What do a country post office, school and police station have in common?
Queanbeyan Courthouse. Photo by Hamish McIntosh, UTS Photography graduate.
If they’re in regional NSW, then it’s likely that they – along with the town hall and perhaps the local swimming pool – were designed by the NSW Government Architect’s Office. The GAO was especially prolific from the late 1950s into the late 1980s, creating a ‘set’ of civic structures often seen as purely utilitarian and overlooked as so-called serious architecture.
UTS School of Architecture researcher and academic Guillermo Fernandez-Abascal has collaborated with Hamish McIntosh and a range of contributors to create Regional Bureaucracy. Using meticulously researched drawings, stories and images, this book outlines an oeuvre that stands as recent evidence of how modern architecture can construct a state – albeit a complicated and ambitious one.
None of the projects are presented in a comprehensive manner. Rather, space is left for readers to make their own interpretations and perhaps visit the buildings themselves. The result is a publication that is sometimes nostalgic, often congratulatory and always critical – and one that functions almost as a travelogue of the GAO’s ‘good enough architecture’ of this period.
Regional Bureaucracy is published this month (Oct 2021) by Perimeter Editions.