Andrew Mackenzie at URO media; and Rochus Hinkel at AADR: Art, Architecture, Design Research – Spurbuchverlag.

Conference Convenors and Editors of the Conference Proceedings

AnnMarie Brennan and Philip Goad

Conference Organizing Committee

Amanda Achmadi, University of Melbourne
AnnMarie Brennan, University of Melbourne
Karen Burns, University of Melbourne
Harriet Edquist, RMIT Design Archives
Philip Goad, University of Melbourne
Hannah Lewi, University of Melbourne
Anoma Pieris, University of Melbourne
Paul Walker, University of Melbourne
Julie Willis, University of Melbourne

Conference Academic Committee

Amanda Achmadi, University of Melbourne
AnnMarie Brennan, University of Melbourne
Karen Burns, University of Melbourne
Harriet Edquist, RMIT University
Philip Goad, University of Melbourne
Gevork Hartoonian, University of Canberra
Paul Hogben, UNSW Australia
Hannah Lewi, University of Melbourne
Mirjana Lozanovska, Deakin University
Judith O’Callaghan, UNSW Australia
Anoma Pieris, University of Melbourne
Ari Seligmann, Monash University
Paul Walker, University of Melbourne
Julie Willis, University of Melbourne

Conference Tours

Harriet Edquist, RMIT Design Archives
Philip Goad, University of Melbourne
Rebecca McLaughlan, University of Melbourne
Paul Walker, University of Melbourne
Gareth Wilson, University of Melbourne

Referees

Dijana Alic
Amanda Achmadi
Gene Bawden
David Beynon
Simone Brott
Alexandra Brown
Karen Burns
Scott Coleman
Ursula De Jong
Kim Dovey
Harriet Edquist
Paola Favaro
Jennifer Ferng
Robert Freestone
Julia Gatley
Janina Gosseye
Qinghua Guo
Maryam Gusheh
Gevork Hartoonian
Kate Hislop
Paul Hogben
Sandra Kaji-O’Grady
Nicole Kalms
Stuart King
Peter Kohane
Catherine Lassen
Andrew Leach
Gini Lee
Hannah Lewi
Miles Lewis
Cameron Logan
Mirjana Lozanovska
Duanfang Lu
Desley Luscombe
John Macarthur
Leoni Matthews
Harry Margalit
Christine McCarthy
Janet McGaw
Paul Memmott
Joanna Merwood-Salisbury
Andrew Metcalf
Luke Morgan
Antony Moulis
Elizabeth Musgrave
David Nichols
Judith O’Callaghan
Kristen Orr
Michael Ostwald
Peter Raisbeck
Charles Rice
Anoma Pieris
John Sadar
Andrew Saniga
Christoph Schnoor
Peter Scriver
Katrina Simon
Robin Skinner
Ari Seligmann
Kate Darian-Smith
Nicole Sully
William Taylor
John Ting
Deborah Van der Plaat
Christopher Vernon
Tijana Vujosevic
Paul Walker
Nigel Westbrook
Julie Willis
Andrew Wilson
Julian Worrall
Jianfei Zhu

Administrative Support

Raymond Kee
Philippa Knack
Irna Grace Kostic
Anne-Marie Pedeau
Rees Quilford
Sanaa Vohra

Logo Design

AnnMarie Brennan
Michele Burder

Graphic Design

Research

Yvette Grace Putra

Conference Website Design and Maintenance

Patrick Paevere