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SOLD OUT | Slide Night: Robin Boyd’s Nordic Travels
Tue December 2, 2025 @ 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm AEDT
$20 – $30
Join us at Walsh Street for Slide Night: Robin Boyd’s Nordic Travels presented by Jonathan Russell from the RBF Research and Collections Team.
Robin Boyd’s 1950 travels through Denmark and Sweden and his 1964 visit to Finland are richly documented in the Walsh Street Archive’s slide collection. A keen-sighted traveller, Boyd’s photos illustrate the influence of Nordic ideas on his thinking, especially around housing, urbanisation and architecture. Our RBF slide nights offer an insight into the Walsh Street Archive’s 1500+ slides and the stories they contain about Robin Boyd.
This event is generously supported by Brickworks Building Products, Konpira Maru Wines and Yumbo Soda.
Doors will open at 6.30 pm to allow attendees to explore the Walsh Street house – the iconic modernist residence designed by Robin Boyd in 1957 – and enjoy refreshments in the courtyard.
This event is in celebration of the new online exhibition Robin Boyd: Nordic Connections, curated by Jonathan Russell and Kerry Landman and produced by the Robin Boyd Foundation’s Research and Collections Team.
In 1950, at 31 years old, Robin Boyd visited Europe for the first time. The trip, supported by a travelling scholarship and with introductions from Melbourne friends, gave Boyd his first close-up view of the post-war architectural scene abroad. Boyd visited Denmark and Sweden, and both places made a strong impression: as with many young architects of the era, the Nordic combination of nuanced, locally inflected modernism and progressive social policy was a lodestar for what might be possible back home.
The subsequent 20 years saw Boyd return often to writing about Nordic architects and Nordic design ideas – his admiration for Finnish-American Eero Saarinen was abiding, as was Boyd’s sympathy towards Dane Jørn Utzon in the Sydney Opera House affair. In 1964 Boyd visited Finland and found another valuable precedent, this time in the urban design of the planned city of Tapiola.
Boyd’s admiration for Nordic design was multi-faceted and deeply held – it can be seen throughout his writing, photography and correspondences. Robin Boyd: Nordic Connections is an interlinked collection of sources that together tells the story of this engagement. Combining items from the Robin Boyd Foundation’s Walsh Street Archive and new archival research, it highlights the crucial influence of Nordic ideas on Robin Boyd’s thinking.
We offer discounted tickets to RBF Friends and Boyd Circle members – support the Foundation and join today.
Prior to your visit, please note:
- Attendees must be 16 years and over.
- No external food or drink permitted.
- Large bags and backpacks will need to be checked in at entry.
- Stiletto or pointed heels are not permitted due to our cork flooring.
- Tickets are refundable up to 72 hours prior to tour.
- Tickets can be exchanged, as long as purchaser advises us of the attendee name.
Image credit: House, 1950, Copenhagen, Denmark (Arne Jacobsen). Slide taken by Robin Boyd, 1950. Walsh Street Archive. © Estate of Robin Boyd.