When we hear the word fashion we automatically think of clothing with shoes and accessories, hair styles, jewellery and all those fabulous elements that we can mix and match as we see fit. Fashion is something we can follow slavishly or reject out of hand. However fashion applies equally well to all elements of design, be it motor vehicles, boats and the more obscure elements of life such as restaurant menus and holidays. Architecture also follows a fashion and in particular residential architecture will wax and wane through the rhythm of fashion.
In Australia a popular residential design approach from around the late 1890’s through to the 1920’s coincided with the federation of Australia and we now know this design trend as Federation. It was soon followed by Art Deco in the 1920’s and later the Post War era 1945 – 1950’s gave us the first glimpses of modern architecture. Through the mid 50’s till the mid 70’s we slowly adopted the International Style of architecture with its simple and somewhat futuristic approach, which we now refer to as Mid Century Modern. The sixties also gave us futurism with domes and spaceship residences and introduced us to brutalism. The eighties brought us Post Modernism and then in the 1990’s when searching for a new way forward we went backwards and embraced Federation once more. However we were still searching and looked overseas when we adopted the Tuscan theme, which took us to the 2000’s. Once again searching for a way forward in the early 2000’s we went back once more and revisited the 50’s and called it Retro.
