Robin Boyd Foundation has launched an online collection of works and artefacts that catalogue the seminal architect’s connection to Japan.
The Robin Boyd and Japan collection expands on recent exhibition at the Walsh Street House.
Boyd visited Japan in the 1960s and later held the position of exhibition architect at the Australian Pavilion during the Osaka Expo ‘70. The 1960s was an era when Japanese architects’ rose to prominence internationally. Boyd was both part of the dissemination of knowledge regarding Japanese design, and indisputably influenced by the work he saw. A significant topic of discussion within Japanese design culture at the time was how the beauty and specificity of everyday life in Japan could be retained whilst huge post-war social and economic change was taking place, along with urban reconstruction, modernization and westernization all at once.
The online collection was created by the foundation’s research and collections team led by Jonathan Russell and Kerry Landman. It draws from the Walsh Street Archive, State Library of Victoria, and RMIT Design Archives.
“It has been exciting discovering connections between individual objects within our own Walsh Street Archive and enhancing this with correspondence held by State Library of Victoria,” said Kerry Landman. “There is a wealth of material covering Boyd’s relationship with Japan, so selecting which material to highlight, and how to frame the stories and link the various pieces to make a cohesive online exhibition, which you can dip in and out of, has been fun and felt like a puzzle at times.”
A letter from Kenzo Tango to Robin Boyd.
Image: State Library of Victoria
The collection is divided into four categories: In pictures, which includes some of Boyd’s own photographs of Japan and Japanese architecture; In Letters with correspondence between Boyd and Kenzo Tange among the dozens of letters; At Work, which includes both written and architectural work produced by Boyd; and At Home, which gathers together Boyd’s own collection of furniture, artwork and design objects and artefacts found in the Walsh Street Archive.
“Jonathan Russell and Kerry Landman’s research on Robin Boyd and Japan has been outstanding,” said architectural historian Philip Goad. “Using the resources of the Walsh Street Archive and the State Library of Victoria they have unearthed hidden gems about Boyd’s internationally significant engagement with Japan. What they show is a career-defining engagement with one of the most intriguing and inventive architecture cultures of the 1960s.”
