UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
CROSS-SECTION
Issue No. 18: April I, 1954
The M LC Insurance Co is about to begin its extensive programme of new private office bldgs in nearly every capital & some provincial cities. For Brisbane, New-
castle & Woollongong, contracts are now being arrang- ed. Adelaide will follow closely & oihers soon. The architect-engineers, Messrs Bates, Smart & McCutcheon, are working to the S A A Code & introducing light weight structure unprecedented in Australian city bldgs.
The normal concrete encasing of steelwork is gone . In- stead floors of pressed-steel panels are fire-protected with 2" granolithic surface finish & gypsum-plaster sus- pended ceilings. The steel columns of the rigid frame are gypsum-plastered. Savings are estimated at 55% in weight, hence 30% in steel; & work is dry, eliminating shuttering. The system is most completely realised in
Adelaide, (Assoc Architects; Messrs Lawson, Cheesman
& Doley) where city regs are being amended following the arch'ts' successful appeal to the referees. Other features: air-conditioning, sliding aluminium louvrê-
shutters & in Brisbane, "sun-breaking" grids over the glass facades.
¶ Nominations closed yesterday for this year's Sulman arch'I award: church & school bldgs completed in NSW during 5 yrs to Dec 31 '53.
If Just a week before the Queen arrived in Melbourne, the Chamber of Manufactures suddenly was inspired with the idea of a great arch linking St. Paul's & Young-
&-Jackson's at the city gate. They built it in no time.
a handsome though obviously temporary steel portal (Brian O'Connor, arch't). Cost was no object. Then the Queen left & someone realised it would be almost as costly again to remove the thing. The C of M immediately gave it to the City, in situ. The Council politely rejected the gift, then finally agreed to- pay for removal & keep the parts for next time.
Prestressed precast concrete floor joists are being used in this 35 sq house in North Balwyn, Vic. They are made by E P M Concrete, Oakleigh, Vic. The plan, on a I in 10 slope, has separate sleeping & living levels.
(Montgomery, King & Trengove, Arch'ts)
IT The A M P Society's 6 storey, steel frame, 160' x 70' new offices in North Sydney will be completed this mth, 12 mths after starting. Final estimate: £365,000.
(Stephenson & Turner, arch'ts; Concrete Const'n Co;
Stanley & Llewelyn, eng'rs).
¶ A motel at Dalby, Qld, used walls of concrete T-beams precast in aluminium moulds from Scotland;
a method of Indian origin, says Mr George Johnson, who holds the rights for its use. It gives a 9" wall with 5" cavity.
¶ Taylor Woodrow (Aust) Pty Ltd an English sub- sidiary established in NSW to build low-cost housing, has completed 2 projects at Miranda & begun a third, 32 homes at Woolooware near Cronulla. 65 brick houses have been sold at £2,950 for 2 bedrm, up to
£3,950 for 3 bedrm.
IT
At a cocktail party in the Black Panther night club, Adelaide, Fred Ingham & Co introduced their new material, Gypseal wallboard, used in the club's remodel-ling. It is a 9'8" x 19" x 3}" slab, hollowed for piping.
If The AS AA held its Council meeting in Q'land, elected Mr Alan Mollison of Auckland, President-Secre- tary; & Miss Joan Huckle of Sydney, Treasurer.
¶
Q'land arch'ts announced their intention to exchange standard plans with Institute Small Homes Services in Melbourne & Sydney.IT
While Melbourne Degraves-st rail passengers' sub- way potters along, Sydney City Council has countered the NSW Railways' proposal for a subway exit from St James Station to Market-st with 2 alternative plans.Both would emerge in David Jones' store.
¶ In Jan, '53, a C'wealth-State guarantee was given for a loan for new stands at Melb Cricket Ground for the Olympic Games. The est'd cost: £200,000. Later it rose to £300,000. Last month the contract was signed with the lowest tenderer, E AWatts Pty Ltd, for £535,975.
(Total seating capacity of MCG: 120,000.) /Final drwgs for tendering of the Olympic Pools bldg will be finished in 2 weeks. /Hundreds of condemned trees in St Kilda-rd are now to be left till after the Games.
All over Australia urban bldg is lazily awakening. The scene in Melbourne city, which only last year seemed condemned to bldg inactivity forever, has quite sud- denly changed. After 14yrs almost without a new building, many major works are now actually under way
& several more are in advanced planning. They are of many types, with the notable exception of rentable office investment. Below we begin to see the shape of new city design after the long hibernation. It is not exactly 14 yrs ahead of pre-war, but neither is it merely a return to where bldg left off. At least one project indi- cates heavily the new New York influence: a box of glass here doing its best to ignore the regulation set-backs which once were affected as a "sky-scraper" silhouette.
Some incorporate experimental techniques. One breaks away from box & glass with a promising original form
& a huge mural. If it is fair to judge from sketches, there will also be, in this midget boom, moments of awful ineptitude. But with few exceptions, the most remarkable thing about these bldgs & others about to start is the consistency of the arch .' approach, amoun- ting almost to a new idiom of city design—wary, unprovoking, unexciting, but sounder than any popular movement of the past, an Australian-looking compromise with the glass envelope, a logical expansion to urban size & character of the generally more simple & rational post-war development in small suburban bldg.
¶ The following are under construction:
I. Hosies' Hotel, Flinders-st. Cost: £365,410, Time:
17 mths. Arch't-Engn'rs: Mussen, Mackay & Potter. Bldr:
E A Watts. 4 fls of fully air-conditioned public rms break back with a garden for guest fls. Reinf conc frame, alum'm windows & spandrels, ceramic veneer &
travertine finishes. The mosaic mural may be the sub- ject of a competition.
2. H C Sleigh Ltd HQ, Queen-st: £300,000; 17 mths Arch't-Engn'rs: Bates, Smart & McCutcheon. Bldrs:
Hansen & Yuncken. Steel frame & hollow-block floors.
3. Town Hall Hotel, Swanston-st: £366,000; 12 mths.
Arch't: Best Overend. Prentice Bldrs. A "luxury" finish, fully air-conditioned. Steel frame with structural terra-
cotta & stainless steel facings & alum'm double glazing to combat noise.
4. Gilbert Court, a co op company office bldg, Collins-st East: £243,459; 10 mths. Arch't: J A La Gerche. Bldr: E A Watts. Reinf-conc frame with alum'm windows & spandrels.
5. Pharmaceutical Guild Fed'I HQ,: St Francis-st
£58,000; 15 mths. Arch'ts: Cowper, Murphy & Assoc'ts.
Bldrs: Simmie & Co.
6. Federation Insurance bldg, Flinders-Bond-st-cnr. 3 fls at present: £186,500; 9 mths. Arch'ts: Meldrum &
Noad. Bldrs Lewis Const'n.
7. Myer car park, Lonsdale-st: £150,000; to finish June.
Arch't: Bernard Evans. Bldr: Morrisons Pty Ltd. Eng'rs:
J L & E M Daly. 66' x 310', steel frame cantilevered without external walls, split fl levels with linking ramps.
8. Oxford Chambers, an 1888 bldg in Bourke-st; ex- tensive reconstruction for Eagle Star Insurance Co.
Arch't: C Mervyn Morgan. Bldrs: Holloway Bros, London. Time: 6 mths. Steel beams replace brick bearing walls, 2 lifts added.
9. SKF bldg, Queen-st. Arch'ts: Robert Marsh, Benny
& Barry. Bldrs: Hansen & Yuncken
10. Queen Victoria Hospital: (a) boiler house (Bldr:
K G Hooker & Co) & (b) Jessie McPherson block (Bldr: J R & E Seccull Pty Ltd) Arch'ts: Stephenson &
Turner.
11. Grand Central Car Park, Lit Collins-st, later to be capped with 10 storeys of offices. £200,000; 6 mths Arch'ts: Seabrook, Fildes & Hunt; Bldr: Clements La ngford.
12. Com'Ith Offices, Exhibition-st, £54,000; 9 mths;
Arch'ts: Dept Works, Bldlr: E A Watts.
13. Telephone Exchange, Flinders Lane near Market-st;
contract price 2 yrs ago was £550,000; may finish this year. Arch'ts: Dept Works, Bldrs: McDougall & Ireland.
IT Also under way just beyond the city's square mile:
St. Vincent's Hospital; Carlton & United, & Victoria Brewery bldgs; Dried Fruits depot; Coroner's Court;
Prince Henry Hospital blocks, & finally
14. The new Telephone Exchange, Russell-st, which has
2 3
been building for 5 yrs & may look something like this wartime sketch by next December. Arch'ts: C'wealth Dept of Works, Bldrs: Clements Langford. Cost: Plus.
¶ SA's Public Entertainment Places Act caught up with J C Williamson's Theatre Royal, Adelaide. Blind seats must be removed, mech'I ventilation installed &
structural improvements made to the timber-propped stage wall. Total estimate: £25,000.
¶ The beautiful, bluestone "Royal Terrace" in Fitzroy, Melb, was 100 yrs old; but historians knew nothing of its origin beyond the date on the parapet. The Argus appealled for information. Readers responded with every imaginable fact except the identity of the arch't.
The bldrs were John & Charles Barwell.
¶ The SA Govt's offer of a £ for £ subsidy up to
£300,000 for church homes for the aged has stimulated 3 immediate new-wing plans: Baptist at Norwood, Anglican at Grange, & Methodist at Malvern.
¶ The third Anzac Highway Estate of the SA Housing Trust Flats (CS Aug Oct 53) at Camden, receives its first 36 families this month.
¶ Owner-builders now make up 66% of WA house builders. A report from the Assoc Sawmillers & Timber Merchants, WA, gives 16 mths as the average time for owner-builders to complete, 5 mths for contractors.
¶ Interstate exports of WA jarrah have been cut by more than half, to protect local needs & forests. Sub- stitutes are urgently being sought by SA & Vic, the main buyers.
¶ Electronic Industries Ltd in Adelaide announced a
£gym bldg programme, anticipating television. First step:
an £80,000 contract for remodelling their Flinders-st bldg.
If The Adelaide Advertiser's "unconditional" gift of
£15,000 for a sound shell in Elder Park has been ac- cepted by A C Council. Messrs Woods, Bagot, Lay- bourne, Smith & Irwin, arch'ts, are working on a design to cope with a symphony orchestra, carols by candle- light & expanding opinions about size—the shell is now to span 80 ft.
The new Sydney Univ of Technology bldg has a super- ficially simple form which often appears to be a strait- jacket restricting the complicated functions of the building. Sometimes indeed the convulsions underneath the surface strain the seams in the back of the jacket (above) and unexpected irregularities appear. These are strictly controlled on the flat facade, however, which is left with only a perforation of pokey windows in a brick wall. In this, its first building, the new University has demonstrated once & for all that it has no aspirations above technology, and perhaps no aspirations at all. (NSW Govt Arch't; James Wallace
& Co, bldrs).
¶ The SA Govt accepted the £100,000 tender of K G Hooker Pty Ltd, Melb, for Mt. Gambier's timber mill.
¶
Melbourne's Master Plan is on show for the second time, now supported by the newly-formed City Develop- ment Assoc'n. /Adelaide may have a similar association aimed at goading a plan into being. /To Perth, Prof Gordon Stephenson, British town-planner, has returned to follow up last year's preparatory study for a Metro- politan Plan for Perth & Fremantle. The plan is to presume I-m popul'n in 50 years. /Discussions about the developmental plan for Fremantle harbour may be forced to a decision by the derelict condition of the railway bridge which crosses the harbour's end. En- gineers estimate 7 yrs as its limit of life, but it already forms a hazard to small craft. /Brisbane's Plan, begun 1935 & finally adopted by BCC, is so out of date that when the Qld Local Govt Director, Mr. Sewell, takes time off normal duties to examine it this month it "will probably be scrapped."6 I4
Completed three months ago, the premises of the Royal Perth Yacht Club, on Pelican Point near Perth, rank among the most modern of their kind in Australia.
Architects : Forbes & Fitzhardinge.
MOST MODERN YACHT CLUB REQUIRES MODERN FLOOR TILES
if The building is of steel frame construction with panel brick walls, asbestos roof and concrete floor slabs. The section facing the water-front is completely glazed. The premises incorporate this modern bar, for which Dunlop Semastic Floor Tiles were selected to harmonise perfectly with the modern design and colour tonings. Ease of
maintenance and ideal suitability for concrete floors without being cold or hard, were other factors that influenced the choice of Dunlop Semastic Tiles in this instance.
1f The Compass Rose worked in Dunlop Semastic Tiles in the bar floor provides an appropriate nautical note. Dunlop Semastic Tiles are readily adaptable for special emblems such as this.
Other points of preference about Dunlop Semastic Tiles include the freedom from chipping, scarring and staining . . . ability to stand up to the year-after-year punishment . . . the wide selection of plain and marbled colours.
WHERE BEAUTY & UTILITY MUST COMBINE
Specify p Y DUNLOP SEMASTIC FLOOR TILES
9" x 9" Tiles Available in 17 Selected Colours
COMPLETE FLOORING SERVICE
Contact your state Flooring Department, Dunlop Rubber Australia Limited, for complete information concerning :
SEMASTIC FLOOR TILES RUBBER FLOORING FLEXIMERS STAIR TREADS • LINK MATS
[ADVERTISEMENT]
