SOCIETY
The Age
Saturday February 12, 2011
COMMUNITY: BUILDING MODERN AUSTRALIAEdited by Hannah Lewi and David Nichols, UNSW Press, $59.95THE architecture of ordinary life is the subject of this fascinating book by a group of Melbourne-based scholars who have decided to look at the often overlooked, those kinds of buildings that merge into the background of our sight and memories: kindergartens, baby health centres, municipal libraries and swimming pools, bowling clubs, and the like. They also trace the social movements that brought these structures into being: the early 20th-century emphasis on health and fitness that built sports facilities, for instance, or the increasing concern with early childhood development that gave us the kindergarten and baby health centres; and through a series of often sensitive readings of the architecture that reveals the social meanings of these built forms. The illustrations are charming and make you look anew at buildings you might pass by every day.Many of these buildings are under threat: it is startling to read how many swimming pools have been closed in recent years, and the author of the chapter on bowling clubs, Hannah Lewi, alludes to fears that the closure of those clubs can only have a bad effect on the well-being of older citizens, many of whom rely on them for social contact. Although the book is never consciously nostalgic, it certainly acts as a prompt to dark reflections about where community takes place now: the mall, the pokies venue, the attenuated wilds of the internet.
© 2011 The Age