Prefab and Precut: Affordable Housing Options in Post-War Australia 1945-1975

A one-day symposium that features papers from scholars and heritage practitioners from across Australia that address this issue. Invariably modest in scale, carefully planned for solar orientation, and above all conceived with affordability in mind, these houses offer potential lessons on what might be possible for the future of Australian housing.

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The story of housing provision in post-war Australia has frequently been described through accounts of speculative house providers, project home builders and one-off architect-designed houses – stories drawn largely by the private sector’s shaping of market demand and suburban domestic taste. Missing is the story of the search for affordable housing options required in times of special need and unusual demand as Australia’s urban, regional, and remote communities grew after World War II.

Housing shortages, national and state-based infrastructure projects, social housing, the influx of a migrant labour force, mining and extraction, Cold War defence projects and housing for First Nations peoples were just some of the circumstances that demanded different solutions, often with the caveat of cost control, high production numbers and speed of erection. One tactic to meet these demands was to turn to an alternative method of delivery: the machine-made house, either fully prefabricated or precut as a kit of parts, produced in significant numbers, and transported across the country.

At a time when Australia faces an acute shortage of housing across urban, regional, and remote communities, it is time to critically reflect on the successes and the failures of the machine-made house in post-war Australia.

Session One Chair: Prof Hannah Lewi | Session Two Chair: Dr Giorgio Marfella | Session Three Chair: Prof Paul Walker |

KEYNOTE | EMERITUS PROFESSOR MILES LEWIS AM
THE POST-WAR HOUSING SOLUTION

Professor Miles Lewis is an architectural historian specialising in the interaction of technology and culture – in how technical developments are accepted or modified, in the dynamics of vernacular architecture, and in the effects of environmental constraints. His research in these areas has embraced topics such as the international spread of lehmwickel, the evolution of the bark roof, prefabrication in the nineteenth century, iron lighthouses, and the prehistory of doors and locks. His book Architectura was published internationally in 2009 in five languages, uniquely for an Australian work in this field.

Lewis is an honorary life member of the Comité International d’Architecture Vernaculaire (CIAV), has been a UNESCO referee for about twenty World Heritage sites, and has delivered public or invited lectures in Al Ain, Cambridge, Chicago, Christchurch, Glasgow, Nicosia, Santiago, Tabriz, Valencia and Zagreb. Abut six hundred items from his collection of books on the history of building technology have been scanned and made publicly available through the Building Technology Heritage Library (USA).

Lewis was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 1988. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2002 for service to architectural history, heritage protection and urban planning, particularly through policy development and professional organisations, and he received the Centenary Medal in 2003 for service to Australian society and the humanities in the study of architectural history. He is an honorary life member of Australia ICOMOS, the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, and the National Trust of Australia (Victoria).