Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Wanted! A Plan!, rehousing proposal, showing the New Zealand example, the 1943 Dixon Street Flats designed by the Department of Housing Construction. © Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Wanted! A Plan!: post war development!, Sydney, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 1946.
Sunny flats will replace…A congested slum block

Sydney’s post war housing improvement schemes

Authors

  • Noni Boyd

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DOI:

https://doi.org/10.52200/65.A.NJU1HE8E

Keywords:

Modern Movement, Modern architecture, Modern housing, Post-war housing, Welfare architecture, Mass housing, Sydney modern architecture, Sydney slum clearance program, Preservation of modern architecture, Demolition of modern architecture

Abstract

The present text traces the post war slum clearance program in Sydney, Australia, that saw the construction of modern blocks of flats drawn from international examples of rehousing schemes. This State-funded urban renewal program continued from the late 1940s until the 1980s. Many of the blocks of flats are slated for demolition, yet no overall assessment of their design quality or detailed discussion of the range of building forms or apartment layouts has been undertaken. There is a danger that these well-designed blocks will vanish rather than be retrofitted and that this unparalleled demonstration of modern housing progress by the State of New South Wales will be incomplete.

How to Cite

Boyd, N. (2021). Sunny flats will replace…A congested slum block: Sydney’s post war housing improvement schemes. Docomomo Journal, (65), 78–83. https://doi.org/10.52200/65.A.NJU1HE8E

Published

2021-07-01

Issue

No. 65 (2021): Housing for All

Section

Essays

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Plaudit

Author Biography

Noni Boyd

Sydney-based architectural historian and heritage specialist. Her areas of expertise are 19th and 20th century architecture in Australasia. She has contributed entries for the SoS Brutalism exhibition and catalog, Deutsches Architekturmuseum, Frankfurt (2018) and Australia Modern: Australian Modernism in Architecture, Landscape & Design, University of Melbourne (2019).

References

“Reveals Shocking Slum Conditions”, The Labour Daily, Sydney NSW, 20th October 1938, 3.

“‘Star-Plan’ Flats will Replace City Slum”, Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney NSW, 29th April 1948, 2.

“Sydney’s 99-Year Slum Leases Expire Soon”, Herald, Melbourne VIC, 27th June 1947, 9.

“They’ve forfeited right to own slums”, Tribune, Sydney NSW, 27th June 1947, 3.

“Wipe Out Slum is Big Scheme”, Daily Telegraph, Sydney NSW, 21st April 1936, 8.

Commonwealth Housing Commission (Australia), O’CONNOR, L. P. d., Australia Department of Post-War Reconstruction, “Final Report, 25th August 1944”, Sydney, Ministry of Post War Reconstruction, 1944.

NSW Housing Commission, “Report of the Housing Commission of NSW for the year ended 30 June 1959”, Sydney, NSW Government Printer, 1959.

NSW Housing Commission, “Matavai and Tauranga”, Sydney, NSW Government Printer, n.d.

Royal Australian Institute of Architects, Wanted! A Plan!: post war develop- ment!, Sydney, Royal Australian Institute of Architects, 1946.

ZANARDO, Michael, BOYD, Noni, Affordable Housing Sydney: Architectural Map Guide, Sydney, Studio Zanardo, 2019.