ACAHUCH - 2023 Symposium - Prefab and Precut - Keynote

Presented by Emeritus Professor Miles Lewis AM 'The Post-War Housing Solution' The housing crisis after World War II lasted for over a decade and was solved by the intervention of state and Commonwealth governments, as well as by a number of private initiatives. It is generally and correctly understood that a large part of this solution consisted in the importation of prefabricated houses and the development of a local prefabrication industry. But the situation was more complex than this would suggest. Australian prefabricators already established before the war, one of which had received significant international recognition, continued, and expanded their operations. The war itself left a triple legacy - numbers of recyclable buildings, though most were not houses; the industrial capacity which was now released from munitions and other wartime factories, and some individual servicemen who had acquired skills which they now applied to house production. The importation of buildings was also more complex. At first there was little thought that war-ravaged Europe would have the capacity to supply buildings for Australia, and the Chifley Government was suspicious of prefabrication in principle. The first European buildings imported were merely specimens intended to inform the development of a local prefabrication industry. But this changed rapidly, in three ways. The Europeans, desperate for currency, quickly tooled up to export houses, even at the expense of their own houseless citizens. The Australian states, or in many cases individual state instrumentalities, entered into their own negotiations with European manufacturers. And the Menzies Liberal Government, which now came into power, was less concerned about the effects upon Australian workers, and actively investigated potential suppliers by sending a fact-finding mission to Europe. -- A one-day symposium that features papers from scholars and heritage practitioners from across Australia that address this issue. Invariably modest in scale, carefully planned for solar orientation, and above all conceived with affordability in mind, these houses offer potential lessons on what might be possible for the future of Australian housing.