Search

To commence the thirtieth annual conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ), held on Australia's Gold Coast in July 2013, ten delegates were invited, with very little warning, to take five minutes and one image and offer a provocation on the open matters of architectural history in the present moment. The term 'open' was taken as the conference theme--a device used by SAHANZ meetings not so much to define the scope of papers presented as to declare the conference flavour year by year. It was not, therefore, an open conference (anything goes) so much as a conference on open issues (where, indeed, to go). The ten interlocutors were invited after the conference to document their interventions. They are presented here as a record of the preoccupations of a specific moment and a specific institutional geography, with all the idiosyncrasies and commonalities it might reveal to a broader audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two national town planning conferences held in 1917 and 1918 were milestone events in the early development of Australian town planning. Their significance was recognized at the time by planning protagonists and has been elaborated upon in subsequent years by planning historians. Women had a visible presence at both conferences. This paper examines the town planning interests and motivations of the women delegates. It reveals the extent to which many of the women were imperialist and win-the-war loyalist. Little scholarly attention has been given to the relationship between gender issues and imperialist sentiment within early twentieth century town planning discourse, yet it is significant in understanding the Australian women’s planning aspirations. The paper shows that the women’s advocacy of better housing and more extensive facilities for children was linked closely to a commitment to ‘improving the race’. It suggests that the objectives were imperialist rather than nationalist: it was the future of the ‘imperial race’ that was deemed to be at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]