Australian residential architectural styles have evolved significantly over time, from the early days of structures made from relatively cheap and imported corrugated iron (which can still be seen in the roofing of historic homes) to more sophisticated styles borrowed from other countries, such as the California bungalow from the United States, the Georgian style from Europe and Northern America, and the Victorian style from the United Kingdom. A common feature of the Australian home is the use of fencing in front gardens, also common in both the United Kingdom and the United States.
Climate has also influenced housing styles, with balconies and verandah spaces being more prevalent in subtropical Queensland due to the mild, generally warm winters experienced in the state. For many years, Australian homes were built with little understanding of the Australian climate and were widely dependent on European styles that were unsympathetic to Australian landscapes. In recent times, modern Australian residential architecture has reflected the climatic conditions of the country, with adaptations such as double and triple glazing on windows, coordination considerations, use of east and west shade, sufficient insulation, strongly considered to provide comfort to the dweller.
Another aspect of Australian suburbia is that the suburbs tend to have a combination of both upper middle class and middle class housing in the same neighbourhood. In Melbourne, for instance, one early observer noted that "a poor house stands side by side with a good house."Davison, Graeme. "The Past & Future of the Australian Suburb." Australian Planner (Dec. 1994): 63–69. This is somewhat less common today, with home renovations, gentrification and the teardown ("knock down, rebuild") method becoming more and more common in affluent suburbs, giving a broader distinction between wealthy and lower class areas. However, the teardown technique has led to home buyers purchasing land or older homes in poorer metropolitan areas and building extravagant homes on the land, which look out of place and excessive, failing to match with the remaining houses in the street.
Variation of styles Because architectural styles have varied in Australia over the years (from villas to bungalows and brick renders), there is a slight inconsistency in the architectural flow of the suburban streets, with writer Troy Patrick noting that Australian housing styles tend to comingle and coexist awkwardly. This is less common in the United States of America and England, because most of the homes had been long established well into the 19th century and reflect a similar style in both regions. Residential architects in Australia have suggested adapting similar styles of new homes with the surrounding established homes to create a sense of uniformity.
History and styles Pre-colonial period ~40,000 BCE – 1788 CE
Indigenous Australians are traditionally semi-nomadic, rotating between different areas in conjunction with the seasons to harvest and maintain food-producing areas. They managed the land through controlled burning practices involving a biennial burning-off which stunted forest growth and encouraged crop germination.
The housing of the Eora people first encountered by Europeans in the Sydney region were shelters constructed of a semicircle of stick, covered with large sheets of bark which could be conveniently stripped off Melaleuca trees which grew profusely along waterways. Other types of simple structures were seen including lean-tos and in tropical regions raised sleeping platforms. Grass, leaves and reeds were used as a thatch where suitable bark was not available.
There are instances of Indigenous peoples constructing partially using dry-stone wall techniques in Western Australia. The Aboriginal people also built dry-stone Fish Traps, of which the most extensive, ranging over 500 metres, is on the Barwon River at Brewarrina. Its age is unknown. It has been maintained and rebuilt after floods many times and is said traditionally to have been given to the local clans by the Creator Spirit.
It appears that in conjunction with such catchment schemes, there may have also been nearby sedentary settlements of people who maintained them. There is evidence at Lake Condah in Victoria of houses in conjunction with eel traps dating back about 8,000 years.Uncovering Australia. Sarah Colley. Published by Allen & Unwin, 2002.
In January 2006 bushfires uncovered another nearby site of a village of stone houses that are large enough to have provided sleeping space for several families.
Old Colonial period 1788 – c. 1840 Colonial architecture is the term used for the buildings constructed in Australia between European settlement in January 1788 and about 1840.
The first buildings of the British penal settlement in Sydney were a prefabricated house for the Governor and a similarly prefabricated Government Store to house the colony's supplies. Sydney was a tent settlement. Building anything more substantial was made unnecessarily difficult by the poor quality of spades and axes that had been provided and the shortage of nails.
The convicts adapted simple country techniques commonly used for animal shelters and the locally available materials to create huts with wattle-and-daub walls. So useful were the local acacia trees for weaving shelters that they were given the name Wattle. Some pipe clay was obtained from the coves around Port Jackson. Bricks were fired in wood fires and were therefore soft. Lime for cement was obtained by burning oyster shells.
The first imported roofing material was corrugated iron sheeting. Roofs of this type were to become part of the Australian vernacular. For many years imported roofing was in very short supply. Two local roofing materials were available- there were extensive reed beds near the Cook's river for thatching. There was also bark which could be peeled off a number of the indigenous trees in large sheets. Methods of heating and flattening the bark were used by the Aboriginal people and these were quickly assimilated by the convict builders.
The two most significant trees, both of which grew in the Sydney area, were the Melaleuca and the ironbark. The Melaleuca bark, having the texture of paper, could be peeled off the tree in layers up to thick, a metre long and perhaps half a metre wide without serious damage to the tree. Although not particularly durable as exterior roofing, the material provided excellent insulation and was used for ceilings and lining the walls.
The resilient bark from the ironbark tree was adapted as a major building material everywhere that such trees grew. It was widely used as a roofing material, was weatherproof, insulating and could last for thirty years. Houses of axe-hewn slabs with Iron-bark roofs continued to be built in rural Australia until WWII.
As better tools became available the Colonial builders became adept at working the extremely hard and durable timber of the native hardwood forests. The majority of houses were built of split logs rather than sawn timber. The technique employed for the construction of a wall was to chisel out a deep groove in a straight log, preferably of the local termite-resistant Cyprus pine which became the foundation. Split logs that had been adzed flat at the ends were then stood in the groove and another groove log was placed on top and slotted into place in a circular corner post. The gaps between the split logs were either packed with clay and animal hair or had narrow strips of metal cut from kerosene tins tacked over them. The interior could be plastered with clay, lined with paperbark or papered with newspaper, wrapping paper or calico. Cards, photographs, news clippings and commemorative items were often stuck directly onto the walls.
The technique of making durable hardwood roofing shingles was also developed. Where these shingles have been applied to brick houses, they have sometimes survived to the 21st century, covered by subsequent corrugated iron roofs.
In the earliest houses windows were usually small, and multi-paned with cylinder glass. When the cost of glass put it beyond reach of the home-owner, blinds of oiled calico were tacked across window openings in the winter months.
Types of buildings
The simplest houses were of a single room, which, if the bread-winner prospered, became the kitchen to a more substantial residence, or conversely, became the living room with a lean-to kitchen added. Houses that grew piecemeal were generally asymmetrical, with the door leading into the original room.
Houses that were planned were generally symmetrical, and very simple, usually containing 2 to 4 rooms around a central hallway. The kitchen was frequently detached and entered from a rear verandah or covered breezeway where pantry or scullery might also be located. Fireplaces projected outwards from the walls of the house. Except in the case of some small inner-city Georgian row houses built of brick, houses generally had a verandah added to them, often on three sides.
One class of people who maintained the tradition of wattle and daub, with a bark roof was the squatters who did not have title to their land, and potentially had to move on every two years.
Very few 19th-century houses of wattle and daub or split timber have survived. A small number of split-timber cottages which later became kitchens may be seen adjacent to more substantial homes, generally painted to match the house and barely recognizable.
Most buildings erected in the first 50 years of Australian settlement were simple and plain. Convict huts, marine barracks, government stores and houses for officials were simple rectangular prisms covered with hipped or gabled roofs often with verandahs supported on wooden columns in the Classical manner. They were influenced in particular by the regulation British military buildings in India and other tropical locations.
At the time of the first settlement, Georgian architecture was the architectural vernacular in Britain. Craftsmen, including carpenters and plasterers were trained in the classic proportions associated with the Palladian style fashionable across Europe. Palladian ideals reveal themselves in some of the few larger homes of the Regency period such as Elizabeth Bay House. Neoclassism incorporating not only Greek but also sometimes Ancient Egyptian motifs, beginning in Europe about 1760, also influenced Australian architectural style. "Fernhill" at Mulgoa with its wide colonnaded verandah shows the influence of Neoclassicism. As the Australian economy developed and settlements became more established, more sophisticated buildings emerged.
Old Colonial Georgian The vernacular style of the Old Colonial period. Buildings of this period were often rudimentary compared with British architecture at the time, but Georgian ideas of orderliness still influenced their shape and scale. Buildings built in this style often featured symmetrical facades, rectangular and prismatic shapes, and were well-proportioned.Apperly, Irving, & Reynolds (1989), pg 24 Similar to other British colonies in hot climates, the verandah became a common way to protect a house from the sun, and on single storey houses the Georgian verandah is usually a lower pitched extension of the main roof.
Old Colonial Regency
Old Colonial Grecian In Georgian era Britain, Neoclassical architecture mainly drew its inspiration from Roman architecture until the rediscovery of Ancient Greek architecture beginning with James "Athenian" Stuart's 1758 trip to Greece.Apperly, Irving, & Reynolds (1989), pg 32–35 By the 1830s the Greek Revival architecture was reaching the heights of its popularity, and had major influences on the development of the Regency style. Old Colonial Grecian buildings used Greek features such as the pedimented temple, porticoes, and Greek order columns such as the Doric and the Ionian.