Fusion of Horizons

Fusion of Horizons is the story of five pioneering architects from Australia who travelled throughout Asia in the post-war years and fundamentally contributed to the architecture and design of the continent.
These figures existed at the centre of an array of intellectual, professional, and business networks, and their architectural work collectively defined an aesthetic now readily identified with Asia.

The exhibition incorporates a range of objects and images from private archives located across three continents to present a narrative tapestry of intersecting encounters and professional pursuits. Private letters, diary entries, ethnographic research and documentation contribute to the story of this fusion of horizons, culminating in an array of spectacular architectural drawings and models that convey shared approaches to materiality and tectonics decades in the making. Framed by the unique socio-political context of post-colonial Asia, the exhibit will map for the viewer the various pilgrimage, recreational travel, ethnographic, and migratory routes of these individuals in an effort to show how travel inspired the evolution of an array of architectural styles commonly identified with Asia, and found in tourist hotels and infrastructure from Bali to Beijing. Viewers will learn how the personal subjectivities, professional inclinations, and leisurely pursuits of these figures and their own respective engagements with Asia’s “otherness” contributed to the history of internationally recognized, exoticized architectural depictions of the continent.