The Postmodernisms of Russell Hall: Exploring Australia’s Changing Architecture Culture Through a Biographical Approach

Abstract

This paper studies the work and practice of Brisbane-based architect Russell Hall to better understand how architects in Australia negotiated the professional and formal changes that emerged in architectural culture from the 1970s. Architectural historiographies tend to discuss postmodernism as plural and multiple, while also boxing it into various branches or strands, such as ecological, traditionalist/historicist, vernacular, or pop/fun. Many of these strands, however, co-exist within the work of architects. When you study their professional biographies up close, it becomes difficult (if not impossible) to sustain these categorisations, as architectural designs often blend different interests in specific, situated ways. If broad categorisations exist about postmodern architectural forms, so too do they exist about postmodern professional practice. In the latter decades of the 20th century, it is often said, the “hired-gun-architect” and the “conglomerate architecture-building-business corporation” replaced the “gentleman-artist-architect.” However, once again, on the ground, the situation is often more nuanced and multifaceted than that. This paper adopts a biographical approach to better understand how one architect, Hall, negotiated the professional and formal changes that emerged in architectural culture from the 1970s. In doing so, it seeks to improve our understanding of postmodern architectural culture in Australia—and Queensland specifically.