UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE
C.R O SS -SECT ION
Issue No. 188 June 1, 1968
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Photos: Wolfgang Seivers
¶ The Bronze Medal Architectural Award of the Vic- torian Chapter of the R.A.I.A. was presented to archts McGlashan and Everist for a house for Mr and Mrs John Reed at Templestowe Road, Bulleen. Mr R. Q.
Evans, builder. The jury reported "lt uses basically only four materials—terrazzo, limestone, timber and glass. The house is formed by a series of cubical spaces, some inside and some outside, which are used for sitting, sleeping, eating and displaying Mr Reed's famous collection of painting and sculpture". The client had asked for a romantic house, with a sense of mystery and the qualities of a maze in a natural garden, belong- ing to the landscape as a ruin rather than a brand new house. The architects have achieved these qualities without becoming sentimental or lachrymose, within a discipline of few materials used consistently, exquisitely reticent detailing and fluent planning.
¶ A chair of town planning and urban studies will be established at the U of Melbourne. The chair will be jointly sponsored during its first five years by the Country Roads Board and a group of large private enterprises.
¶ Gavin Walkley has been appointed the first director of the Australian Institute of Urban Studies. Until head- quarters are established in Canberra the Institute will operate from Mr Walkley's North Adelaide office.
¶ The Victorian State Executive Council gave final approval to Melbourne's amended Master Plan.
IT Mr. Davis Hughes announced the commencement of the third and final stage of the Sydney Opera House.
¶ A large developer in W.A. outlined to Premier Brand and Wanneroo Shire Council their plans for a satellite city near Perth on a 20,000 acre site with a 10 mile beach front at Yanchep. The city would develop into a community of 200,000 people connected to the capital by freeways. Town Planner: Miss Margaret Feilman.
¶ The Perth firm of Cameron Chisholm and Nicol have won the British Government's limited competition for a carillon on an island in Lake Burley Griffin, Canberra (C-S No. 180, Oct. 67). Three triangular shafts rise 160 feet, one containing stairs and another a lift. The shafts are free standing except at the 80 ft., 90 ft., 120 ft. and 130 ft. levels where they will be connected by floor slabs forming the carillon chamber and a public observation platform at the highest floor level.
Three shafts acknowledge the British and Australian governments and the City of Canberra. The shafts are angled in sympathy with the Griffin Triangle. Project architects: Ross Chisholm and John Koivisto.
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¶ Citations were awarded by the Vic. chapter (1) For domestic architecture to Mr. Geoffrey Woodfall, archt, for a house at Brighton for Mr and Mrs Don Breedon.
T. L. Moorcroft & Co., builder. (2) For ecclesiastical architecture to Mr. Paul Wallace, arch, for St. Christ- opher's Roman Catholic Church at Anglesea. Peter McBride & Co., builders. (3) For educational architec- ture to Romberg & Boyd, archts, for McCaughey Court, Ormond College, University of Melbourne. Simmie &
Co. Pty. Ltd., builders. (4) For urban architecture (defined as buildings within MeIb's "Golden Mile") to Buchan Laird & Buchan Pty. Ltd. archts for A.C.I.
House 550 Bourke Street. E. A. Watts Pty. Ltd., builders.
IT From the "Times" Canberra, 17th April 1968: "Bull- dozers and workmen began knocking down trees on a Mugga Way site yesterday, and residents complained that the NCDC had not been open about the use of the site. The area, an irregular triangle bounded by Mugga Way, Stonehaven Crescent and Melbourne Avenue, is the site for the $100,000 national headquarters for the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. A spokesman for the National Captial Development Commission said last night that the architects' building would be pre-
dominantly residential in character, use and appear-
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ance. Of the 108 developed trees on the site, only 37 would be removed. The block was criss-crossed with underground water mains, making it unsuitable for
normal residential sub-divisions." -( -
¶ From the "Sun", Melbourne, 10th April 1968: "Mel-
bourne had about 800 acres of slums, the Minister for
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Housing, Mr. Meagher, told the Legislative Assemblyyesterday. He said about 4000 slum dwellings were involved, although no precise survey had been made."
(I I) What criteria is being used?
¶ Mr. Peter Hurford of the U.S.A., chief adviser on the design of the Sydney Opera House's $100,000 Organ arrived in Sydney without a current smallpox injection and was immediately lodged at the quarantine station.
The Federal Health Minister, Dr Forbes, agreed to let innoculated architects confer with Mr Hurford. Four architects from the project, led by Mr Peter Hall, spent 2 days at the station in conference with Mr Hurford.
The troubles that building has .
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¶ Sydney architect Mr. Walter Bunning has recom- mended, in what was probably a foregone conclusion, that the State Government should declare the Padding- ton residential area an historical area, protected from highway traffic. Mr Bunning has suggested specific by-passing expressway routes. The Minister for Local Government and Highways will study the report before dPcidinq on recommendations.
Photos: Richard E. Stringer In the past decade the former regular Sat'dee pitcha- nite audience changed their venue and regularity for celluloid entertainment but not their tastes. The visit to the cinema today is a little like collective Tellie viewing without the interruptions imploring us to possess, inhale or be cleaner and promising us greater speed and sex appeal, and the censor is a bit more permissive with the congregation. The suburban pic- ture theatres have become bowling alleys and the like or have been pulled down and replaced by service stations etc. In the city centres some theatres have remained intact except for the addition of a super screen and super sound system, most were recon- ditioned. Some revamps are very successful, for ex- ample, Walter Burley Griffin's Capitol Theatre (C-S No.
161, March, 1966). There are regrettable disappear- ances and, surprisingly, brand new theatres built. The illustrations are examples from Brisbane. The Tivoli circa 1913—a masculine Art Nouveaux-styled edifice
— as modern and acceptable as the juke-box and Carnaby Street, was recently removed to make way for Civic Square. All it needed was a psychedelic colour scheme? Forum is a new one but unacceptable as modern, with its too literal Roman evocations. The interior has dual Venus statues in backlit blue niches and gilt-edged Corinthian pilasters. And why hark back to the old concept of "picture palace"? A
"Forum" was a place of meeting for private and public discussion. The wrong theme for a cinema, and pom- pously handled. It could have been forgiven if some- thing funny had happened on the way.
The Steampacket Hotel at Nellingen on the NSW south coast replaces the previous hotel which dated back to the days when steamships to Sydney loaded the wool clip from bullock wagons right outside. The new building maintains a latter-day air in its traditional form and excellent sense of scale, with no nasty "super-inter- national" finishes. Fisher & Jackson, archts; Hughes Bros., bldrs.
This fountain at Stones Corner, Brisbane, was the first to be built under the "Fountains for Brisbane Com- mittee" sponsorship. The Rotarians of Stones Corner financed and built this fountain and commissioned Peter Heathwood A.R.A.I.A. for the design. Since its opening, it has been besieged by vandals. Potassium permanganate and detergent are only minor abuses that it has suffered. A sack of rotting mangoes thrown onto the top deck produced a putrid stench which, with the violent purple of the foaming water, well laced with broken bottles, tissues etc., indicate the public's interest in this public utility. Perhaps when Brisbane is the "Aqua" City of the North with 100 fountains playing in the sun, the novelty of vandalism will wear off. On the other hand, perhaps fountains should be designed as a "Catharsis" for the public's resentments and tension and invite imaginative acts of abuse.
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