Architectural History and the Material Geographies of the Colonial Tasman World

An architectural history that foregrounds materials over the intentions of the architects and other agents of procurement and design places works and the means of their production into fields that do not map neatly on to established geographies. Drawing on a recent body of work concerned with those architectural histories of the Tasman world and the interplay of extractive industries and “grey” architecture, this paper reflects on the conceptual stakes of prioritising specific industries over habitual historiographical frames. Timber’s dual standing as an extracted resource subject to the vicissitudes of trade, and as a building material deployed in settings immediately adjacent to forests and at significant distances from its point of origin, exposes the complexity of a form of architectural history attentive to historical events and the images history necessarily draws from them. The paper responds to a proposal by Mark Crinson intended to address this complexity, suggesting that an architectural history of timber in the specific setting of the colonial Tasman world may offer a useful test.