Tropical modernism in Australia’s Top End: climate, generic models and Harry Seidler’s Paspaley House, Darwin

Abstract

The Paspaley House (1959) in Darwin designed by Harry Seidler, Australia’s best-known modernist architect, illustrates the global exchange of information that links Europe, North America, and Brazil to what was then one of the least developed but most strategically significant cities in Australia. Darwin’s remoteness from major population centres in Australia has meant that very little is known about the Paspaley House. Whilst the Commonwealth Environmental Building Station (CEBS) established solar principles, these efforts suppressed local climate difference and failed to account for tropical cyclones, leading to omissions and generalisations in the reception and recording of Australia’s tropical modernist architecture. This paper contextualises the Paspaley House by comparing it to ‘tropical house’ designs by the Commonwealth Department of Works and the only other known contemporaneous modernist house in Darwin, the ES&A Bank Manager’s Residence (1957) designed by Stuart McIntosh. It reveals Seidler's response to designing and building in equatorial Darwin against a backdrop of global discourse around modern tropical architecture and the escalation in scientific research in Australia to establish performance standards for housing in tropical zones. It uncovers the extent of Seidler's climate awareness at the moment when the significance of climate to his broader practice was first fully realised.