This year, Sydney Living Museums is presenting a Home and Architecture program with a whole bunch of mouth-watering tours, talks and exhibitions about Australian residential architecture. The Museum of Sydney is one of the main venues for the program.
Hot on the heels of the ‘Iconic Australian Houses’ exhibition at the museum, ‘Dream Home, Small Home’ is an interesting look at building in the suburbs after World War II.
The post-war period was a new dawn for residential architecture in Australia, and homes were better designed for local conditions. During this time, about half of all homeowners were owner-builders, and they were hungry for ready-made house plans with modern features like large windows and open plan living.
As the museum explains, the demand for house plans was met by retail stores and magazines:
“In the 1950s, the scale of architectural advice available to home buyers grew enormously as architects, department stores, home magazines and the Sunday newspapers formed a series of partnerships to provide home plan services. These services commonly offered a complete set of house plans and specifications, prepared by an architect, at a fraction of the normal cost. Some partnerships were short-lived – the Sunday Telegraph’s plan service, offered with architect John P Ley in November 1953, lasted only a few months – but the Small Homes Service initiated by the NSW chapter of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, and the plan bureaus established by Grace Bros [department store] and The Australian Women’s Weekly [magazine], endured into the 1960s.”
The Dream Home, Small Home exhibition takes about an hour if you want to look at everything carefully, and there’s a nice selection of mid-century house plans on show, along with some of the original advertising. The Mondrian graphics in the presentation design and the Aussie accents in the video on display are the icing on the cake!
‘Dream Home, Small Home’ is at the Museum of Sydney until November 23rd, 2014. For more information see sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/exhibitions/dream-home-small-home
Museum exterior:
Extract from the Sydney Living Museums Home & Architecture brochure:
Entrance to the exhibition:
Compact Family House design by the Small Homes Service, 1953 (Image via Sydney Living Museums/Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection):
House of Tomorrow design by John P Ley, 1957 (Image via Sydney Living Museums/Caroline Simpson Library and Research Collection):
