The international stereotype of both Texas and Australia conjures images of endless wide-open spaces dotted in one instance with longhorns, jackrabbits and cowboys and in the other with kangaroos, dingoes and sandgroppers. Both places can easily prove such popular myths in isolated spots, but currently are better epitomized by brash, dynamic cities with sprawling green suburbs. In the universalized 20th century, Texas and Australia retain a strong and tantalizing imagability which is a complex confluence of frontier toughness and intemperate progress. Their parallel but independent formulation of so many environmental similarities suggests a near inevitability of character drawn from kindred climates, geographies, periods of growth and economic influences. A quick comparison of their environmental development both affirms and brings into question current environmental directions in each place.

When the first major influx of colonists came to Texas in the 1820s, the British had just begun widespread settlement in Australia, founding four of the six capital cities in the period 1825-1836. Both Texas and Australia began as farm country, the richest, most fertile land being claimed first. The climates were similar. (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth cluster from east to west around 30-35 degrees south latitude in much the same way that Houston, Dallas/ Ft. Worth, Austin, San Antonio and EI Paso are strung along similar north latitudes.) Temperature, rainfall and fertility of land varied widely within each region, and settlement distribution was checkered to match.

The colonists’ first structures in both places were primitive timber cabins or stone huts built from available materials and fashioned with crude frontier craftsmanship. Simple gabled roofs sheltered plain boxes which contained one or two rooms, a door, a fireplace and a few small windows. It did not take the Yankee settlers in Texas or the British colonists in Australia long, however, to embellish the building prototypes which they had brought from their more temperate climates with extensive, deep porches to protect against the hot sun. The dominant “front” porch in Texas was occasionally utilized in Australia, but a complete wrap-around verandah providing outdoor shady areas on all sides of the house was more common. Open central halls sometimes cut through the houses, providing an additional place to catch some shade and breeze, as in the familiar Texas “dog-run.”

By the mid-19th century, growth of population in both Texas and Australia spread settlement to less fertile areas with lower rainfall where self-sufficient farming was impossible. The independent homestead producing a wide variety of crops and animal products to meet all its inhabitants’ needs was replaced by extensive cropping and grazing. In Texas, cotton and cattle became the mainstays of progressively larger farms and ranches. In Australia, it was wheat and sheep which formed the economic backbone of station life. The introduction of mechanized transport facilitated specialization, and the locations, sizes and layouts of towns and cities came to reflect the impact of railroads and the commerce which they nourished.

Country towns flourished as collection and distribution points serving large districts. A straightforward street architecture developed in both places, consisting of simple building volumes with deep front porches, once again, as the major embellishment. Broad, lively main streets bustled with Saturday business from farm families. The continuous verandahs on either side became shady spots for meeting “neighbors” or just watching the passing parade.

As farms, ranches and stations prospered, homesteads and towns came to reflect a greater affluence. The occasional pure examples of architectural “styles” which had been imported early on- not only by Anglo-Saxon colonists, but also by the Germans, Spanish, Dutch and French – were now combined with the more common and pragmatic local vernacular to make new hybrid buildings. A Georgian derivative (Greek Revival) was popular in both Texas and Australia from 1840 to 1870, probably because of its adaptability to porch forms and its ease of simplification. Tudor and Gothic sources were also common in Australia during the same period.

After 1870, the flamboyance of Victorian architecture found a natural home in each place. The opulent Werribee Park near Melbourne crowned an estate that could have been the set for Giant except that sheep filled its paddocks rather than cattle. Rich, earthy colors, exotic patterns and textures and unbridled eclecticism characterized preference in both places. Richardsonian Romanesque with its robust solidity and playful exuberance was particularly popular for public buildings. Queen Anne was favored for residential work. Towers, turrets, ornate eaves and, of course, highly decorated porches encased complex, articulated plans.

Outstanding local architects emerged as leaders in their regions – Edmund Blackett and George Temple Poole in Australia; J. Reily Gordon, Alfred Giles, and Nicholas Clayton in Texas. Affluent and stylish living became more common not only among the older cattle and sheep barons, but also among newer mineral-rich families who reaped profits from the Australian gold discoveries in Victoria and Kalgoorlie and from the Texas oil boom. Entire districts of late and belated Victoriana developed in Galveston, Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio, as well as in Bendigo, Melbourne and Sydney.

The early 20th century saw a return to a greater purity of style in both Texas and Australia. A revived classicism produced the similarly ornate Scottish Rite Cathedral in Dallas of 1914 and the Town Hall in York, Western Australia, of 1911. Spanish revivals with red tile roofs and local buff colored stone were deemed appropriate both for the University of Texas campus in Austin beginning in 1908 and for the University of Western Australia campus near Perth beginning in 1914. But revivalism had lost much of its energy, and by the 1920s new ideas had emerged on a global scale which began to influence building even in the Texan and Australian hinterlands.

The 1912 international competition for a city plan for Canberra had been won by Chicagoan Walter Burley Griffin, a young and enthusiastic disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. His architectural practice in Australia, beginning in 1914, introduced a modified Prairie Style which had immediate impact. Similarly, architects such as Trost and Trost in EI Paso brought the idiom of Wright fairly literally to Texas as illustrated by the Trost House of 1908. The original, intact imports of Wright’s style were modified freely. Their deep eaves, low-pitched roofs, horizontal lines and organic massing were fully integrated into local vocabularies.

But it was perhaps the work of Californians Charles and Henry Greene which had the most impact on residential building in Texas and Australia in the ’20s and ’30s. The popular bungalow style dominated residential building, particularly in moderate and lower price ranges. Its exposed wood framing used as minimal ornamentation, its loose asymmetrical composition and, of course, its ubiquitous overhangs and porches were all natural solutions for both climate and lifestyle. Australian versions incorporated local preferences for red brick, whimsical white trim and tile or metal roofs. Texas versions favored narrow clapboard siding with occasional brick piers or posts, classicized wood trim and shingle roofs.

The period between the wars was a time of significant expansion for both Texas and Australia. Sizable towns turned into real cities. Communication and transportation links unified disperse districts. Pride and identity evoked an impulse toward independence and assertiveness. An indigenous architecture began to be identified and pursued in both places. Architects such as Walter Burley Griffin in Australia and David R. Williams and O’Neil Ford in Texas sought a conscious expression of local climate, landscape and building tradition in their work. A great many other buildings were produced by now-forgotten firms which incorporated bits and pieces of pioneer simplicity, pragmatic sensibility, Georgian grace, Victorian flamboyance, organic freedom and bungalow modesty into what could be broadly identified as 20th century Texan and Australian vernaculars. Unlike their more self-consciously regional counterparts of the same period, they are without identifiable style, even in individual parts. They are original, sensible and, perhaps, ordinary. They exude a quiet sense of place and a sort of timeless amicability with their surroundings.

Since World War II, building in both Texas and Australia has responded to phenomenal growth. Each has doubled in population since 1945, reaching roughly 13 million in 1978. The growth in urban centers has been even more striking. In Australia, the most rapidly urbanizing country in the world, 85 percent of the people now live in cities. In Texas, the most rapidly urbanizing state in the United States, 80 percent of the population are urban dwellers. The population of Sydney now bests Dallas/ Ft. Worth by only a few hundred thousand. Melbourne and Houston run neck-and-neck, while Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth are reasonable matches in size for San Antonio, EI Paso and Austin. Even among secondary cities the parallel continues with Canberra similar in size to Corpus Christi, Wollongong to Lubbock, Newcastle to Amarillo and Hobart to Beaumont.

Love affairs with the car and the single-family house prevail in all Texan and Australian cities, producing interminable sprawling suburbs which engulf bustling, tower-filled downtowns. The influence of international modernism is strongly felt. Mechanical air-conditioning, high technology and an image of sleek, clean perfection have transformed the hot rugged prairies into modern metropolises.

Texas, in particular, has responded strongly to the forms of modern architecture and has even invited some of its leading lights (Wright, Mies, Johnson, Kahn, SOM, etc.) to build here. Due in part to an initially abundant presence of cheap energy, logical considerations of local climate, geography and traditions largely have been surmounted by seductive nation al and international movements. The dominant trend has been to ignore regional conditions.

Australia also has espoused modernism enthusiastically, but a hard-headed Aussie individualism has compelled a constant questioning of both its credos and forms. What has been adopted, by and large, is a modified modernism adjusted to local conditions and, to some extent, integrated into longstanding traditions. The thin-skinned glass box never has been accepted intact for Australian skylines. The desire for sensible and visible sun control could not be compromised that far.

Virtually every tall building in Australian cities exhibits some overt consciousness of the sun. John Andrews’ King George Tower in Sydney is encased in a shroud of tinted solar screens. Mc Connel, Smith and Johnson’s Law Court Building in the same city uses recesses and awnings. And both systems are varied according to orientation. Cameron, Chisholm and Nichol’s Allendale Square in Perth is stepped in plan to avoid east-or west-facing windows altogether. Even Harry Seidler, perhaps the most doctrinaire modernist practicing in Australia, balances structural and sculptural expression with practical quantities and placement of glass.

Concessions to local conditions are common in high-rise Australian office buildings – a genre which itself is a product of international modernism. In more longstanding and tradition al building types, regional considerations wield even more influence. John Andrews’ student housing near Canberra, for example, recalls common 19th century porch construction in its curved, corrugated roof shapes. The adjacent Cameron Park in Belconnen Town Center, also by Andrews, is encased in modernized loggias and verandahs similar in function to those attached to the earliest Australian town building.

More literal interpretations of tradition exist as well. Gus Ferguson’s Murdock University campus outside Perth has the feel of a bush farm with stark, simple shapes and colors that are reminiscent of local shearing sheds. The Guild Building (student union) at nearby University of Western Australia by the same architect recalls 19th century pubs In its deep, double-decker porches, but alludes to the Victoriana of an adjacent landmark house in its decorated eaves and to the Mediterranean revival of earlier campus buildings in its red tile roof.

Continuity with appropriate and well developed traditions relating to climate, landforms and history are by no means universal among new buildings in Australia, but they are common. Similar gestures in Texas to an equally rich and sophisticated regional background exist, but are not as common. They have played a bit part to the overwhelming lead of national and international trends of style. Perhaps there is a lesson to be relearned from our own past and from both the past and present of our counterpart down-under. Design trends and awareness in building can be convincingly assimilated into an evolving vernacular architecture. New buildings can continue to draw, through all eras, on an appropriate sense of place. Herein lies the basis for continuity and intrinsic quality in the built environment.

In these days of shifting direction in architectural thinking, and tightened budgets for architectural training, these are questions which cannot be avoided. If history is, in fact, “fat” in the architectural curriculum – a luxury which, when put to its most practical application, serves only to provide fuel for cocktail party conversations spiked with tantalizing terms like gargoyle or ogee – then perhaps in demanding times (like the present) it should be dropped, or at least diminished in emphasis. If, on the other hand, a knowledge of the past and the progressive development of ideas and theories of architecture are essential to the continued vitality and pertinence of the field, then it is in “hard” times particularly that history should be mined to its depths. It should be emphasized as an indispensable aspect, not only of architects’ initial training, but of their continued development as well. In this latter direction (you may have already guessed) lies the inclination of this article.

If one believes in the value of the past in stimulating directions for the future, then perhaps in the case at hand it makes sense to begin by reviewing the recent history of architectural history and its relation to the field as a whole.

The earliest clearly defined attitude toward the role of history in relation to training for the practise of architecture which bears on our case is the rigorous Beaux Arts system developed in France and practised, in modified form, around the world well into the twentieth century. Under this scheme, history of architecture was a vital and practical aspect of design training. History, along with technical studies, drawing, and rendering, was part of a tightly coordinated program supporting design courses which were the focus of the curriculum. History was a means to the end of design. The “fundamentals” of classical orders and styles were studied for their direct applicability, and actual, tangible forms of the past were important and relevant. Mastery of both spirit and technique was acquired through painstaking hours of copywork drawing from handsome illustrated volumes ingraining for all times the qualities of composition, line, form, volume and texture which were the legacy of the past.

Resource material, collected and disseminated by an emerging cadre of architectural historians, was largely archaeological. The concern was more with what was done rather than with why or how. Artefacts pre-empted explanations or analysis. There was seldom any need to lecture architectural students (or practicing architects) on the relevance of a good, thorough, periodically resuscitated background in architectural history. It was simply a sensible, pragmatic part of the discipline.

In its latter stages of development, and particularly in its modified American form, Beaux Arts “lessons of the past” were extended well beyond traditional classical sources to more recent examples which had themselves been designed in an eclectic mode. The system began to evolve into a rather closed, inbred circle, both politically, in terms of the masters and leaders of academe, and formally in terms of the building solutions which were produced.

By the early 1920s the situation was ripe for revolution, and the Bauhaus provided the impetus. As with most revolutions, the prior regime received unqualified condemnation; its attitude towards the history of architecture being no exception. “Instruction was confined to observation and representation associations with any kind of ’style’ were studiously avoided.”

Since the goal of an architect’s training was to “liberate the individual by breaking down conventional patterns of thought,” the formal study of building precedent was totally purged from the Bauhaus curriculum. Oskar Schlemmer’s dramatic cry of “death to the past” was the extreme expression of a movement which looked studiously forward to a future which would be so revolutionary in its make-up that it would prove both the forms and philosophies of the past to be irrelevant.

Despite its widespread publicity and influence, the comprehensive curriculum of the Bauhaus was never as pervasive in architectural education as had been the Beaux Arts system.

By the end of World War II, with the Bauhaus itself long since disbanded, a strange amalgam of Beaux Arts and Bauhaus educational attitudes characterized most schools of architecture. The contradictory views of the two systems concerning instruction in history led to a period of confusion and indecision as to its role and ultimate fate.

The “young turks” of the period regarded architectural history with suspicion because students might be tempted to draw inspiration from and make use of styles of the past. It was, at best, useless and, at worst, harmful. They wanted it abolished. The more seasoned veterans of such debates were loath to eliminate it. And yet they acknowledged, in general, its prior misapplication and found it difficult to rationalize a reasonable new application for history in the context of “modern” architecture which was, by now, in vogue. History and design became independent entities – history a sort of connoisseur’s hobby in which beauty, tradition and style could still be appreciated, and design a practical, real-world matter devoid of such sentimental aestheticism.

In schools of architecture, as well, the disciplines diverged and became parallel courses within the curriculum. More and more, history was taught by historians and design by designers. The grand chronology courses, “Ancient to Medieval” and “Renaissance to Modern”, developed along scholarly and academic lines, and could almost as easily have been electives in anthropology or French literature for all their application to the practice of architecture. They were historians’ histories – an admirable and high-minded world of knowledge for the sake of knowledge. They might spark an enjoyable avocation for the more intellectual student, but, for most, they were of questionable relevance and secondary importance.

The journals of the AIA in the United States and the RIBA in Britain during the early fifties are sprinkled with attempts to rationalize this split. It was a difficult period for historians, some of whom became very weary of constantly justifying their existence.

Work such as Space, Time and Architecture by Seigfried Giedion and Pioneers of Modern Design by Nikolaus Pevsner, which gained preeminence during this period, can be seen as curious contributions towards healing the rift between history and modern design. Here were histories of modern design – masterful works in which the past could be viewed through the blinkers of modern architecture. Leading contemporary attitudes could be seen to grow inevitable out of the past. History was used to confirm and validate the present.

The impact of such works is startling. If history could not contribute to modern design, at least it could be used to rationalize it, and in a world sceptical of such radical change, that was valuable. Even if the works did contain an element of distortion and bias, at least they got architects and historians talking again and seeking more vigorously a real integration of their disciplines.

By 1960 Henry-Russell Hitchcock could note that “the architects and the historian-critics of the early twentieth century… taught us to see all architecture, as it were, abstractly, false though such a limited vision probably is to the complex sensibilities that produced most of the great architecture of the past.” Hitchcock could see in this abstraction a means to design. He continues, “When we re-examine – or discover – this or that aspect of earlier building production today, it is with no idea of repeating its forms, but rather in the expectation of feeding more amply new sensibilities that are wholly the product of the present.”

The abstraction of architectural history into aspects or issues sparked a new era of analytical and evaluative history which, for the first time since the Beaux Arts, could make a clear, positive contribution to the formulation of design. Historical attitudes, philosophies and even approaches could be accepted as analogues for contemporary work. Why and how a particular building or cityscape developed began to receive as much emphasis as the actual artefacts themselves.

Historians sought issues and ideas which, when isolated from their period, bore relevance to contemporary design. Architectural history emerged once again as a potentially pragmatic part of the total curriculum – a source of parallels, models and metaphors which could improve abilities in everyday design.

Robert Venturi said that Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture dealt with “the present, and with the past in relation to the present.” Interplay between analysis of historical works and design of new ones stimulated provocative criteria and methods. But it also produced, as Hitchcock had warned, some alarming distortions. Sir John Summerson decried what he called the “mischievous analogy” which twentieth century architects had substituted for the eclectic imitation of their predecessors. We have reached the near-present.

I would suggest that current postures towards history reflect even less sureness and conviction than before. Among schools of architecture in Australia a great diversity exists in attitude towards the issue. In at least one school, no formal courses in history are offered at all. In other schools, thorough, traditional chronologies are adhered to conscientiously. Some faculties have loosened their concentration on the western tradition in architecture to emphasize the relatively short, but vital, history of architecture in Australia. Others have concentrated on histories of south-east Asia, China, India or Japan. Some schools prefer an academic approach, while others emphasize analytical lessons from the past. Such diversity can be stimulating and enriching, but it also indicates, perhaps a need for reassessment and redirection.

What current and near future role should architectural history play in design? How should we be training ourselves and the next generation of architects as regards the past? I suggest a seven-point programme:

• Do not neglect at least a peppering of good old academic architectural history – the sometimes dry, but generally broadening exposure to the progress of architecture through the ages. Stress the heritage of their profession. Demand rigorous scholarship (at least a little), fastidious research technique and clear, clean austere logic. The discipline of history has much to lend to architecture, and this may be the closest to real academic education that most architects will ever come. Do not overdo this point.

• Emphasize perspective of the inevitable flux of architecture. Strive to instil, through history, the flexibility of mind that saves the designer from the fallacy of considering time as static. This aspect of history has been most notably absent among leading designers trained in the Bauhaus and post-Bauhaus anti-historical tradition. The sage perception of this perspective is the surest protection against the error of rigid extremism.

• Emphasize, at the same time, those aspects of architecture which do not change and are common through all time. Aldo van Eyck observed that “modern architects have been harping continually on what is different in our time to such an extent that even they have lost touch with what is not different, with what is always essentially the same.” History should be employed to illustrate lessons about those simple, constant human traits which architects often forget in the myriad competing complexities of design. The richness in expression of human life which is evident in buildings of the past is impressive and inspiring.

• Underscore the utility of history as an important aid in developing an architect’s values, principles, philosophy or theory. The forming of values is a critical aspect of a designer’s development. History provides a means of vicarious experience in judging the relationship between values or directions and their resultant products or effects. As a testing ground, it can rescue designers from the pitfalls of trial and error.

• Utilize history as a means of sharpening skills in environmental evaluation and analysis. The skills in objective scrutiny of environmental quality that are required in historical analysis are exactly the same facilities necessary for constructive self-criticism in design. By developing an objective eye with which to probe extant work, an architect also cultivates greater capacity for self-criticism in creating felicitous new work. The essential analytical steps of architectural design are made more vivid and real by comparison.

• Enrich visual vocabularies by a flood of images from the past. Harold Bush-Brown is credited with the observation that new forms always emerge from their antecedents, even if in violent reaction to them. An architect without broad exposure to a wide range of forms, shapes, materials, colours, textures and scales is like a poet with an inadequate set of words. During the past generation, most architects have lived on a starvation diet in terms of visual vocabulary, largely because of the wholesale rejection of the past as a source. Early Australian settlers famished in the bush (while Aborigines survived) simply because they considered so much of the available plant life to be poisonous. Likewise, currently, many architects are famishing visually (and sometimes literally) simply because they have marked the rich vocabularies of the past as forbidden fruit.

• Acknowledge the increasing degree to which architecture involves the expansion and adaptation of environments built in the past. The sensitive placement of new work in an existing context requires appreciation of that context – its attitudes, intentions, methods and means. This is specific, practical historical knowledge to which most current practitioners find they have never been adequately exposed.

Comprehensive coverage of these seven points constitutes a more than full plate for any budding design student about to sit down to his first architectural history lecture. It likewise constitutes an overwhelming remedial effort for the practitioner attempting to sharpen his own developing design abilities. And it certainly could present some nightmares to instructors in architectural history who, after all, have only so many hours of class in which to cram all of that diverse information.

The solution to this dilemma lies, I think in the realization that the role of history in relation to architectural design is a complex bundle of functions, none of which can be singled out or allowed to preempt the others. Rather than pretending to train complete academic historians or complete analytical historians or complete eclectics, we should concentrate on preparing designers to use history in many ways as circumstances require. We should develop concurrently a broad set of historical applications, drawing from the past a diverse relevancy ranging from everyday and pragmatic applications to abstract and academic ones.