Pioneers Of Modernism

The Arts and Crafts architects created some of the most thoughtful, beautifully crafted and inspired architecture in Australia's history.

The Arts and Crafts movement--emerging in the 1880s and 1890s--brought a breath of fresh air to Australian design. A sense of innovation and understanding of the values of simplicity, harmony and unity permeated both architecture and the allied arts and crafts.

Professor Harriet Edquist traces the development of the movement from its origins, including key architects who introduced the theories and idioms of the British Arts and Crafts movement and transposed them to Australia. From remote government buildings to homesteads for the landed gentry, from the quintessentially Australian bungalow style to religious architecture, from garden design to furniture integral to its environment, and finally to a vision for the 'new city', we see the innovation and influence of the Arts and Crafts movement.

Pioneers of Modernism is richly illustrated and visually impressive but it is Edquist's thorough research and perceptive eye that make this original and scholarly account of major significance in acknowledging the importance of the Arts and Crafts movement in Australian design history. About the Author

Harriet Edquist is Professor of Architectural History in the School of Architecture and Design at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She has published widely on Australian architecture and art and was editor of Transition: Discourse on Architecture from 1987 to 1992. She is the author and editor of a number of books, including The Culture of Landscape Architecture and Frederick Romberg: The Architecture of Migration 1938-1975.