Melbourne Architecture 1970 - 86
An Introductory Essay by Norman Day
2
3
4
An architectural exhibition, entitled Four Melbourne Architects at Powell Street Gallery in South Yarra in 1979, shocked many local practitioners but promoted the notion, now generally unquestioned, that architecture can and should be publicly exhibited and discussed as part of a wider cultural debate.
The exhibitors were Peter Corrigan, Norman Day, Peter Crone, Maggie Edmond and Greg Burgess.
An expansion of the means of public debate about architecture was initiated via programs on FM Radio 3RMIT, run by architecture students; ABC Radio and Television. The Age newspaper published a weekly architecture column from 1976 to 1984. Transition, a magazine of discourse on Architecture, was founded and initially edited by the young architects Ian McDougall and Richard Munday but was published then, and still is published, by the Department of Architecture at RMIT.
The Half Time Club, a vehicle for the discussion of architecture, was founded in 1979 and continues to this day.
Finally we should note The Architects' International Series which for most of the latter part of the period organized annual lecture programs in Melbourne by the best known and most talented international architects.
Thus a substantial culture of architectural debate, still unrivalled in Australia, was established in Melbourne during this period.
