Home in the imagination
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 2: Dreams of Land
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Mark Wakely
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We live out our lives, most of us, in other people's houses. We had no say in their shapes, took no part in their construction. Perhaps the house in which you live was standing before you were. Most likely it will outlive you. People have lived there before you, others will live there after you. A woman, not yet born, is about to enter the room in which you're sitting. Crossing the room, she places a vase of violets on a small mahogany table located exactly where your television stands now. Her furniture and her tastes make it her room. But the exterior of the house will say no more about the new owner than it says now about you. Apart from maybe choosing the new colour to paint the guttering, it was none of her doing.
The long car trips to visit my grandmother were accompanied by singalongs. Among the family's small repertoire was a ditty we would chirp over and over, as repetitive as the white road posts flashing by the car windows.
We'll build a bungalow big enough for two,
Big enough for two, my honey, big enough for two, walla walla.
And when we're married, how happy we will be.
Underneath the bamboo, underneath the bamboo tree, boom boom.
The order of things set out in this simple song about the nesting impulse might surprise many today. You build the house first and marry second. The house is completed in time for the wedding and once the happy couple are ensconced it becomes a home. Living as I was at that time in a drought-stricken country town, the prospect of finding an allotment with the required tropical bamboo seemed slim. But did it ever occur to me that the first-person plural pronoun in "We'll build a bungalow" was meant literally? You and I together will build a house and we'll build it with our own hands in the evenings after work, on the weekends, with the assistance of our relatives or neighbours or any help we can muster. This will be our Shangri-la and we will be its owner-builders.
Throughout the decade in which I was born, the 1950s, an average of one third of all houses that went up in Australia were built by their owners. It was an age when home-making magazines explained not just how to decorate a home but how to construct one and how to get your hands on scarce building materials. What puzzles me now is how so many people found the confidence to attempt to build houses. The attitude was: "Let's give it a go. If the Connollys or O'Reagans can do it with no experience then so can we. What's the worst that can happen?" A fair-enough approach to baking a cake but there's somewhat more at stake over whether a house rises or falls.
It is not as if building skills were handed down from father to son or that the owner-builders were all tradesmen. Many of these people worked in offices during the week. While some might have picked up skills from odd labouring jobs or from military service, most just threw themselves into it. Faced with a housing shortage that allowed home owners to name their price, the alternative was to keep saving for God knows how long while living under the same roof as the in-laws or in a caravan or a tent. Doing it yourself saved a significant amount of money that otherwise would have been spent on labour. These people demystified the idea that building a house was something difficult. If you didn't know how to lay bricks you could still hammer on a weatherboard, so you built in timber. And looking at the tangible results of one's labour felt good. These were small, unpretentious houses. An additional room might come later, as the family grew, or it might never be more than a dream, something to talk about endlessly on Saturday afternoons over a cold beer and the form guide.
OURS IS AN AGE OF SPECIALISATION. We're more removed from life's everyday processes of supply and demand than were past generations. In the year to June 2003, the Housing Institute of Australia notes, 2710 owner-builder approvals were issued nationally, representing 2.4 per cent of total approvals – a far cry from the 30-odd per cent of owner-built homes in the 1950s.
But we remain passionately interested, perhaps even obsessed, with the appearance of our homes. Renovating has become almost a national sport. If we're not doing it ourselves we're watching strangers do it in the latest television lifestyle program. And newsagents' shelves are buckling under the weight of home-design magazines promoting examples of innovative domestic architecture that for most people are in the realm of impossible dreams. The cost of using an architect to design a one-off tailor-made house means that less than 5 per cent of new Australian homes have ever seen the hand of a registered architect. Most of us buy houses the same way we buy our clothes, off the rack, mass-produced from housing display villages with quaint names like Home World.
If a house is a measure of earthly success then it follows, in the minds of many, that the more house you have, the more successful you must be, or appear to be in the eyes of others. There's an expectation that wealth and grandiose architecture go hand in hand; that no one makes millions as a movie star or as a futures trader only to live in a five-room house. In the Liberace school of design the modernist dictum of "less is more" is replaced with "more is more".
A quick glance at the range of houses being churned out by some Australian builders, with little or no input from architects, reveals the continuing appeal of the past in the housing marketplace, along with a fondness for neoclassical ornamentation (in an effort to impress from the street) and lots and lots of rooms.
"The Sovereign 40 Georgian", declares an advertisement in a newspaper housing supplement, "really presents an open face to the world. A pediment supported by sturdy looking columns frames the porch and the front door ... the grandeur of this home is such that, on entering, you will be in awe of it. And when you're dressed for dinner, descend the staircase like Scarlett O'Hara, for this is a Georgian-inspired home." By evoking Gone with the Wind the developer is offering a double dose of things Georgian, a dash of King George I and a pinch of Atlanta, Georgia. If you have a taste for Italy then the Villa Toscana 4000 might be for you, with the promise that its Tuscan feel "will transport you in spirit to the sun-kissed Mediterranean with the soft yellow tones of its rendered façade and classically styled columned portico sheltering the large front door". Or you could live in a temple if you choose the Riverview 2800. "Perhaps the Parthenon in Athens provided the inspiration for the opulent Riverview 2800," speculates the man from the advertising department. "Triangular roofs and wide portico with columns combine to create a clean-lined classic, Grecian look." Well, if you've ever tried parking a car near the Parthenon in Athens you'll appreciate that this temple to domesticity comes with a double lockup garage.
These popular houses, built by the score, are what Newcastle architect Lindsay Johnston refers to as ABBA architecture; all bloody balustrades and arches. They borrow features from classical architecture and celebrate a sense of arrival by flanking their front doors with ornamental columns.
You don't have to drive far in any suburb to find a house that still celebrates the column, especially the simple Tuscan column. In a radio broadcast, a colleague of mine once suggested tongue-in-cheek that the most elaborate style of classical column, the Corinthian column, with its acanthus-leaf-decorated capital, was favoured in Australia by the nouveau riche, degenerates and drug dealers. The Corinthian can certainly pop up as a prop-up on the houses of European immigrants, who, of course, are likely to be none of the above. Lions or eagles might flank the gated driveways of the same houses, as migrants secure themselves in their new country. But the appeal of lions and heraldic pomp and ornamentation that speaks of other places isn't limited to the new houses of European immigrants.
The end of the pathway that led to my parents' final home, built in the Federation style at the end of the 19th century as Australia became a nation, was flanked by two reclining, life-size concrete lions. Their faces rested on their paws in a pose that seemed to sum up the complacency of a nation snug in the bosom of mother England. The lions might have appeared to be keeping silent sentry at the front door but every time I passed them they had something profound to say to me about empire, queen and country, and about the house as castle.
Architectural ornament on a house is like jewellery on a woman. The right piece might lend an air of sophistication. Wear too much and it seems flashy, a little common. A moneyed matron once reminded me of the axiom that when a woman thinks she is finished dressing and is ready to present herself to the world, she would be strongly advised to look one more time in the mirror before leaving the house and force herself to take off a piece of jewellery. It's a plea for restraint that anyone designing a house should take on board. Knowing when enough is enough is a matter of good taste. But as Australian architect Robin Boyd used to say, good taste is a relative value influenced by the fashions of the time.