Rex Addison was asked by Architecture Australia in 2004 to design a page to be made into a poster to mark 100 years of publication. Rex made a linocut print called ‘Homegame’, showing five architectural works with which he had a personal connection. This presentation is an exploration of these works and their design context. Each of these buildings, in Rex’s view, stands apart from the ideas of Corbusier and the so-called Modernist zeitgeist of the Twentieth Century.
The influence of the English Free Style, the Arts and Crafts movement and the significance of Frank Lloyd Wright, and their connection to the buildings chosen, are considered. The five works that Rex uncovers, including a house of his own design, are illustrated with a vast number of images, providing an alternate viewpoint of Twentieth Century architecture—alternate to the Modernist mindset. He is more interested in the emergence of an idea about a building than making the building fit a set of ideas.
By the completion of this unit, you will:
Rex Addison grew up in Brisbane, is a graduate of the University of Queensland and has a graduate diploma from the Architectural Association in London.
Following four years of practice as an architects in Papua New Guinea, from 1978 to 1982, Addison established his own Brisbane based practice. The work of this practice has been widely published and has received awards in Queensland, the ACT and Papua New Guinea.
He ahs delivered many public lectures on his work and has taught in architecture faculties as a number of universities. He is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Queensland.
His house and studio, two of the three buildings at the centre of this discussion, won the Robin Dods Award in the RAIA’s 2000 program. The Speculative House, the third in the ‘3 in the Pocket’ was published in Architecture Australia in May/June 2005.
Addison’s work has been described in Architecture Australia as “a thoughtful linkage from the public heritage of formal architectural ideas through local building traditions to his own history.”
