Publisher: Lund Humphries ISBN: 9781848222298 Author: Andrew Leach Format: Hardcover, 160pp, 250x190mm

The Gold Coast is Australia’s most rapidly changing city – regularly compared to Miami and Las Vegas for its embrace of bad taste and the good life; and with Dubai for its sudden moments of high-rise assuredness and seeming lack of restraint in either the ambitions of building or their manifestations.

Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book offers the first comprehensive history of the city and its architecture, documenting its rise from a series of seaside villages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the present-day city.

Considering city plans, architectural works, landscape formations and modes of inhabitation over the time in which the Gold Coast has been peopled, it considers the role of architecture in carrying the city forward. Its main focus is on the contemporary city and the conditions that have given rise to its character - high rise, bad taste and skewed towards the beach edge.

With over 150 colour illustrations, this accessible history provides any visitor to the Gold Coast with an insightful and comprehensive guide to this dynamic city and its architecture.

Through its study of the Gold Coast, the book puts forward a compelling case for the key role architecture plays in the contemporary city, its development and financial success.