EDITED BOOK —

Hot Modernism is a thematic history that traces both the conflicts and felicities that occurred as Modernism encountered a region with an already strongly developed cultural identity. In nine expansive essays, segmented by rich visual surveys of some of Queensland’s key modernist buildings and organised by critical themes such as climate, international influences, changing lifestyles and urban development, Hot Modernism explores the foundation and growth of modern architecture in post-war Queensland. In recent years the regional flowerings of mid-twentieth-century Modernism in Europe and the Americas have been meticulously dissected and widely published. Hot Modernism contributes to this emerging understanding that Modernism, despite its internationalism, was not a monolithic movement, nor one that can be understood at a national level. The vastness of the Australian continent along with its rich climatic, geographic and cultural diversity necessitates a more nuanced, place-based approach. Hot Modernism investigates this finer grain as it expounds upon the idiosyncratic, regional building practice that emerged in Queensland in the decades following the Second World War.

John Macarthur, Deborah van der Plaat, Janina Gosseye, Andrew Wilson (eds.), Hot Modernism: Queensland Post-war Architecture 1945-1975 (London: Artifice Books, 2015).