{"product_id":"2026100012622-secondhand-the-australian-ugliness","title":"The Australian Ugliness","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBook: Fair\u003cbr\u003eJacket: No dust jacket\u003cbr\u003ePages: Yellowed\u003cbr\u003eCondition remarks: Condition as shown in image\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn one of the most provocative and enduring works of Australian cultural criticism, architect and writer Robin Boyd delivers a scathing, witty, and ultimately affectionate indictment of the aesthetic failures that have come to define the Australian built environment. The Australian Ugliness argues that a national obsession with what Boyd terms Featurism — the compulsive decoration and fragmentation of surfaces to disguise a lack of genuine design vision — has produced suburbs, buildings, and public spaces of breathtaking mediocrity. With incisive precision, Boyd chronicles the spread of this cultural affliction from the fibro bungalow to the cluttered commercial strip, painting a portrait of a nation too busy prospering to consider what it actually looks like.\n\nBeyond its architectural critique, the work stands as a landmark of Australian intellectual life, illuminating the broader cultural anxieties of a young, affluent society caught between colonial inheritance and an uncertain national identity. Boyd's prose is sharp, funny, and bracingly direct — the work of a man who loved his country enough to be merciless about it. First published in 1960, it remains a foundational text for anyone seeking to understand how Australians have shaped, and misshapen, their world — and whether anything has truly changed since Boyd first levelled his charge.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50948308533467,"sku":"2026100012622-SECONDHAND","price":20.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/60fc4b0a-95b8-47fa-a60f-d44c545f2847.png?v=1793104396","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100012622-secondhand-the-australian-ugliness","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}