This thematic presentation of the history of modernist architecture of<br><br>queensland, Australia provides a fascinating case of the interrelation<br><br>of climatic design and an aspiration for distinct cultural identity for<br><br>a region.<br><br>As international modernism swept the world after the Second World<br><br>War it confronted differing landscapes, climates, and building<br><br>traditions. The case of queensland is exemplary in this regard.<br><br>queensland provided the challenge of heat and humidity that the<br><br>theorists of modernism expected would be a scientific rationale from<br><br>which regional variations of the movement would grow as Western<br><br>progressive architecture was taken up in the developing world. But<br><br>queensland was a relatively wealthy society with a sophisticated<br><br>architectural culture and a well established discourse on the climatic<br><br>determination of building form that had already given it a distinct<br><br>regional identity. Hot Modernism is a thematic history that traces the<br><br>conflicts and felicities that occurred as international modernism met<br><br>a strongly developed regional cultural identity.<br><br>In nine essays written by a group of international scholars and<br><br>organised into four thematic sections (Foundations: Modernism and<br><br>its Critique; Influences; People, Firms & Networks and Building<br><br>Programmes), Hot Modernism highlights the foundation and growth<br><br>of modern architecture in queensland, as well as issues that are<br><br>common to post-war architecture internationally, such as urban<br><br>form and transport, art and education, civic pride and the rediscovery<br><br>of history.<br><br>The regional flowerings of mid-twentieth century modernism in<br><br>Europe and the Americas have in recent years been meticulously<br><br>dissected and widely published, and Hot Modernism contributes<br><br>to the emerging understanding that modernism, despite its<br><br>internationalism, was not a monolit hic cultural movement, nor<br><br>one that can be understood at a national level. The vastness of<br><br>the Australian continent, along with its rich climatic, geographic<br><br>and cultural diversity, necessitates a more nuanced, place-based<br><br>approach. Hot Modernism zooms into this finer grain as it investigates<br><br>and expounds the idiosyncratic, regional building practice that<br><br>emerged in queensland in the decades following the Second World<br><br>War. Based on substantial oral history and archival research, this<br><br>publication offers engaging first-hand accounts and vivid illustrations<br><br>of significant buildings and their under-acknowledged designers.