Architecture

The executive director of Heritage Victoria has recommended that one of Guilford Bell’s most notable houses be included on the Victorian Heritage Register.
Seccull House in Brighton is one of Guilford Bell’s later works, completed in 1972, and is widely regarded as one of his finest.
The 560-square-metre house is F-shaped in plan with a flat roof design behind a high boundary wall.
The house was commissioned by master builder William Ernest Seccull, whose family’s construction company built prominent post-war buildings in Melbourne such as the Royal Children’s Hospital.
Bell, who established his practice in Melbourne in the 1950s, had become known for designing houses for Australia’s wealthy elite, including the Fairfax, Myer and Baillieu families.

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Seccull House by Guilford Bell, 1972. Image:

Abercromby’s Real Estate

Seccull had seen photos of Bell’s Fairfax Pavilion in Bowral, another flat-roofed house, and wanted Bell to design a house in a similar style for him.
“Bell himself felt that his relationship with the clients, the Seccull’s was one of the most satisfying of his career, and the result one of his most pleasurable works,” reads a statement of significance from the National Trust.
The house consists of a series of courtyards, wide, gallery-like corridors and floor-to-ceiling windows and openings.
Bell had developed several characteristics that had become the hallmarks of designs, including extreme privacy, anonymous street frontages and highly ordered plans. He was also influenced by Middle Eastern and classical architecture, and incorporated perimeter walls, ritualized entries and courtyards into the designs of his houses.
Architectural historian Phillip Goad described the house as “one of [Bell’s] favourite commissions, and one of his most accomplished exercises in the rituals of entry and reception, axial denial, concealed courtyards and exquisitely obsessive gap and recess details [and] a tour-de-force of white stucco, black steel and travertine.”
Heritage Victoria’s executive director recommends that the house be listed for its cultural significance. The Heritage Council of Victoria will make the final determination on the listing. More

An ornate government-owned and occupied Sydney building associated with colonial architect James Barnet will be redeveloped into a hotel with a soaring tower cantilevering over it.
The proposal, with concept designs from FJMT, comes from Built and Irongate Group, who submitted an unsolicited proposal to redevelop the historic Former Public Works Department at 50 Phillips Street in 2017.
The developers own the site next door at 52 Phillip Street, and hope to amalgamate the two sites, adaptively re-using the historic building and delivering a 47-storey tower, with 331 hotel beds. A state-significant development application is now before the planning department.
The former Department of Public Works Building is as an extension to James Barnett’s Chief Secretary’s Building, a state-heritage listed building in the Victorian Free Classical style. It has been occupied by a range of government departments since it was built.

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50 and 52 Phillips Street proposal by FJMT.

FJMT describes in planning documents how the design will seek to preserve and celebrate the character of the heritage building.
“The new slender tower will provide a clear separation from the existing heritage building so that the facades, roofscape and building form remain clearly legible,” the architects state.
The proposal consists of three major components: the adaptive reuse of 50 Phillip Street, a new podium infill building at 52 Phillip Street and a new tower at 52 Phillip Street which will partially cantilever over 50 Phillip Street.
“The new infill podium at 52 Phillip Street will reinforce the scale and material quality of the heritage facadesof 121 Macquarie Street, 50 Phillip Street and of the Intercontinental hotel on the north side of Bridge Street,” states FJMT “Itwill also provide a similar scale and material character toPhillip Lane to the South.”
Built CEO Brett Mason, said the development represented a unique opportunity to give the historic buildings new life. “Our plans for a luxury hotel mixed-use development will do this while preserving the important history of 50 Phillip Street that reflect the unique nineteenth century architecture of the former NSW colony,” he said. “This history will be restored, conserved and opened to the people of NSW in our development for the first time.” More

Compared to the grandeur of Melbourne’s Royal Exhibition Building or the ancient timeline of the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, a 19th-century “portable building” might at first seem unremarkable.
But some high-profile heritage advocates think these early examples of prefabrication should become the next Australian sites to be added to the UNECO World Heritage list.
Shipped to Australia’s shores from around the world from the 1840s onwards, portable buildings, as they were then known, ranged from humble houses, shops, churches and schools formed of simple materials through to elaborate cast iron plate cottages, a lighthouse and even the NSW legislative council chamber.
While such buildings were shipped to many different places in this period, including to California and Latin America, Australia has more surviving examples than anywhere in the world; in fact, “it has, by a considerable margin, more than the rest of the world combined,” the proponents say.

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Wingecarribee, Bowral, c 1854-7. Image:

Miles Lewis

The campaign to have them placed on the World Heritage list was launched by former federal minister Barry Jones, who previously served as the vice president of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. The campaign taskforce, which includes many leading heritage bodies and experts from Australia and further afield, notes that the buildings are significant for their association with “episodes of great moment” in history, including the proliferation of steam navigation, the gold rushes in Australia and the US, and the Crimean War.
One of the campaign organizers is Miles Lewis, a professor at the University of Melbourne’s School of Architecture, Building and Planning and one of Australia’s most notable architecture historians.
“The huge importation of buildings from overseas is a really exciting aspect of Australian history, because there has been nothing comparable in scale elsewhere in the world,” he said.
There are 104 known examples through Australia, though around 20 percent are “very fragmentary” or too altered to be understood visually. The majority, 63, are in Victoria, 16 are in New South Wales, 13 in South Australia, four in Tasmania, three in Queensland, three in Western Australia, and two in the Northern Territory.
Among them are the only Singapore-made wooden portable buildings from the 19th century to survive in the world; more than a dozen iron buildings made in Glasgow in the 1850s (only two survive in Glasgow); buildings made in the United States (only one such building survives in the US, and that in storage); and both wood and iron buildings by twenty-one English makers, “very few of which can be identified in England itself.”

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Corio Villa, Eastern Beach, Geelong, designed by Bell and Miller and manufactured by Robertson and Lister.

The nominations taskforce explains that the gold rushes of the 19th century caused a boom in the demand for portable houses, and saw the emergence of house entrepreneurs in Singapore and Hong Kong. The Hong Kong houses in both San Francisco and Melbourne have all disappeared, but a number of the hundreds of houses from Singapore survive in Victoria.
“The houses were generally built of dedaru (Singapore teak or Singapore oak) and meranti (cedar), and were cultural hybrids,” the taskforce’s report notes. “The dimensions and room sizes were designed to meet the European tastes of the market; the entrepreneurs were ethnically Chinese, and at least some of the labour was Malay.”
One of them is the former 1 Hoddle Street house, which was threatened with demolition in 1983, before being rescued by architect Andrew Muir and re-erected on his property in Collingwood, where he has since collected other examples.
On the grander end of the scale, is Corio Villa in Geelong, which was designed by Bell and Miller and manufactured by Robertson and Lister in Glascow, which arrived in Geelong in August 1853.
“The house is beautifully constructed of heavy cast iron plate with joints run with red lead and virtually invisible externally, a system which was probably copied from Alexander Gordon’s cast iron lighthouses,” the taskforce report reads.
The taskforce noted that many of the buildings are now protected under relevant heritage controls, but they are not recognized collectively for their contribution to world architecture.
“A World Heritage listing is an important thing for the country concerned,” said convenor of the campaign, Tony Isaacson. “It gives a boost to national pride and identity, and it generates tourism. Two-thirds of the buildings in this proposal are in Victoria, and it will be a bonanza for the state and for all states that get on board.”
The taskforce acknowledged that a world heritage nomination was “a major exercise” that would be further complicated by the number of properties involved. It’s asking the federal government and all state governments to support the nomination, and is expecting the process to take “from five to ten years.” More

A historic boot factory in Sydney’s Bondi Junction is set to be transformed into a civic innovation hub, designed by Archer Office. Waverley Council has appointed Lloyd Group as head contractor for the restoration and adaptation project, which is expected to be completed in March 2022. The project includes the creation of a large skylight, […] More

The appliance company Gaggenau has launched a design awards programme celebrating the best kitchens in Australia. Gaggenau’s Kitchen of the Year Design Contest is open to professional kitchen designers, architects, interior designers, builders and developers from Australia. Awards will go to the best kitchens in different regions (SA/WA/NT; VIC/TAS; NSW/ACT; QLD), and from these winners […] More

Australian steel building products company Lysaght is this year celebrating 100 years of local manufacturing, an achievement that goes against the trend of offshoring that has prevailed in Australia in recent decades.
While the current Lysaght range covers roofing and walling, architectural cladding, guttering, fascia and rainwater goods, fencing and screening, steel sections, formwork and framing, patios, carports and structures, it’s corrugated iron that it’s long been known for.
This steel building product has been used on everything from the roofs and bull-nose verandas of heritage homes, through to shearing sheds and outback dunnies.

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Corrugating Galvanised Iron at the original Newcastle Works.

The product’s journey to national icon status can be traced back to Britain, where entrepreneurial Irishman, John Lysaght, began galvanising corrugated steel sheeting in Bristol during 1857. He registered the product under the trademark “Orb,” which continues to be used to this day
Lysaght turned his attention to export markets, namely Australia, where he saw opportunities arising from the gold rush of the late 1800s. He began exporting to the colony soon afterwards.
Orb was first sold in Australia through independent merchants until Lysaght established his own distribution company, the Victorian Galvanised Iron and Wire Company, which acted as a central selling agency. The venture worked well and by 1913, some 80,000 tonnes of Orb had been shipped to Australia.
The next challenge the company encountered was World War I, which saw compulsory redirection of production capacity to assist the war effort, this devastated local supply and highlighted the need for a local production presence in Australia.
Within three months of the war commencing, the company (now under the direction of John Lysaght’s nephew Herbert Royse Lysaght in Australia) was making arrangements to purchase 24 acres of land in Newcastle, NSW adjacent to a site already owned by Broken Hill Pty. Co. (BHP).

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John Lysaght.

By the following year in 1917, John Lysaght (Australia) Pty Ltd was formed with the intent of establishing a manufacturing site in Australia, and approximately four years later in April 1921, the new Lysaght company commenced manufacturing at its purpose-built site in Newcastle.
Lysaght general manager Peta Renkin said the company was proud of reaching the important milestone.
“For Lysaght to have reached 100 years of manufacturing in Australia is an extremely satisfying achievement for our company,” she said.
“It’s proof that there’s viability in local production – Lysaght has worked hard to develop new product lines, to innovate and to make manufacturing processes as efficient as possible while still providing premium quality products and offering superior support.

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Lysaght Mini Orb.

“Of course, this achievement would not have been possible without the dedication of Lysaght employees and the ongoing support of our business partners and clients, so to all of you we say ‘thank-you’ and we look forward to the future.”
Today, Lysaght’s parent company, BlueScope, supplies it with Australia-made steel, with manufacturing (customizing, forming and profiling) of the Lysaght products overseen by skilled production technicians at more than 40 Lysaght branches nation-wide.
Along with products like Custom Orb – whose heritage can be traced back to Orb – Lysaght has continued to innovate with products including Klip-Lok and Bondek.
Lysaght More

Pritzker laureates Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are curating the inaugural Rothwell Chair Symposium in April 2021, alongside the University of Sydney’s School of Architecture, Design and Planning. The pair, renowned for their “never demolish” approach, were appointed the university’s inaugural Garry and Susan Rothwell chairs in architectural design leadership in 2020, prior winning architecture’s […] More

Taubmans has once again partnered with not-for-profit organization Givit to raise money in support of Australian communities affected by bushfire, drought, and flood. Originally launched in 2020, the In it Together campaign raised $155,000, surpassing its initial goal of $120,000. “The incredible donation was used to purchase essential items and services needed by people and […] More