Our Robin pavilion takes its name from celebrated Australian architect Robin Boyd. In his book The Australian Ugliness, he identifies our local strain of gentility with excruciating accuracy: featurism. This hideous 'decorative technique' infects the built environment with cloying prettiness, and disguises sound, elegant function. Featurism flourishes in Australia, writes Boyd:
Perhaps the explanation is that man, sensing that the vastness of the landscape will mock any object that his handfuls of fellows can make here, avoids anything that might be considered a challenge to nature. The greater and fiercer the natural background, the prettier and prettier the artificial foreground: this way there are no unflattering comparisons, no loss of face.
Ouch.