On the Drawing Board

Next time you park at your local shopping mall, consider how the site might have once looked before concrete, glass, and steel conquered the landscape. It’s curious to think about how such urban spaces have been transformed over time, and what might have influenced the design vision of the architect. In the 1950s and early […]

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Jobs for the Boys

It was a careful hand, using a fine-tipped paint brush, that expertly filled in the blocks of pastel watercolour paint on these architectural drawings in early 1933. It might have been the young architect Edward Boyd Scobie (1904-1988) who copied and coloured them at his drafting desk, in the offices of his father’s architectural firm at […]

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A Troublesome Echo

In 1863, the people of Morpeth enthusiastically found good uses for their newly finished courthouse. Not only were legal cases heard there, but they also held concerts, public meetings, vaccinations, a fundraising bazaar, voting, and a death inquest – all before the furniture had even been installed. But it was quickly recognised that there was […]

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Air of Authority

‘… there was no air – can you imagine five people locked in a cell with no air?…’ – former prisoner Allan James remembered his experience at Maitland Gaol in 1961. Established in 1848, Maitland was the oldest intact gaol in NSW and had become notorious as one of Australia’s toughest prisons. Ventilation grills like […]

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