Print Email Facebook Twitter In search of the ugliest country in the world: Australia vs. Belgium on Robin Boyd, Renaat Braem, regionalism and post-war modernism Title In search of the ugliest country in the world: Australia vs. Belgium on Robin Boyd, Renaat Braem, regionalism and post-war modernism Author Gosseye, J. Heynen, H. Faculty Architecture and The Built Environment Department Architecture Date 2013-07-02 Abstract Three decades after Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre first introduced the notion of critical regionalism into architectural theory, the concept remains decisively current. One of its manifold recent attestation is Place Makers, an exhibition sponsored by the Queensland government to promote an idiosyncratic Queensland architecture by providing “a fascinating insight into the historical influences on today’s architecture, including responses to the ‘timber and tin’ tradition of the Queenslander, explorations and adaptations of Modernism, and influential efforts to develop both residential and public architecture that is responsive to Queensland’s subtropical environment.” Comparable initiatives can be recognised in Flanders, where the previous architectural yearbook, for instance, received the (revealing) title The Specific and the Singular. According to its publisher, the challenges dealt with in this volume “are to be found at the level of the architectural design and its role in its own context,” thus providing a specific knowledge,“able to contribute to architectural activity in Flanders.” Half a century ago however, this regionalist distinctiveness between Australia and Belgium seemed less outspoken, as two famous modernists, one Australian, the other Belgian, each wrote a narrative on ugliness in which they—in largely similar terms and for ostensibly comparable reasons—criticized the state of architecture (and urbanism) in their respective, geographically distinct built environments. Robin Boyd authored The Australian Ugliness in 1960 and seven years later Renaat Braem baptized Belgium The Ugliest Country in the World in his eponymous publication. This paper traces the professional trajectories of both men and compares their writings on ugliness to unravel similarities and differences in their approach. Ultimately the question will be addressed how the modernist universalism, which was shared by both Braem and Boyd, interacted with specific cultural, socio-economic and geographical contexts to result in diverging narratives about the impact of modernism on the built territory. To reference this document use: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:111f05e6-0c2c-4a8e-982d-abc6b650caac Publisher SAHANZ ISBN 978-0-9876055-0-4 Source OPEN: The 30th Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, 2-5 July 2013 Part of collection Institutional Repository Document type conference paper Rights (c) 2013 Gosseye, J.Heynen, H. Files PDF 312429.pdf 476.4 KB Close viewer /islandora/object/uuid:111f05e6-0c2c-4a8e-982d-abc6b650caac/datastream/OBJ/view