Modernity

Tempe is a city town in the area of the eastern suburbs that was named after the mansion (Tempe house) in Wolli Creek on the banks of the Cooks River and is known as one of the many great houses of Sydney. Tempe House was built in 1836 by a Scotland immigrant from Elgin named Alexander Brodie Spark (1792-1856). He named the house after the Vale of Tempe,which in Mount Olympus, Greece, was a lovely valley. This historical site was created and designed in a Georgian style by John Verge (1772-1861) with some modern touches to it. The House of Tempe holds such importance of history and still to this day intact with unblemished 1830s villa and enclosed with its greatly unchanged landscape setting. Verge’s design has created a picture perfect, eye catching and picturesque look.

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File:Wolli_Creek_Tempe_House.JPG Fig. 1

 

Tempe house has so much social significance due to being a landmark to the Tempe community. The site’s relation with Spark and his progressiveness in building the community and entertain as much as he can which adds social importance of the site. This historical site has operated as a target for the public’s actions during Spark’s time of ownership. The continuos use of the House from the ‘Sisters of the Good Samaritan for the neighbourhood’s actions and to increase the significance of this relation. (Environment NSW 2016)

Tempe House was built and formed during the modern times, the house appeals to modernist beliefs about development and consumerism, the red, cream brick and sandstone detailed building signifies modernist design, which is categorised by reasonable functionality and high maintenance.

Tempe Houses’s identity and structure hold’s so much history. The design of the house starts off with the Northeast side rises bull nose edged verandahsand

 

‘Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense modernity can be said to unite all mankind’ (Berman, 1982,)

This quote by Berman in 1982 talks about everything around us from places to people, level to culture and faith and science is made up by modern environments and experiences. Meaning by, in context of Tempe House, it has been through a lot over the last 180 years. but it still holds historical figures of Modernity to Postmodernity to Colonisation.

 

Quotes of Modernity:

  • ‘Modern environments and experiences cut across all boundaries of geography and ethnicity, of class and nationality, of religion and ideology: in this sense modernity can be said to unite all mankind’ (Berman, 1982,)
  • ‘Modernism nevertheless retains the distinctiveness of a major episode in the history of culture.’ (Ellis, 2005)
  • ‘Distinctions among modernization, modernity, and modernism remain indispensable: modernization as the condition of social, economic, and technological change; modernity as the lived social experience of these transforming conditions; and modernism as the cultural activity situated within and alongside these other dimensions.’ (Ellis, 2005)