Image: Plan of the Owens House, Mount Lawley.
Source: The Architect (WA) 3, no. 4 (1958),36.

‘The mind resorts to reason for want of training.’ - Henry Adams

Western Australian architectural history is a blunt instrument. Now much can be done with such an instrument. It is useful to clear ground, break up obstructions, and erect boundary fences; but when we survey the terrain, or come to prepare maps finer discriminations and greater subtlety is required. In our understandable desire for a settled (and useable) architectural history we cannot afford to be prescriptive, to give emphasis to the rational and logical, we also need to accept the presence of the irrational and the random. Historians may be embarrassed by seemingly ridiculous design sequences and the architectural profession might wish to minimize their frequency or significance, but it would be foolish to deny their existence.

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