Merchant Builders: This is Not Subtopia! is a major study of Merchant Builders, the Melbourne development company whose cluster housing and townhouse prototypes proposed a shared, relational alternative to the private suburban block.
About This Book
Founded in 1965, Merchant Builders set out to rethink what the Australian suburb could be. Rather than treating each house as a sealed private domain, its cluster housing and townhouse schemes were organised around the spaces between dwellings—pergolas, verandahs and sunscreens that became settings for encounter, neighbourliness and shared amenity.
Edited by Philip Goad and Alan Pert, this substantial volume draws on newly uncovered archival material and interviews to reposition these suburban experiments as a serious architectural response to the problems of subdivision. It then carries the argument into the present, connecting the company's legacy to current debates on housing affordability, sustainability and the outward spread of our cities. The result is both history and provocation: a case that the suburbs can still be designed for sharing, ecology and community.
Key Features
- Built on newly uncovered archives and original interviews
- Examines cluster housing and townhouse prototypes as alternatives to conventional subdivision
- Focuses on the in-between spaces—pergolas, verandahs, sunscreens—that shaped shared suburban life
- Links a pioneering development model to present-day debates on affordability, sustainability and suburban growth
What You'll Discover
- How Merchant Builders reimagined suburbia as relational rather than purely private
- The design devices used to create spaces for encounter and neighbourliness
- Why the company's suburban experiments matter to the history of Australian housing
- What its legacy offers architects, planners and developers facing today's housing challenges
About the Editors
Philip Goad is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Chair of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, and director of the Australian Centre for Architecture. Alan Pert is Professor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, where he teaches curatorial practice and architectural theory; his research centres on housing and suburban design.
Specifications
- Format: Hardcover
- Pages: 656
- Language: English
- ISBN: 9780522877984
- Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing
Perfect For: Architects, planners, developers and housing advocates, and anyone interested in Australian postwar architecture and the future of the suburb.