Do you know your Art Deco from the modern middle of the century? Your guide to five popular design epochs

If you walked along the street, could you choose a Victorian terrace from a bungalow of the Federation?

Could you recognize a postmodern pad from an Art -deco masterpiece?

While Australian architectural history does not go back to a few centuries -old cultures, our past in our design reflects the global trends and the Australian spin, which we award for many of them.

The host of Australia's host and professor of architecture Anthony Burke leads us through five popular design epochs.

And you bet, in the end there is a test!

Victorian

What you should pay attention to:

• Probably a terrace or a house with an adjacent wall
• Wrought iron balustrades
• Opulent and decorated decorations such as ceiling roses and cornice equipment
• High ceilings

Date: 1837 to 1901 The period of Queen Victoria's reign

As Burke says, the Victorian era in Australia recorded a development of “withdrawn” design in the early years about “Details and Flamboyance” when the gold rush in the southeast of the country brought prosperity into the pockets of the country.

“When you get through the gold rush and come out of the early settlement … people have found their feet, they straighten up business, they start to express their success,” he says.

“They are looking for ways to do this, which brings architecture into a moment when we no longer survive or only imitate [what’s come before]But we try to express something that is more of us.

“We are enthusiastic about our own success in the future.”

According to Burke, the opulence of the Victorian architecture reached its peak in the 1880s and until around 1890 “, with things getting hard with an economic downturn after the gold.

“Then we reached the new century and things change to change,” he says.

federation

What you should pay attention to:

• Asymmetrical front with a living room that jumps out and the front door has moved in
• Veranda at the front, which are sometimes about
• Details in the masonry
• The colors of the Hallmark federation are dark green, creamy yellow, rich dark red and white
• Australian motifs in decorations

Date: Period for Federation from around 1890 to 1915

Overlapping with the Victorian period and sometimes called Edwardian, the era of the Federation, which, as Burke notes, really begins to forge its own style.

“What we see now is the Australian version of the bungalow,” he says.

“With the bungalow and not the terrace, we have a somewhat more relaxed, somewhat more classified way of house.

“It moves a little further from the front street and usually has a little more garden.”

Burke says that this type of house in Suburban Australia is now all quite familiar, at the time a “very patriotic and heroic” moment.

“What you see in a lot of decoration in lead lighting, colored glass and things is a lot of Australians,” he says.

“Suddenly we see … things like Kookaburras or Flowers that are Australian flora.

“It is a moment when we started to really project a feeling for what Australia are brought into our decoration and the houses that we have built in.”

art deco

What you should pay attention to:

• Futuristic and geometric patterned appearance
• Stripes in the facade and masonry of buildings to overdo the lines of the building
• P&O style – curved corners and bulla walls such as cruise ships

Date: 1920s and 30s

The distinctive expression of Art -deco comes from France in the early 20th century, but, as Burke says, quickly spread around the world.

“What it tried to do was to look back into tradition … and is looking forward to a new style, a new aesthetics,” he says.

Time fell with revolutionary machines such as aircraft and trains, which Burke led to a “very futuristic idea” that focused on the technological future of speed and movement.

“We see buildings like the Chrysler building in New York. It is super decorative and complex, it is about a new expression of the era,” he says.

“It is stainless steel and shiny, it's a bit of space age … it is the future.”

Art Deco also contains P&O style -according to the Ocean Liner business -that is defined by curved walls and bullau walls that imitate the appearance of a cruise ship.

“Here too, boats and trains and movements are everything that is part of the future,” says Burke.

He says of the roaring 20s, the extravagance of the movement began to slow down in the 30s when the global economic crisis hit.

Modern in the middle of the century

What you should pay attention to:

• Minimal decorations
• Modest materials such as bricks and wood
• Exposed rays and clear structures
• Glass window in full length
• Clearly defined rooms, but start to open rooms for each other and the garden

Data: In the mid -1940s to the mid -1960s

As Burke explains, modern design in the middle of the century brought ideas such as functions from modernity to a home.

It was also influenced by the consequences of the Second World War.

“Returned soldiers came home, the military industry complex that built balls and tanks, and things like that suddenly had nothing to do,” he says.

“They turned to houses and looked for opportunities to use the same industrial materials that we used during the war and somehow found a home application.”

Examples are walls with windows that let slight flooded and light steel binder come into view.

“We would not have seen this in a Victorian home before because it would have had a blanket and a blanket rose and elaborate plaster work,” he says.

Burke also notes that the modernity in the middle of the century was “as important” the furnishings as the house itself.

Postmodernity

What you should pay attention to:

• Playful design
• Bring life and color into buildings
• Historical motifs such as broken step pediments that look like a gap in a triangular roof
• Colors such as pastels, avocado and salmon

Data: Started in the 1970s

Postmodern could be the crazy and funny of the previous design epochs.

As Burke explains, it was a moment in which architects and designers rejected the austerity measures and mouth of modernity.

“Postmodernism wanted to bring people back to history,” says Burke.

The result is often buildings or houses that were “developed with a feeling of playfulness and irony”.

“When you see a postmodern house, you may even see a little cartoonist,” says Burke.

“You get this kind of ideas and you did not have to sit together in a kind of coherent hole that would have to happen in previous periods.

“In the postmodern time you can somehow get away with everything.

“It was a little cartoon, lots of color, a little crazy, definitely quirky.”

Test your knowledge

Time to put your knowledge to the test.

Can you choose which architectural era these houses and buildings belong to?

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