Conditions, Connections and Change: Reviewing Australian Architectural Theory 1880-2000

There are no Australians included in the several anthologies of architectural theory published in the past decade. Anthologies that survey the recent period of intense theoretical production in architecture include Architecture Theory Since 1968 (1998), edited by K. Michael Hays, with 47 entries, and Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture (1996), edited by Kate Nesbitt and including 51 contributions spanning the period 1965—1995. Contributors to these anthologiesare primarily North American or European, with the exception of one Japanese and a New Zealander now based in New York. Hanno-Walter Kruft's A History of Architectural Theory: From Vitruvius to the Present, 1994, has no discussion of the scene outside Europe and the United States and anthologies that address the modern period such as Joan Ockman's Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A Documentary Anthology (1993) are similarly without Australian content.The selections involved in constructing an anthology in any historical subject are motivated, even where authors profess to objectivity or an even-handed survey. It would be difficult, though, to argue that the absence of Australians in an international setting is a major oversight or a deliberate slight...