‘Hand-crafted homes on the edge of the city’ are the focus of this new book, published by Thames & Hudson and co-created by Jessica Lillico and Sean Fennessy. The beautiful tome takes a very specific subject matter – a movement of “uniquely Australian architecture” rooted in the north-eastern fringe of Melbourne on Wurundjeri Country along the Birrarung (Yarra) River.
It’s a personal focus for the book’s co-creators, who write that a move from Tasmania to “a city of five million people was culturally energising but left us feeling disconnected from nature.” They describe leaving the inner city and making a home in Eltham Shire, where they came to learn about a distinctive architectural style in the area.
‘Bush Modern’ is the term used to identify the dual influences of “modernism and Australian rural vernacular architecture.” As the introduction explains, pioneering local building designer Alistair Knox catalysed an early phase in the area in the late 1940s. One of the emphases was on using local materials such as mud bricks and recycled timber.
The book tells how the movement reimagined modernism through the lens of the local Australian landscape. Simple homes built ‘of the land’ captured the mood of those searching for an alternative way of life close to nature. The movement gathered momentum in the counter-cultural 1960s and culminated in near-mainstream popularity in the 1970s.
Writer and literary critic Morag Fraser contributes an essay titled ‘Time and Place,’ while the photography is, of course, provided by Fennessy. Chapters then delve into houses whose work spans from 1940 to 2001, including Fraser-Jackson House, Büsst House, Birrarung House and Monty Sibbel.
This is a beautifully crafted book whose warm, timber-filled photographs take the reader not just into the houses themselves but the architectural terroir of the area. It’s refreshing for its deliberately limited focus and will find an eager audience in a time when design enthusiasts are keen to learn about connection to place, landscape and nature.
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