The Cultural Logic of Queensland Architecture: Place, Taste and Economy (2011-2013)

This project is the first attempt to understand architecture as a matter of public policy in Queensland, comparing the present with the turn of the 20th Century. While there is currently no explicit state policy, a range of institutions enact implicit strategy by framing local architecture as equally site-specific and exportable, regionalist and cosmopolitan. Key ideas persist, about the influence of climate and the role of architecture as an art, but the meaning and values of these terms have dramatically changed. Tracing shifts between architecture understood as Creative Industry and as craft-based art, the project will examine the cultural logic of state attempts to train and govern a taste for architecture in Queensland.