Dr. Mirjana Lozanovska puts migrant houses of the 1950's-1970's on the architectural map

Mirjana Lozanovska is an Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment at Deakin University and says: " She has always dreamed about revising the visual perception of migrant housing", hoping her latest exhibition, titled Terrazzo, will pave the way towards a better understanding of "the visual power and presence of migrant houses in the Australian landscape", built by first generation migrants from southern Europe between the 1950's and 1970's. Dr. Lozanovska discusses how this 'style' of housing, largely ignored by the design elite and architectural educators, can regain some of its lost dignity through the "creative ways that architecture mediates humaneness, society and beauty". Dr. Mirjana Lozanovska has authored several architectural publications through which she has pioneered a new field of knowledge.

Dr. Mirjana Lozanovska at her 'Migrant Housing Terrazzo' exhibition in North Fitzroy during March 2019. Source: Supplied

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The exhibition titled Terrazzo, was held during the month of March at the DiMase Architects office in North Fitzroy.

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The exhibition was an enspired body of work by Associate Professor Mirjana Lozanovska and students Vanessa Napriza, Samantha Jackson, Chayakan Siamphukdee and Jacqui Jeavons.

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"Most Australians are able to identify what are sometimes called ‘Mediterranean Palaces,” houses built between 1950s and mid 1970s by first generation migrants from southern Europe. Smooth wire-cut brick facades, large and clean steel-aluminium windows, and spacious terraces - double fronted, triple fronted – cascading along the side of the house, along with materials used in new ways – concrete, terrazzo, pebble mix. Or adaptations of single fronted workers cottages aspiring to this."

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"On each daily walk along the street where my parents live, and I grew up with my sister, parents and grandmother, I looked at the houses and thought - nothing about these houses or the many families who live in them – was mentioned in my architectural education. They were mostly ignored and it seemed embarrassing for the aesthetic elite to talk about the houses. And yet names erupted and their ugliness and detriment to Victorian heritage was cemented."

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"Terrazzo is a study of the visual power and presence of migrant houses in the Australian landscape. Looking at the migrant houses, again and again, and re-organising their visual representation, experimenting with how visual strategies may affect our perception. Working with Deakin architecture students to develop these.

Do they become beautiful?

Viewers are invited to review this architecture and the parameters of each of our aesthetic borders."