Events Calendar

Symposium: Australian houses of the 1950s and 60s

Some of Australia’s leading experts and commentators joined the HHT at the Australian Houses of the 1950s and 60s symposium to explore the modern Australian house, interior design and icons of the period. Now you can listen to their presentations and also read more about each presenter.

Listen to the audio files
Read the speaker biographies

Audio files

Symposium introduction
Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon, Assistant Director, Creative Services, Historic Houses Trust (HHT), Kate Doyle, Registrar, NSW Architects Registration Board, and festival spokesperson

Australian houses of the 1950s and 60s: Sydney
Trevor Howells, Director, Graduate Heritage Conservation Program, University of Sydney

Unfinished experiments, uncertain heritage: Melbourne houses of the 1950s and 60s
Philip Goad, Professor of Architecture, University of Melbourne

Modernist influences of the 1950s and 60s
Dirk Meinecke, Harry Seidler & Associates

Modernist influences of the 1950s and 60s
Keith Cottier AM, Trustee of the Historic Houses Trust

Conservation of the Jack House
Annalisa Capurro, Design Educator, Sydney Institute Design Centre Enmore

Conserving, managing and researching mid-20th-century interiors
Joanna Nicholas, Curator, Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, HHT

Living in a 50s house
Tim Ross, comedian, broadcaster and author

Panel discussion

Moderated by Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon

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Speaker biographies

Dr Caroline Butler-Bowdon

Caroline Butler-Bowdon, Assistant Director, Creative Services, at the Historic Houses Trust, has worked in the cultural/heritage sector for over 15 years, including at the Museum of Sydney, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the universities of Sydney and New South Wales. She was most recently Head Curator at the Museum of Sydney where she published widely and curated exhibitions on many aspects of Australian history. In 2008 her book Homes in the sky: apartment living in Australia, co-authored with Dr Charles Pickett (MUP, 2007), won both the Australian Institute of Architects’ Bates Smart Architecture in the Media Award and Energy Australia National Trust Heritage Award for Interpretation and Presentation. She has also co-authored Shooting through: Sydney by tram (HHT, 2009) and Sydney then & now (Thunder Bay Press, California, 2005) and was co-editor of Talking about Sydney: population, community and culture in contemporary Sydney (UNSW Press & the HHT, 2006). She has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions at the Museum of Sydney, including: Art Deco, Federation Sydney, 1880– 1910, and Leunig animated. She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales on the history of apartment living in Sydney.

Trevor Howells

Trevor Howells is Director of the Graduate Heritage Conservation Program of the Faculty of Architecture, Design & Planning at the University of Sydney. He has practised as a conservation architect in the UK and a heritage consultant in Australia, and taught architectural history and building conservation at the university. Among his publications are Warehouses and woolstores of Victorian Sydney (1982) with Emery Balint and Victoria Smythe, Towards the dawn: Federation architecture in Australia, 1890–1915 (1989) with Michael Nicholson, Terrace houses in Australia (1999) with Colleen Morris, Allen Jack + Cottier 1952– 2002 (2003) and The University of Sydney architecture (2007). Other architectural guides are Istanbul architecture (in print) with Murat Gul, and Rome architecture (in preparation) with Flavia Marcello.

Professor Philip Goad

Philip Goad is Professor of Architecture and Director of the Melbourne School of Design at the University of Melbourne. He has worked extensively as an architect, 20th-century-heritage consultant and curator. Known internationally for his research on modern Australian architecture, he is also an expert on the life and work of Robin Boyd. He was co-editor with Ann Stephen and Andrew McNamara of Modernism & Australia: documents on art, design and architecture 1917–1967 (2006) and Modern times: the untold story of modernism in Australia (2008). With Julie Willis, he is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Australian architecture (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Dirk Meinecke

Dirk joined Harry Seidler & Associates in 1984 and worked personally with Harry Seidler for over 20 years on projects such as the Riverside Centre, Shell House, QV1 and Farrell house before spending three years in Vienna as local liaison and site architect on the Neue Donau projects. His more recent work has included the apartment coordination on Cove Apartments, liaison with Austrian authorities and consultants on the Thürnlhof-West housing project in Vienna, and design and documentation for part of the Grosvenor Place Ground Plane Redevelopment. Besides photographing the latest office projects, he also manages information systems for the office and acts as office pilot when required.

Keith Cottier AM

Keith Cottier is one of Australia’s most highly regarded and awarded architects and a Trustee of the Historic Houses Trust. A Director of Allen Jack + Cottier since 1965, he has been a driving force behind the quality of the company’s work, which has received an unequalled number of design awards. In 2001 he was awarded the Gold Medal, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ highest honour, and in 2004 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia. Keith has had a continuing involvement in heritage conservation, serving as a Commissioner of the Australian Heritage Commission for six years and as a Member of the Heritage Council of New South Wales for three years. He has also been in property management as a Member of the Sydney Cove Authority and the City West Development Corporation. Some of the high-profile heritage projects completed under his direction include Wylie’s Baths, the Argyle Centre, the Submarine Mine Depot at Chowder Bay and Penfold’s Magill Estate in Adelaide.

Annalisa Capurro

Annalisa Capurro is an interior designer of more than 20 years’ experience both in Australia and overseas in commercial, residential and hospitality design, conservation and heritage, and textile design. She is currently a design educator with TAFE NSW Sydney Institute Design Centre Enmore, where she teaches design studio, architectural and design history and restoration studies. Annalisa is past vice-president of the Art Deco Society of NSW and has held a seat on the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) 20th Century Heritage Committee. She is a volunteer leader for the Australian Architecture Association (AAA) and a member of the Design Institute of Australia (DIA). In 2010 she presented the Harry Seidler Memorial Lecture for the HHT at Rose Seidler House, and in 2011 spoke on ‘Australian modernism’ at Modernism Week in the US and on the theme ‘old is new again’ during Sydney Design 2011. Annalisa has a particular interest in mid-century modernist houses and is the owner of the 1957 Sulman-Award-winning Jack House designed by Russell Jack, founding partner of Allen Jack + Cottier, and his wife, architect Pamela Jack.

Joanna Nicholas

Joanna Nicholas is the curator of the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection (formerly the Conservation Resource Centre) at the HHT, which focuses on the history of houses, their interiors and gardens. She has been the curator of Rose Seidler House and Meroogal, Nowra, and also of the 2002 exhibition And so to bed: a short history of beds and bedding in Australia at Elizabeth Bay House. Joanna’s interests include 19th- and 20th-century houses and interiors, particularly furniture and soft furnishings and visual and decorative arts. She is a former longstanding member of the committee of the Furniture History Society (Australasia) and Museums & Galleries NSW’s standards programs, and sits on the Museums and Collections Advisory Committee of the National Trust of Australia (NSW). Joanna has also worked as a curator for the National Trust of Australia (NSW) and lectured for the Museum Studies Unit, University of Sydney.

Tim Ross

In 2001 Tim Ross, comedian, broadcaster and author, helped launch the Nova network. The Merrick and Rosso breakfast show soon became Sydney’s most popular radio program and then went national for six of its nine years. On TV, ‘Rosso’ featured on three seasons of the Logie nominated Unplanned on the Nine Network. He has also featured in The B-Team (Network Ten) and The Merrick and Rosso Show (Foxtel) and has made guest appearances on shows such as All Saints, Spicks and Specks and Rove Live. He has hosted Uncharted and Facing the Hangover for MTV, guest programmed Rage and is a regular on Weekend Sunrise. Along the way he’s picked up numerous ACRA radio awards, an Astra, the GQ ‘Man of the year’ award and an ARIA. In 2010 he released his first book, Mum had a Kingswood. Tim is currently a contributor to Men’s Style Australia and Rolling Stone and writes a monthly column, ‘Rosso’s Sydney’, for The (Sydney) Magazine in The Sydney Morning Herald.

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Museum of Sydney | 23 September 2011 | 8.30 am – 4.30 pm