Paper draft for Fabrications,
vol. 35, issue no. 2, “Housing,”
October 2024.
vol. 35, issue no. 2, “Housing,”
October 2024.
“Set on broad, high, gently sloping ridges, eleven miles south of the Brisbane General Post Office and just out of sight of the main Ipswich Road, lies the Commission's greatest venture in housing, the Satellite town of Inala”—began the story of a new 1950s Brisbane suburb, also known as Serviceton. And the greatest housing venture it was indeed: at £20 million, it housed more than 4,000 families. Planned according to the garden-city principles, the town was envisioned as a model city, run as a cooperative venture, with factories, theatres, schools, playgrounds, shops, parks, swimming baths, child care centres and libraries. Its lived reality was undoubtedly different. Under the pressure of the post-war housing crisis, Queensland politicians opted for prefabricated European-made timber homes, adapted to the Commission’s designs and shipped with construction workers and their families.
The many historical layers of the suburb’s design reveal the international osmosis of ideas and the way imported urban models and building types were adapted to the conditions of the Australian climate and post-war urbanism. The history of this model suburb offers a cross-disciplinary reading of housing, bridging studies of materials, technology and labour, social and planning histories beyond the conventional architectural framework.