OF MFT,BOURNE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
CROSS-SECTION
Issue No. 16: February 1, 1954
Melbourne University Council approved plans for International House, long-awaited, badly needed hostel for overseas students—the first to be specially built in an Aust'n University (Leighton Irwin & Co, arch'ts; Raymond Berg & H L. Waugh, consulting arch'ts). Elevated bedroom wings are in reinf- concrete, with hollow block floors, roofs V'd to the centre, baked enamel spandrels between sliding strip windows.
The plan is an E, with admin, library & games rm, dining, common rms & kitchen in the long spine sited E-W down the centre of the site. 42 bedrms are in the 3 even elevated 3-storey wings (bottom of plan). Boiler rm is at top left, housekeeper &
Warden at top right. The entrance is centre rt, from Sydney-rd; north to top
Each single room is 12' x 10' with divan bed & all fittings planned to be built-in. Most rooms face east, some west; heat is no problem as the building will empty in mid-summer.
The Sydney Morning Herald sold its Pitt-st bldg to
the Bank of NSW for £14--m, highest price ever in Australia for a city property. The SMH plans to build nothing less than "the most modern & largest newspaper office in Australia; one of the largest in the world".
¶ Tas will spend £140,250 on 5 new schools &
2 remodels, incl £51,000 on a 2-storey infant school at Glen Dhu, Launceston.
¶ The Tos Transport Comm'n plans a £190,000 HQ in Park-st, Hobart. The Govt arch't (Mr Rose) said he could not prepare plans urgently, so Messrs I G & L G Anderson were commissioned.
IT Dr H J Cowan, engr, arrived in Sydney to occupy the new Chair of Arch'I Science at Syd Univ. He came, of course, from England. "No Australian need apply!" commented the Mirror. "While uni- versities continue to go overseas for talent, we may expect the drift away of our most gifted sons &
daughters to continue."
¶ The NSW Housing Comm'n is building 2-storey, 4-unit flots based on an English design, with private stairs to upper units: "The cheapest method of obtaining 3-bedrm accommodation in brick", said the
HC.
¶ Tasmania now has a Govt 7-square house plan:
2 bedrms, £2/8/- weekly.
¶ Messrs Philp, Floyd, Lighton & Assoc'ts have prepared a modified scheme for extensions to the Royal Hobart Hospital, to cut costs from £i-m to about £350,000.
IT Rolls Royce is building a £1-'4-m jet plane service station at Mascot (Syd) airport, on a former Chinese market garden. When finished in 6 months it will service jet & turbo-prop commercial aircraft on all overseas routes.
¶ NUAUStudents' conference opens today in Brisbane.
IT SA's cement famine may end this year. Concrete product manufacturers are planning big expansion.
¶ The Montgomery pavilion at the Narabeen War Veterans' Home (NSW) will be finished this week, an £80,000 bldg incl 400-seat theatre, tearooms, cafeteria, dressing rms (Fowell, Mansfield &
McLurcan, arch'ts; E Spring Brown, bldr; Woolacott, Hale & Bond, engnrs). /The first use in Australia of Fural is claimed for this bldg. Fural (Umec Pty Ltd, Syd, distributors) is a clip-on, no-nails, no- bitumen, light, attractive, ribbed aluminium roof cover which looked like the answer to all our roofing prayers when it first arrived from Switzerland last year. It comes in rolls, is wholly recoverable, waterproof as low as 5 degrees. But the imported Swiss product is still expensive—more than decking
& felt. Local production will correct this. And Mr McLurcan, who negotiated the use of it when in Austria last year, says that even the imported sheet proves economical on a large roof area, & flexible.
Here it curves on a minimum pitch over the theatre.
¶
A speed-up in slum clearance was promised by the Vic Housing Minister, Mr T Hayes: the HC hopes to finish, by June 30, 4000 houses (800 more than last year's record) including 70 in slummy Fitzroy. By Dec. 30, the first 12 blocks of flats at Heidelberg would also be finished; 36 blocks with 216 units are planned. If the pessimistic sketch published last month is any indication, the scheme is to be a first-rate example of official housing:unloved by its promoters, unlovely to the public, unlovable by its occupiers.
Royal tour decorations are blooming violently in all states as civic fathers and commercial leaders plumb the depths of fatuity & vulgarity in decorative taste.
Sydney, however, has managed a certain gusto which may yet be reflected in final touches in other States. Melbourne's worst: floral "birdcages" in Flinders-st. Canberra's worst: shallow cones hanging in King George Terrace, now re-christened by locals:
"Falsie-alley."
The Women's Rest Centre at Hyde Park Syd (S C Council Arch'ts) is about the first new bldg in the city for 14 years. Its heavy magazine modernism of horizontal stress & textural contrasts is not lightened by logic. e.g. plate glass to the ground fl lobby is unshaded but the long first fl window has:
1, a hood 2, vertical louvres 3, venetian blinds.
The vertical louvre "sun-breakers" of Le Corbusier have swept the world from Brazil to Bendigo, Vic,*
as on answer to the problem of shading off-north windows. Why are they used on this north eleva- tion? To break the winter sun? These summer days they are in the shadow of the hood. (Last month's picture, above, was taken at 1 1.30 a.m.)
¶
An International Students' Conference at Rome, organised by the C'tee of Italian Students, April 15-21, will discuss education, student exchanges, modern arch'ture, working conditions. Cost per student: 21 dol, incl board and trips. Australians in Europe then are invited to contact the C'tee at Via Gransci 53, Roma.¶ Contestants for the 1954 Haddon scholarship (£450) sat here yesterday for the sketch design of a transport terminal & hostel. Completed drwgs will be in by April 29.
¶ The old Gothicky William Wardell E S & A Bank at Camberwell Junction (Melb suburb) re-opens to- morrow, after alterations by Overseas Corp'n, as Australia's first drive-in bank; cars will pass the tellers' windows. 3 miles east in Burwood Aus- tralia's first drive-in movie is almost ready to open (Leith & Bartlett, arch'ts; Leighton Pty Ltd, bldrs).
A few miles north Australia's first drive-in church is proposed.
¶ Albert Lacey Pty Ltd is taking big space in southern capital daily papers to advertise for rent 23 shops, 24 offices & 1 night club in "The Walk", a sporty 2-storey, 2-piece shopping centre now building at Surfers' Paradise, Q (Frank R Fox &
Assoc'ts, designers, Syd).
¶ How bad is the housing shortage still? In NSW the Housing Comm'n now completes units at the record rate of 125 weekly, 25 more than last year.
Yet more & more people are applying for emergency accommodation . . . in dirty, squalid housing settlements. "These are becoming an accepted port of the housing situation," wrote the S M Herald, ' . . . their problems & evils become more serious."
*In Bendigo, Vic., General Hospital, 1950, by Messrs.
Yuncken, Freeman Bros., Griffiths & Simpson, arch'ts, ad- justable aluminium vertical louvres were used extensively and effectively as sun-breakers to off-north windows for the first time in Australia.
¶ Mr C L McVilly, former chairman of Vic's Hos- pitals' Commission, dismissed by the Minister for Health (Mr Barry), was still seeking a judicial in- vestigation. Meanwhile 2 Treasury investigators claimed that the McVilly Commission's bldg pro- gramme was "extravagant" & "haphazard" & that
£5-m of the £26-m could have been saved. The new comm'n's policy is basically to decentralise—
with more, smaller, lighter, cheaper, standardised bldgs. It hopes for 16-20 bed hospitals under
£50,000, medical centres under £20,000. Only 5 Trustee) buildings will go on. /£z-m extensions to Royal Park, Vic, mental hospital will make it "one of the best mental receiving hospitals in the world".
¶
A new ward for 60 men at Parkside Mental Hos- pital, SA, designed by the Arch't-in-Chief's Dept, will be ready for occupation soon. /A new wing to cost £60-70,000 & take 72 girls will be added to Minda (mental) Home, Brighton, SA.¶ The SA School_of Mines will introduce 2 courses of bldg instruction, promoted by the SA Chapter, Aust Institute of Bldrs: 1, For bldg foremen &
clerks of works. 2, For master builders. The aim is "to raise the status of builders to that or archi- tects."
¶ The Minister for Social Services (Mr Townley) flew from Canberra to see the cracked Hectorville, SA, War Service Homes (C-S, Dec '53). Later he asked the SAIA to make an arch't available for an independent investigation, but "our arch'ts, indi- vidual bldrs, & other arch'ts we have called in have agreed completely . that the fault is not constructional defects".
¶ 2 special Tenancy Courts will be set up in Vic shortly, following amendments to the Landlord &
Tenant Act which come into operation today. A flood of cases is expected as landlords seek evictions under the new law which forbids tenants receiving more than the value of the pegged rent from sub- tenants.
Aluminium vertical saw-tooth windows on the long front of a factory nearly completed for A M Bick- ford & Sons at West Croydon, SA, turn their glass sections to the south-
& blind aluminium panels to the hot west (Lawson, Cheeseman & Doley, arch'ts). Likely cost of the
factory: £175,000.
In Launceston, Tas, this month the Queen will open Australia's most practical memorial to servicemen of World War II: a concert & meeting hall, first unit of Launceston's big projected War Memorial Community Centre to comprise also a theatre (1082 seats), enclosed Olympic Pool bldg (18,000 sq ft), gym, health & child welfare centres, creche, clinics, restaurant & rooms for "cultural organisations."
Tragically, the magnificent site on Windmill Hill
& the proud civic enthusiasm behind the centre are not reflected in the confused pedestrian design of the buildings. (Tranter, .Kemsley & Associates, arch'ts).
¶ Tenders close tomorrow for the new grandstand at Melb Cricket Ground (Arthur W Purnell &
Assoc'ts, arch'ts) for the 1956 Games. Work will start after the Royal tour, to be finished by Dec '55.
IF The old Wren-ish market at Castlemaine, one of
Victoria's most colourful & fascinating historic bldgs, was attacked again: a "decrepit, grotesque, dilapi- dated monstrosity" wrote a correspondent to the Castlemaine Mail. In 1952, when the SEC wanted to buy the site for modern offices, 1364 local people voted to retain the bldg and 917 voted to sell it for demolition.* Now the opposition appears to be stirring again despite the fact that Castlemaine does not appear to a visitor to be completely bereft of vacant sites nor of buildings more deserving of demolition.
Reviewing arch'I activities of last year, the president of the SAIA (Mr W T Haslam) stressed Adelaide's 2 most urgent needs: a master plan &
a chair of architecture.
IF Tasmanian Govt housing in the past has favoured galvanised iron for roofing. Now the Govt's "new roofing policy' is all for tiles. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Townley) seemed to be in a dilemma.
There was no doubt that tiles were "much more attractive," he said, but he would like' to be sure that the Govt. was not merely wanting to put business in the way of a particular Govt-assisted industry. /Meanwhile the SA Housing Trust, en- couraged by the SA Institute of Architects in the press, continues its new roofing policy—favouring corrugated sheet roofing instead of tiles.
*During that referendum campaign sentimental supporters of the market described the facade as "a rare example of early Australian Architecture . . . The only other example to be found elsewhere in Aust. is the new American Embassy at Canberra."
Lost month Cross-Section correspondents in 6 states noted these houses:
A NSW house of no less than 80 squares begin- ning at Bellevue Hill, with internal court, staff quarters, entrance under a hanging master bedr'm.
(Douglas B Snelling, arch't).
A WA house in brick, glass & painted panels, half built at Mosman Park. (Cameron, Chisholm & Nicol, arch'ts).
A Tasmanian architect's own home at Launceston, for Mr. T V Tandy (Tandy & Pryor, arch'ts; H J Martin, bldr).
A Queensland house grounded at Broadbeach. Cost:
£350 a square, incl landscaping. (Blight, Jessup &
P'ners, arch'ts; W A Neilsen, bldr).
A SA house —shaped, for a single occupant, with a glass wall facing a southern view, at Stirling.
(Caradoc Ashton, Fisher, Woodhead & Beaumont Smith, arch'ts).
A Victorian 7 square beach house at Sorrento, with trim glazed wall, on to a ti-tree shrouded terrace, owner-built without supervision to Vic Small Homes Service plans. (Total architectural fees: £5).
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ti 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.
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Architects: Forbes & Fitzhardinge.
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