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Urban versions of the Australian suburban Federation style were devised in the early part of the 20th century. Melbourne architects Usher and Kemp (Dalswraith House, Kew, 1906) composed elements imaginatively derived from both English and American Queen Anne sources. Their Professional Chambers (Paris end of Collins Street, 1908) included pointed-arch windows along the street frontage. J.J. and El. Clark, with an Edwardian baroque repertoire, designed the Melbourne City Baths (Swanston Street, 1904; alterations and additions by Kevin Greenhatch with Gunn Williams Fender, 1980). Red brick and white stucco trim, a common fin-de-siècle medium, were eclipsed by the advent of plain unembellished surfaces. The epitome of severe classical revival was the Shrine of Remembrance by Philip Burgoyne Hudson (Hudson and Wardrop, 1934; World War I Memorial Forecourt by Ernest E. Milton, 1954), where a conjectural restoration of the tomb of King Mausolos, Halicarnassus, split a modeling of the Parthenon into two porticos. Melbourne architects have often made imaginative compositions from many and varied sources. The former Auditorium Building (Collins Street, Melbourne, 1913), by Nahum Barnet, was inspired in program and detail by Adler and Sullivan's 1889 Chicago building of the same name. The Renaissance palazzo tripartite division can be seen, with American Romanesque arches at the entry and vertical window bay strips, yet rendered as "blood and bandages"; the red brick with contrasting white stucco classical details also refers to contemporaneous London buildings. In Barnet's building, rows of curved projecting balconies were completed with ornate handwrought ironwork balustrades, an addition of elements that transformed the Chicago model.
Robert Haddon had Art Nouveau origins in mind for his red brick and stucco forms (Eastbourne Terrace, East Melbourne, 1901) with handwrought ironwork balcony balustrades and radiant curves. Harold Desbrowe Annear, before he committed to classicism, was a significant Arts and Crafts exponent. His Chadwick House (1903, restored by Peter Crone, 1999) was one of three Annear houses on The Eyrie, Eaglemont, set beside a steeply inclined pedestrian walk near the riverbank scenery favored by the late 19th-century Impressionist Heidelberg School plein air painters. Walter Butler's Mission to Seamen Building (1917) was also in Arts and Crafts style, a new amalgam of Californian Spanish Mission elements finished in rough-cast cement.
The engineer John Monash (with Bates Peebles and Smart) used Kahn bar reinforcing (patented by Albert Kahn in the United States, 1902) in the concrete-ribbed Reading Room dome in the State Library of Victoria (1911). Walter and Marion Griffin designed the stone-faced reinforced concrete Newman College (University of Melbourne, Parkville, 1918). The double-skin reinforced concrete dome and its pattern of ribbing were loosely based on a Paris patented dome construction system. The Griffins's Capitol House and Capitol Theatre (designed with Peck and Kemter, 1924) were slip-form reinforced-concrete construction, similar in method to Frank Lloyd Wright's Unity Temple (Oak Park, Illinois, 1906). Frederick Romberg's Stanhill House (1950) and Harry Seidler's Shell House (1988) concluded a long episode of innovative urban concrete construction.
The Griffins's own house, Pholiota (Magic Mushroom, 1920), was constructed out of Knitlock concrete masonry-tile construction (patented by Walter Burley Griffin and David C. Jenkins, a building contractor, Melbourne, 1917). The Griffin's Knitlock system was tectonically based on the combination of French brick cavity walls with mild steel reinforcing and terra cotta blockwork that Griffin used in his American houses. A number of Knitlock houses by the Griffins were built in Melbourne and Sydney. Kevin Borland, in his Rice House (1951), and Robin Boyd, with his Wood House and supermarket (1952), used a sprayed concrete system patented by the building contractors McDougall and Ireland in Melbourne (1950). Some architectural works in Melbourne have been overtly European in inspiration. Peck and Kemter, in association with A.C. Leith and Associates (Heidelberg Municipal Offices and Town Hall, 1937), assembled brickwork blocks in the manner of Willem Dudok (Hilversum Town Hall, Netherlands, 1931). On the other hand, Keith Reid (Reid and Pearson with Stuart Calder) with his former McPherson's Pty, Ltd. Building (1937) maintained the preference of many local architects for evoking expressionistic characteristics. Erich Mendelsohn's Schocken Department Stores are exemplars in this instance. David McGlashan (McGlashan and Everist) at Heide (Bulleen, 1965), for the patrons and collectors of post-World War II contemporary art, John and Sunday Reed, designed a series of view-linked serene gallery living spaces about an intricate circulation, indicative of De Stijl principles and an appreciation of the German Pavilion, Barcelona (Mies van der Rohe, 1929). Heide is now the Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne (extensions by Andrew Andersons, 1993; rose garden pavilion by Gregory Burgess, 1991).
A curtain-wall system was created by Walter Burley Griffin for Iconard House (1922, demolished 1970), using different glass casting patterns and transparencies slotted into mild steel channels. Osborn McCutcheon (Bates, Smart and McCutcheon) developed a curtain-walling system similar to Lever House (New York, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, 1952) for IC House (East Melbourne, 1958). The steel framing of IC House was state of the art; its form, however, was closer to the precedent of the United Nations Headquarters (Wallace Harrison and Max Abramovitz, New York, 1952). The former BHP House (William Street, Yuncken Freeman, 1972) was equally structurally innovative; the diagonals of the braced steel-framed core within braced glazed sleeve were expressed. Denton Corker Marshall (101 Collins Street, 1990), with a foyer of pale Postmodern Tuscan columns by Johnson Burgee of New York, and Daryl Jackson (with Hassell Architects, 120 Collins Street, 1991) delineated stepped skyscraper towers of vital solidity. Carey Lyon (Perrott Lyon Mathieson, Telstra Corporate Centre, Exhibition Street, 1992) and Paul Katsieris (Hassell Architects, Commonwealth Courts, 1999) have also proved that floor-level demarcations and meticulous design development can enhance office tower forms.
Roy Grounds produced a bluestone block form with a wide overhanging roof, long strip windows beneath the eaves, and a Richardsonian arched entry for the National Gallery of Victoria (St. Kilda Road, 1968; alterations and refurbishment by Mario Bellini, Milan, with Meier III, Melbourne, 1999). One of three monuments that comprise the Victorian Arts Centre. The avocado-shaped plan of the Concert Hall (1981), presented as a cylinder above ground level, and the Theatres Building (1984), were completed after Grounds's death (Sundermann Douglas McFall, decoration by set designer John Truscott). Denton Corker Marshall has provided an expressionistic airplane-wing metal and glass Melbourne Exhibition Centre beside the Yarra River (South Melbourne, 1996), and their new classicizing State Museum (Exhibition Gardens, Carlton) will open in 2000. LAB Architects are completing an ensemble of crystal-patterned galleries for the arts media (Federation Square, Flinders Street) in time for the centennial of federation celebrations in 2001.
The Melbourne School was invented by Robin Boyd in 1967 to categorize some 1950s Melbourne buildings in tensile steel construction, such as the 1956 Olympic Swimming Stadium (Kevin Borland, Peter McIntyre, John and Phyllis Murphy) and the 1959 Sidney Myer Music Bowl (Yuncken Freeman, Brothers Griffiths, and Simpson). The school created daring forms using cavalier techniques and rejecting aesthetic rules. The steel A-framed house of Peter and Dione McIntyre (1955) and McIntyre's Snelleman house of more conventional construction (1954), but spiraling in plan down a steep slope around an existing eucalyptus tree, are examples of a number of houses of this type and approach.
Expressionism remains a favored style for a younger generation of Melbourne architects, including Norman Day (Mowbray College, Melton from 1981), Ian McDougall (Brunswick Community Health Centre, 1990), Gregory Burgess (Eltham Library, 1994), Ashton Raggatt McDougall (St. Kilda Town Hall redevelopment, 1994), Maggie Edmond and Peter Corrigan (Windsor Fire Station, 1997).
In the same adventurous spirit, with an emphasis on abstract geometry, are works by Peter Elliot (Carlton Baths and Community Centre, 1989), Cocks Carmichael Whitford (Yarra Footbridge, 1989), Daryl Jackson (Melbourne Cricket Ground Great Southern Stand, 1992), Peter Crone (Trinity Grammar School Chapel, 1992), Peter Williams (Williams and Boag, Tyne Street Housing, Carlton, 1993), Allan Powell (with Pels Innes Neilson Kosloff, RMIT Building #94, 1996), Wood Marsh (Buildings #1-5, Deakin University Burwood Campus, 1997), and Nonda Katsalidis (Nation Fender Katsalidis, Republic Tower, 1999). Denton Corker Marshall has sculpted the majestic pair of pylon's astride the Henry Bolte Bridge (City Link roadworks, 1999) together with their bright-hued and rhythmic Melbourne Gateway.
JEFF TURNBULL
Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture,Vol.2 (G-O). Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005. |
