Women’s roles in shaping Queensland’s domestic interiors post-World War II

The appearance of Queensland domestic interiors changed significantly post-World War II. As the state’s economy and social and cultural fabric developed, domestic interiors revealed how design professionals responded to new disciplinary settings and to the aspirations of Brisbane’s citizens. Years of war had disrupted social norms, most particularly for women, who now challenged traditional gender constructs. Whilst this led to the increased agency of women in design, historical narratives about Queensland’s sub-tropical modernist architecture and interior design are dominated by stories of men.1 Compounding women’s absence is the fact that many women who influenced Queensland’s domestic spaces in post-World War II years were not members of the architecture profession at all.2 Instead, the emergence of interiors as a specialist field and awareness of the role of interior design and designers owes much to individual women who were assertive in the face of convention and who responded to opportunities in ways that were consistent with their capacity and social position. Their contributions also helped to erode long-held distinctions between the ‘high’ and ‘low’ arts and the view that architect-designed interiors were essential to good modernist architecture. Images of the interiors of homes published between 1948 and 1970 provide a vehicle for charting the involvement of women in shaping Queensland’s domestic space and for observing how spaces were framed for and received by wider audiences. Analysis of these interiors, which belonged to architect and artist/designer couples, also illuminates shifts in gender roles more broadly.