May 19, 2011 – The key message given by Peter Maddison, a Melbourne architect, at this year’s Heritage Week celebrations organized by Heritage Victoria was “GOOD design involves putting in concrete form the personalities, places and events – not just buildings – that influence our lives.”
Mr. Maddison said, ”As designers, historians and planners, we’re in a unique position to give meaning and context to these moments. This is good design”.
Hosting the Good Designs Australia program on pay TV’s Lifestyle Channel, Mr. Maddison described these moments as ”iconography” which is defined as ”image-writing of moments”.
He further expounds, ”What’s clear is that there’s a basic emotional need to attach ourselves to architectural icons,” he said later in an interview with BusinessDay. But good design was more than built elements on a house like a breezeway block wall or a big curved arch. There are other physical elements that contribute to our sense of place – things like street art, landscape and objects like your dad’s old car”.
He added that good home design recognized and included these elements; however, a truly great design does all this and something else as it embraces change.
Influenced by the qualities of the suburban house design he had grown up in, Mr. Maddison said, ”The rabbit-warren layout, bleak thermal performance and poor orientation were not on my radar, but it was the shape and textures of these elements that left an indelible mark on me.”
Mr. Maddison also said that similar featurism was alive now.
He said, ”There are kids today, like I was, looking up lovingly at reproduction Tudor, French Provincial, Gothic revival, Spanish mission, Victorian, Georgian. All these styles were relevant because ‘’style helps people with identifiable icons they can latch on to”.
Mr Maddison observed that there was now much experimentation in residential architecture and commented that it is healthy due to the fact that the search is on for a relevant style to match Australian conditions whether the it be an urban, suburban, rural or outback setting.
However, modernism was not always good. For instance in the 1960s and ’70s, the agenda was ”to sanitize the grungy heart of Melbourne” which led the Melbourne City Council demolished some very important buildings.
