William Hardy Wilson is a fairly well regarded Australian architect of the 20th century and is such usually afforded a few paragraphs in biographical dictionaries and encyclopaedias. These will mention in passing a few well regarded buildings and pay brief mention to an unrealised effort late in his career to create a new architecture combining European and Asian aesthetics.

This does us a great disservice! Hardy Wilson’s later work was an attempt in his own mind to do no less than save civilisation. His own historical theory of everything, which dictated this work, was amazingly bizarre and for this alone is worth recounting. But he also held strong visions of a future Eurasian Australia. The parallels and contrasts with our own multicultural society are striking in both superficial and deeper ways. Read more »