Modernist Adelaide at NGV's Melbourne Art Book Fair

Join Stuart Symons to discover how modernist architecture was at the heart of the physical, cultural and social transformation of postwar Adelaide. Through this engaging talk through time, Stuart will examine a diverse range of modernist buildings from Adelaide, with a focus on Robin Boyd’s only Adelaide commission, Walkley House.

In 1956, Adelaide’s architectural imagination was flying. Robin Boyd’s Walkley House, with its striking glass box design, definitely challenged its heritage surroundings in conservative North Adelaide. Bates Smart McCutcheon’s MLC Building was rising above Victoria Square as the city’s first international style high-rise. And Adelaide’s own young meteors – including Brian Claridge, Newell Platten, Keith Neighbour and John Morphett – publicly announced their challenge to orthodoxy with an exhibition of 12 temporary modernist buildings at the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ Sixth Australian Architectural Convention.

Stuart Symons is a mid-century architecture historian, the founder of Modernist Adelaide and the author…