John Dalton (architect)

Even in his later life of semi-retirement, living in Lambtail Cottage, Allora from 1979, Dalton avidly continued producing artworks, pursuing painting, sculpting, photography, creating collages and drawing.

To Dalton climatic design had a poetic dimension. He was inspired after moving from the dark and cold climate of Yorkshire to warm and sunny Queensland. In 1977 in Belle magazine he stated, “Design for climate is the simple solution for all our architectural endeavour in Queensland. It is the mainspring for all the magical qualities that add up to a vital architecture. …Our delight is to build in the sun and gather poetic inspiration from the sunlight, shade and shadow that is our heritage”.

From 1975 to his final architectural works in 1987, Dalton’s residential architecture shifted gears towards a quieter stylistic expression. Many of the forms and details to be found in Dalton’s later works reflect both Dalton’s close collaboration with many of his clients and his deep belief in the value of carrying forth vernacular responses to living in the Queensland climate. His residential architecture is imbued with the time he spent living in regional Western Queensland.

According to Charles Ham (an associate in John Dalton Architect and Associates since 1969) the design priorities of Dalton were the environmental system, the building system, the aesthetics of form, volume and surface and then the activity of the user. In complex larger buildings more emphasis is placed on the user activity. Dalton’s environmental systems he employed included;

From 1966 to 1972, feeling a sense of affinity with the activism of students he was exposed to through his position as a teacher at the University of Queensland’s School of Architecture, John Dalton produced a series of pamphlets consisting of “images and text, original and sourced material on an eclectic range of topics” with an intention to instigate further student activism. In 1966, amidst the disagreeable Queensland architectural profession and the increasing frustration amongst architectural students, Dalton released the first of his self-written and self-published “handbill style” pamphlets, Broadside (initially titled Broadsheet), to architecture students at the University of Queensland and Queensland Institute of Technology. 22 confirmed issues of Broadside were published over a three-year period until 1968, and was followed in 1969 by the release of diametrix, with 23 confirmed issues published, ending in 1972. Inasmuch as providing support for students, Dalton’s pamphlets also operated in the testing of his own architectural thinking and ideas that were unlike that of dominant conservative Queensland architectural profession at the time. As well as using his own, Dalton sourced material from student conventions, magazines, books and poems from a range of authors including Serge Chermayeff, Buckminster Fuller, Colin St. John Wilson, Aldo van Eyck, Warren Chalk, Edward de Bono and Gough Whitlam amongst others. By 1972, Dalton and his wife became more occupied with their house in Allora, Queensland, potentially explaining why the pamphleteering came to an ambiguous halt.

Alongside official positions as correspondent, Dalton also often contributed to the Australian Journal of Architecture and Arts, a magazine that featured many of his projects throughout his architectural career, and additionally, he contributed to the first issue of Scarab, published in 1965 by the Queensland Architectural Students Association, a publication he praised in an edition of Cross-Section.

In 1960 Dalton was appointed Queensland correspondent to Cross-Section, a journal founded by Robin Gibson and published by the University of Melbourne’s Department of Architecture from 1952 to 1971, and in 1963 was also appointed Queensland correspondent to Architecture in Australia, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ official publication. In his two official roles as correspondent, Dalton was caught in the midst of the liberal and modernist Cross-Section, and the heavily scrutinised as well as bureaucratic Architecture in Australia, and in 1964 following criticism of the Queensland Newspapers Building by Conrad and Gargett in an edition of Cross-Section, he received “disciplinary action for undermining the standing of the profession.” In 1967, Dalton reports being dismissed from his role as Queensland correspondent to Architecture in Australia against a background of increasing tension from his place as mutineer within the Publications Committee.

Additionally, and perhaps more conventionally, Dalton served as an Executive Member of the Council for the Queensland Art Gallery Society from 1960 until 1974, as well as being an Executive Member of the Contemporary Art Society of Australia in 1965 and later, a Council Member from 1966 until 1970.

Dalton established John Dalton Architect and Associates in 1959 in the Dalton and Heathwood office located at 307 Queen Street. He later relocated the office to 333 Queen Street in 1975 and later in 1987 to Sylvan Road, Toowong. The majority of Dalton’s built body of work occurred in this period. Since Dalton was unable to keep a large staff he had to limit the size of the buildings he undertook to a domestic scale, making a majority of Dalton’s work detached housing. (Clients typically had a professional background.) He also undertook select larger scale commercial projects (University and Government clients). His built body of work occurs most densely in the Brisbane suburbs of Toowong, Kenmore, Chapel Hill, Fig Tree Pocket and Indooroopilly. He also completed projects in the regional Queensland towns of Toowoomba, St George and Cairns. Selected works were widely published in Architecture in Australia, receiving numerous awards and recognition from the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

In 1957 Dalton registered as an architect and worked in practice, starting in partnership with Peter Heathwood as Dalton and Heathwood and then establishing John Dalton Architect and Associates in 1959. From 1963 to 1971, whilst in practice, Dalton lectured fifth year architecture students at the Queensland University on a part-time basis. After being in practice for 22 years Dalton semi-retired in 1979 moving to the town of Allora located in the Darling Downs, he returned to Toowong to continue working in practice on a part-time basis. Dalton died in 2007 from cancer at the age of 79 years.

Alongside his architectural works, John Dalton is identified as having been an artist, having actively produced paintings even as a student in 1957. Artworks by him have appeared in notable Australian architectural journals – having designed the cover piece for the July 1960 edition of the Australian Journal of Architecture and Arts, as well as contributing an article entitled “The Verandah” in the March 1964 edition of Architecture in Australia that was accompanied by six oil paintings by Dalton.

After completing his university education in 1956 Dalton formed a practice with fellow Queensland University graduate Peter Heathwood who had also worked at Theo Thynne and Associates. Their architectural education and the design ethos at Theo Thynne and Associates had instilled in Dalton and Heathwood a climatic responsibility which they synthesised into their body of work. The partnership began after Heathwood had completed a design for a plywood exhibition house for the Industrial Fair in 1957, Heathwood handed the project to Dalton to complete the working drawings whilst he went on his honeymoon. The design which used plywood in various configurations won the competition, was constructed for the exhibition and was later moved to the Brisbane suburb of The Gap. In 1956 Dalton and Heathwood as a practice was established at 307 Queen Street in the Brisbane CBD. The post world war II era was a boom period which aided in continued project work. Heathwood recalls that “he and Dalton although competitive in the design achievements were never competitive for work”.

John Harold Dalton FRAIA (1927–2007) was an English Australian architect, writer, editor and artist.

Dalton was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, England on 30 December 1927, he was educated at Adel school in Leeds, England after which he was awarded a National Diploma in building from Leeds technical college which he attended from 1940-45. Dalton served in the Royal Air Force from 1946 to 1948 as an architectural draftsman. In 1950 he immigrated to Australia where he furthered his tertiary education by part-time study at the Queensland Institute of Technology (now Queensland University of Technology) and the University of Queensland for certificate and diploma courses whilst working part-time in various Brisbane based architects offices, a requirement of the courses. In 1956 he completed his tertiary education receiving a diploma in architecture from Queensland University, Dalton generally had a positive opinion of his architectural education, speaking highly of the academic professors stating, “the members of the profession were ‘honourable men’ and very highly regarded”.