Catalogue 63 New Century Antiquarian Books Late Spring 2012

[22] BEAUFORT DIVISION, Department of
Aircraft Production.
Beaufort Homes: Individually Styled Modern
Designs [cover title]. [Melbourne], Beaufort Division,
Department of Aircraft Construction, June 1946.
Oblong broadsheet, folding to four double-sided
panels, octavo, pages numbered to 6 with two
unnumbered, printed in green and black with highlights
reversed out in white; trivial use, a fine copy. $330
Rare and important: showing floor plans and realisations
(inside and out) of the Beaufort display home on view in
The Treasury Gardens, Melbourne, June 1946.
From manufacturing bombers during the war to designing
metal-based housing after seems a leap but, on reflection, a
logical and imaginative one. The wartime restrictions on
building materials and resources continued into the post-war
years when there was a huge unfulfilled demand for home
construction. The prefabricated Beaufort Homes, designed
by Arthur Baldwinson for the Department of Aircraft
Production, were part of a government scheme to reduce
housing shortages. They were also a productive and practical
way of converting factories that had been dedicated to the
production of munitions and other military matériel to peace
time use. Although ultimately abandoned, the Beaufort
Home project was a pioneering venture into prefabricated
building design and production.
“The Beaufort Home is the culmination of intensive research
in design durability, insulation and equipment by the Beaufort Division of the Department of Aircraft Production in association with the Victorian State Housing
Commission and the Commonwealth Department of Works and Housing through their Experimental Building Station. The project was financed by the
Commonwealth…”.
The display home (“of which only one has been built”), is to obtain an expression of opinion from the public on this modern method of house construction”.
Visitors were invited to complete a questionnaire after viewing the Beaufort Home; the questionnaire was inserted in this ‘pamphlet’ but is no longer present.
The experiment was greeted positively and in the following year Beaufort published a similar piece with the same title and in the same format showing various
aspects of the Beaufort Home Type 2 – similar to the Beaufort Home Type 1 on view in June 1946. Furthermore “The Housing Commission, Victoria, has placed
orders for 5,000 homes concurrently with an order from the Commonwealth War Service Homes Commission for 5,500 Beaufort Homes. It is anticipated that
volume production will commence in September, 1947.”
Both these pieces are very rare and, of their nature, highly ephemeral; we can trace copies of the present piece only in the State Library of New South Wales and
in the University of Technology Sydney, while the 1947 piece seems only to be held in the Matheson Library, Monash University.