'A Village Stood on End': Anthropology and the Interior of the Modernist Tower

The paper considers the influence of American anthropologist Margaret Mead on the design and representation of two residential towers of the Waterloo Estate in Sydney, one of Australia's most well-known housing projects. The paper shows how the NSW Housing Commission, in employing Mead as an advisor, attempted to construct an interior perspective on the community qualities of residential towers. The Commission used Mead's commentary to reframe the domestic environment of the towers - perceived as alienating and hostile in public debate at the time - by establishing an analogy between the residential towers and the village. Mead's presence offered support for changing the negative public opinion on the proposed redevelopment of Waterloo, but the completed project also corresponded to some of the qualities she had envisioned as an anthropological reframing of the modernist tower. The idea that each tower could be a village stood on end aligned with the Commission's plan to build additional towers. The paper situates Mead's influence in the 'anthropologization' (Teyssot, 2013) of the modernist architectural discourse in the 1960s and concludes by pointing to the contemporary relevance for more shared interior space, as the residential tower is once again becoming an increasingly common feature in Australian cities.

Automated summary

The paper examines the influence of American anthropologist Margaret Mead on the design of residential towers in Sydney's Waterloo Estate, highlighting the alignment between her ideas and the reframing of modernist tower architecture.