“Ugly” Architectural Drawings of William Hardy Wilson: (Re)Viewing Architectural Drawings with Difficult Origins or Content for Curation and Display

Abstract

This article identifies architectural drawings as "ugly" not aesthetically, but where there are difficult origins or content. It argues for an explicit methodology for their curation and display. The twentieth- and twenty-first-century shift in the viewing of architectural drawings has brought architectural drawings closer to artworks for public consumption. However, the recent reassessment of cultural artifacts clashes with the widely accepted cultural and social mores. By examining drawings by the Australian architect William Hardy Wilson (1881–1955), this article proposes recommendations for the curation and display of ugly architectural drawings that are borrowed from other fields that have made progress in managing similar problems. By testing the recommendations against Hardy Wilson’s drawings, this article shows that contextualizing and acknowledging the offensive nature of his drawings allows for a critical reckoning of Australian architecture across the scholarly, industrial and public spheres.

Keywords:

• architectural drawings
• #MeToo
• Richard Meier
• exhibition
• publication
• William Hardy Wilson
• colonialism
• racism

Notes

1. Oxford English Dictionary Online, “ugly, adj., adv. and n.,” Oxford University Press, https://www.oed.com (accessed May 4, 2020).

2. Ibid.

3. George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (London: Jacob Tonson, 1734), XXIII.

4. Marcel Duchamp, “The Creative Act,” in Marchand du Sel [The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp: Salt Seller], ed. Michel Sanouillet and Elmer Peterson (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975), 140.

5. Ibid.

6. His surname was originally Wilson, but from 1910 he used Hardy Wilson as his surname. However, some repositories, for example, cite his surname as Wilson and his forenames as William Hardy or Hardy.

7. Hélène Lipstadt, “Architectural Publications, Competitions, and Exhibitions,” in Architecture and Its Image: Four Centuries of Architectural Representation: Works from the Collection of the Canadian Centre for Architecture, ed. Eve Blau and Edward Kaufman (Montreal: Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1989), 111.

8. “Prior to [the 1970s and 1980s], except for scattered instances […] architectural drawings were viewed simply as a means to an end.” Jordan Kauffman, Drawing on Architecture: The Object of Lines, 1970–1990 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018), 1.

9. Lipstadt noted that this term originated with Jacques Guillerme, and defined it as: “A representation may be considered to also be a figuration when the maker is a product of the social and psychological process that makes architects and architecture.” Lipstadt, “Architectural Publications, Competitions, and Exhibitions,” 110–111, 129.

10. Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 15.

11. Ibid., 14.

12. Margaret Richardson, “Architectural Drawings: Problems of Status and Value,” Oxford Art Journal 5, no. 2 (1983): 14.

13. Ibid.

14. “[…] Architectural exhibitions, which are notoriously difficult to stage, have only been an established part of the art world since the RIBA’s Heinz Gallery opened in 1972.” Ibid., 19.

15. Ibid., 15.

16. Ibid.

17. Richardson showed similar misgivings: “But in what respect can an architectural drawing be considered a ‘work of art’ in the conventional aesthetic sense […] should we be trying to compare an architect’s drawing with a painter’s? The obvious difference is that the architect is drawing diagrams and his drawings must rather be judged within the conventions of his own practice.” Ibid., 21.

18. Marco Frascari, “Introduction: Models and Drawings – The Invisible Nature of Architecture,” in From Models to Drawings: Imagination and Representation in Architecture, ed. Marco Frascari, Jonathan Hale, and Bradley Starkey (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 5.

19. Ibid.

20. In later years, Hergé’s feelings about the series were cautiously apologetic: “Hergé claims to have been literally pushed in that direction by Father Wallez, the then director of the Belgian catholic [sic] daily, Le XXè Siècle […] Hergé dutifully complied.” Philippe Met, “Of Men and Animals: Hergé’s Tintin au Congo, a Study in Primitivism,” Romanic Review 87, no. 1 (January 1996): 131–132.

21. Ibid., 131.

22. Rachael Langford also noted the artistic paucity of the series: “What is striking about the album, however, beyond its highly patronizing portrayal of Africans and brutal slaughter of animals, is the fact that it hangs together neither narratively nor in terms of the realism of the decor, something that Hergé was elsewhere minutely concerned to document.” Rachael Langford, “Photography, Belgian Colonialism and Hergé’s Tintin au Congo,” Journal of Romance Studies 8, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 83.

23. “This past July the Commission for Racial Equality in Britain recommended that bookstores throughout the United Kingdom remove the comic book Tintin in the Congo from their shelves.” Anonymous, “Racism in Children’s Books: Tintin in the Congo,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 56 (Summer 2007): 14; Jogchum Vrielink, “Effort to Ban Tintin Comic Book Fails in Belgium,” The Guardian, May 14, 2012. https://www.theguardian.com/law/2012/may/14/effort-ban-tintin-congo-fails (accessed October 28, 2020).

24. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner, “Foreword,” in Hergé, Tintin in the Congo, trans. Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner (London: Egmont, 1997).

25. Sandra E. Garcia, “The Woman Who Created #MeToo Long Before Hashtags,” The New York Times, October 20, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/me-too-movement-tarana-burke.html (accessed October 27, 2020).

26. Camille Gibson et al., “Understanding the 2017 ‘Me Too’ Movement’s Timing,” Humanity & Society 43, no. 2 (March 2019): 219.

27. Ibid., 219–220.

28. Robin Pogrebin, “5 Women Accuse the Architect Richard Meier of Sexual Harassment,” The New York Times, March 13, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/arts/design/richard-meier-sexual-harassment-allegations.html (accessed October 27, 2020).

29. Robin Pogrebin, “The Architect Richard Meier Steps Down After Harassment Allegations,” The New York Times, October 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/arts/design/richard-meier-metoo-firm.html (accessed October 27, 2020).

30. Debra K. Rubin, “Secrecy Decried as Architects Weigh Steps After Meier Sex-Harass Claims,” Engineering News-Record, April 25, 2018, https://www.enr.com/articles/44382-secrecy-decried-as-architects-weigh-steps-after-meier-sex-harass-claims (accessed October 28, 2018).

31. Robin Pogrebin, “Sotheby’s Closes Richard Meier Show After Harassment Charges,” The New York Times, March 14, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/14/arts/design/richard-meier-sothebys-harassment-charges.html (accessed October 27, 2020).

32. Hardy Wilson’s richly produced publications, Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania (1924) and Grecian and Chinese Architecture (1937), include his own illustrations. Old Colonial Architecture was republished in 1975, after his death, in a less luxurious format. He also wrote to Australian journals and newspapers, such as Art in Australia, The Burnie Advocate and The Sydney Morning Herald. His autobiography spans two volumes, The Dawn of a New Civilization (1929) and Eucalyptus (1941). In 1934, he published Yin-Yang, a satirical fantasy novel, based on stories that he had told his son.

33. Robin Boyd, cited in Cyril Pearl, Hardy Wilson and His Old Colonial Architecture (Melbourne: Nelson, 1970), 26.

34. National Library of Australia (NLA), “Hardy Wilson’s Peking,” https://www.nla.gov.au/exhibitions/hardy-wilsons-peking (accessed May 5, 2020).

35. William Hardy Wilson, Solution of Jewish Problem (Melbourne: Hardy Wilson, 1941).

36. Pearl, Hardy Wilson and His Old Colonial Architecture, 23.

37. Stanislaus Fung and Mark Jackson, “‘Yellow of the East and White from the West’: Hardy Wilson’s Grecian and Chinese Architecture (1937),” Architectural Theory Review 1, no. 1 (1996): 67.

38. Zeny Edwards, William Hardy Wilson: Artist, Architect, Orientalist, Visionary (Sydney: Watermark, 2001), 11.

39. Deborah van der Plaat, “An Oriental Continent: Climatic Determinism, Race and Identity in the Interwar Writings of Australian Architect William Hardy Wilson (1881–1955),” Fabrications 28, no. 1 (2018): 82.

40. Hardy Wilson designed ten cities for the placement of, as he foresaw, Sydney’s surplus population. Among these cities is Kurrajong.

41. William Hardy Wilson, Kurrajong: Sit-Look-See (Melbourne: Hardy Wilson, 1954), 25.

42. Ibid., 36.

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid., 7.

47. Ibid.

48. Ibid., 8.

49. Ibid., 36.

50. Ibid., 23.

51. William Hardy Wilson, Kurrajong: Sit-Look-See (Sydney: David Jones, 1950).

52. Ibid., 36.

53. In Hardy Wilson’s publication, Old Colonial Architecture (1924), he showed a liking for Chinese architecture. He had travelled to China in 1921 and drawn the buildings there. The drawings are published, alongside his drawings from Southern Europe, in Grecian and Chinese Architecture (1937). He also collected Chinese artefacts, and his fantasy novel, Yin-Yang (1934), has Chinese themes. In his architectural practice, he experimented with an East-West hybridization of styles with the unbuilt design for his home, Celestion (c. 1924), and the completed tennis pavilion at Eryldene in Sydney (1927).

54. Hardy Wilson, Kurrajong, 8.

55. William Hardy Wilson, Grecian and Chinese Architecture (Melbourne: Hardy Wilson, 1937), 4.

56. Ibid.

57. Hardy Wilson’s Kurrajong Library design clearly owes much to the Hall for Prayer for Good Harvests. The Hall for Prayer for Good Harvests dates from the Ming Dynasty, and is within the Temple of Heaven complex in Beijing.

58. Hardy Wilson, Kurrajong, 31.

59. Herbert I. London, Non-white Immigration and the ‘White Australia’ Policy (New York: New York University Press, 1970), 12.

60. Ken Rivett, “The Immigration Reform Movement,” in The Abolition of the White Australia Policy: The Immigration Reform Movement Revisited, ed. Nancy Viviani (Brisbane: Griffith University, 1992), 16.

61. Hardy Wilson, Kurrajong.

62. Ibid.

63. Fung and Jackson, “‘Yellow of the East and White from the West’,” 64.

64. Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner, “Foreword.”

65. Fung and Jackson, “Yellow of the East and White from the West,” 67–68.

66. Eugenia Shanklin, “The Profession of the Color Blind: Sociocultural Anthropology and Racism in the 21st Century,” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (September 1998): 669–679.

67. Ibid., 673.

68. John Gray Sweeney, “Nationalism, and Nostalgia in Cowboy Art,” Oxford Art Journal 15, no. 1 (Manifest Destiny 1992): 67–80.

69. Ibid., 67.

70. F. C. Westley, “Victoria,” The Spectator 52 (March 1879): 281.

71. Robin Boyd, The Walls Around Us: The Story of Australian Architecture (Melbourne: Cheshire, 1962), 1.

72. Ibid., 2.

73. ARM Architecture, “Barak Building,” Projects, https://armarchitecture.com.au/projects/barak-building/ (accessed May 10, 2020).

74. Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore, “How Can Indigenous Australia Put Its Stamp on Buildings in Modern Cities?” The Guardian, February 12, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/feb/12/how-can-indigenous-australia-put-its-stamp-on-buildings-in-modern-cities (accessed October 28, 2020).

75. Christine Hansen, “Melbourne’s New William Barak Building is a Cruel Juxtaposition,” The Conversation, March 18, 2015. https://theconversation.com/melbournes-new-william-barak-building-is-a-cruel-juxtaposition-38983 (accessed November 18, 2020).

76. Andrew Markus, Division in Bendigo: Mainstream Public Opinion and Responses to Public Protest in Bendigo, 2014–16 (Melbourne: Monash University, 2018), iii–v.

77. Larissa Romensky, “Bendigo Mosque Design Takes its Cue from Many References,” ABC News, September 27, 2016. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-27/bendigo-mosque-design-takes-it-cues-from-many-references/7878650 (accessed October 28, 2020).

78. Markus, Division in Bendigo.

79. Lisa Martin, “A Blessing in Disguise? Bendigo at Peace with its Mosque after Years of Far-right Protest,” The Guardian, July 30, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jul/30/a-blessing-in-disguise-bendigo-at-peace-with-its-mosque-after-years-of-far-right-protest (accessed October 27, 2020).

80. Future applications of the recommendations of this article include drawings that depict the architecture for authoritarian regimes or the architecture from periods of conflict, displacement, or segregation. Additionally, the artifacts for consideration would be extended to, among others, films, models, photography, and writings.

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Notes on contributors

Yvette Putra

Dr Yvette Putra researches and teaches in Melbourne. She trained as an architect, and completed a Master of Design (Heritage) and Ph.D. in architectural history and theory. Her main areas of interest are the history and theory of architecture and urbanism, particularly of Europe and the Asia-Pacific, with emphases on their intersections with architectural representation, twentieth-century architecture and urbanism, postcolonial studies, and social history.