Housing and Residential Environments

Abstract

Today the population of Australian housing is made up of a complex mixture of old and new, diverse dwelling types and materials of construction. I will not attempt a comprehensive history of Australian houses, not least because much of that ground has already been covered, especially in Boyd’s classic work Australia’s Home, and the (1985a) essays Irving edited, The History and Design of the Australian House.

… the small house, probably more than anything else that man [sic] has done, has made the face of Australia and to an extent the faces of Australians … Australia is the small house … a material triumph and an aesthetic calamity.

(Boyd 1978 [1952]: 7)