Docomomo Publications, previous issues

Docomomo Publications

This is a list of Docomomo publications that are available from Docomomo Australia and are offered at the same price of the euro price but without postage expenses.  (Postage is included within Australia).

Art Works: Drawings by Ken Woolley - $20.00
Preservation technology dossier 2:
The Fair Face of Concrete: Conservation and Repair of Exposed Concrete - $25.00
Preservation technology dossier 5: Colour and the Modern Movement - $25.00
Docomomo Journal 31 - $20.00
Docomomo Journal 32 - $20.00
Docomomo Journal 34 - $20.00 (Sold out in Europe)

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Conference: Uckranian Architectural Avant-Garde

DoCoMoMo
International Conference:
Uckranian Architectural Avant-Garde
studies and protection

Kharkov, 1-3 February 2012

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The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture | 2011

Details 250 b/w illus. 250 colour illus. Page extent: 832 pages Size: 318 x 224 mm

Docomomo Australia AGM

The annual AGM for Docomomo Australia was held on wed August 3rd, at the Boyd House, Walsh Street South Yarra at 6.00pm.

Please find attached the following documents:

AGM minutes for 2011: Docomomo Australia 2011 AGM

Borland Open Day PRESHIL

A Space For Learning: Borland Open Day

Preshil School, JUNE 5, noon – 5pm.

Self-guided Tour, historical display and

panel discussion 2-3.15 (with Docomomo members involved)

See attached flyer for booking details: Borland Open Day Flyer

Boyd Foundation Desbrowe-Annear Open Day

June 26th, 2011, open day to see 6 houses designed by Desbrowe-Annear or under his influence organised  by the Boyd Foundation, Melbourne:

Harold Desbrowe-Annear was one of the most innovative architects in Australia in the early twentieth century, and this is a fantastic opportunity to see his work original work and its conservation.

See attached flyer for Booking / Ticket details: Desbrowe-Annear open day brochure-1

Associated with the Desbrowe-Annear open day are two talks on the architecture of Desbrowe-Annear and its conservation.

See attached flyer for booking / ticket details:Desbrowe-Annear talks

100 Collins street shopfront in danger

100 Collins Street, Melbourne’s first ‘glass box’ office building – shopfronts in danger.
A win for the streetscape of Collins Street, Melbourne: all the shop windows of 100 collins street,designed by JA LaGerche, are intact from 1955 when the building opened. Submissions on the proposed design conversion to a bank were recently heard, including those from Docomomo members, and the new shopfront design has now been modified to be far more sympathetic to the original and its retention.

Australia Square | 1967 | NSW

 264-278 George Street,
Sydney NSW
1967
Harry Seidler & Associates

The site of Australia Square was the product of a progressive and most extensive protracted site consolidation process which brought under one ownership an entire city block, involving over 30 different properties and more than 80 land titles. The project aimed at bringing a new openness into the congested centre of Sydney with a high rise tower on an open plaza area. The 13-storey, rectangular Plaza Building, was completed in May 1964 and the 50-storey, 171 metre circular high tower in 1967. The project was the recipient of a RAINs Sulman Award in 1967. The precast units serve as both formwork and finish for the surrounding concrete frame. This results in the tapering fin column creating a dominant visual statement.

Centenary Swimming Pools | 1959 | QLD

Gregory Terrace, Spring Hill,
Brisbane Queensland
1959
James Birrell

The free-form layout of the complex – pools punctuating the concourse and tower restau- rant floating above – was influenced by the sculptor Mans Arp and the Constructivist Moholy-Nagy’s posthumous publication, ‘Vision in Motion’ (I947). Birrell intended to generate a ‘festive air’ and in so doing, he echoed the work of Oscar Niemeyer; the tropical climates of Queensland and Brazil provide the perfect backdrop. The restaurant and pools are of steel and concrete; the pool surfaces are covered in mosaic tiles, patterned in both geometric (main pool) and biomorphic (circular wading pool) designs. In form and function the Pools are one of the most direct adaptations of the Modern Movement to a singularly ‘Australian’ environment.

Academy of Science | 1958 | ACT

Australian National University,
Canberra ACT
1958
Grounds, Romberg & Boyd

The Academy was Roy Grounds’ first large building. Grounds, with his first partner, Mewton, was recognized at an early age in 1928 when a recent graduate, Grounds eventually joined Frederic Romberg and Robyn Boyd in partnership in 1953. The client, a learned scientific body, required a large conference hall with raked seating and a second larger space, the Fellows Room, as well as council rooms and offices. The Academy of Science was the recipient of the RAIA’S ’59 Sulman Award. Grounds deftly moulded these functions into a simple circular plan with circumferential circulation inside and out and housed it all in a concrete copper-clad dome. The dome functions today as designed and the interior details have been retained.

Sydney Opera House | 1963-1973 | NSW

Dennelong Point, Sydney NSW
1957 | 1963 (stage 1)
Jern Utzon 1963 | 1973
(stage 2) Hall, Todd & Littlemore

‘In the Sydney Opera House Jern Utzon realised the great synthesis of earth and sky, landscape and city, vista and intimacy, thought and feeling, in terms of a unity of technological and organic form.’ wrote Christian Norberg- Schutz in 1995. In 1957, the Danish architect Jern Utzon won the international competition to design an opera house on a peninsula in Sydney’s inner harbour, overlooked from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The design was elaborated over subsequent years resulting, in 1961, in the solution of shells derived from the surface of a sphere of common radius, each vault of precast rib segments radiating from a pedestal. Stress between architect and client forced Utzon to leave the project in 1966 at which stage the monumental podium and soaring shells were in place; the remainder was completed by architects Hall, Todd and Littlemore with newly designed interiors and glass walls. Since its opening in 1973, the Opera House has, nonetheless, been a spec- tacular success as a venue for the performing arts. Its significance relates to its embodiment of the integration of sophisticated geometry, technology and art and the seminal nature of its sophisticated design and construction techniques. It is important as the expressive culmination of the philosophy of modern archi- tecture and within its ancient harbour setting, as a cultural icon of the twentieth century.

Robin Boyd House II | 1957 | VIC

290 Walsh Street,
South Yarra, Melbourne Victoria
1957
Grounds, Romberg & Boyd

This house, the second designed by one of Melbourne’s best-loved architects and architectural polemicists for his own family, was planned as a narrow rectangle with a catenary roof of planking on wire cables. The draped roof is the guiding idea of the house, with much of its accommodation placed as floating timber platforms under the shelter of this single sweeping gesture. The catenary spans the length of the house, describing a volume which contains a central court, a living and parent’s zone at one end and children’s accommodation at the other. The horizontal break-up of the window mullions, the refined built-in furniture and the obscured glass side walls of the court are evidence of an interest in Japanese design.

Ancher House III | 1957 | NSW

Sydney Ancher Bogota Avenue,
Neutral Bay, Sydney NSW
1957
Sydney Ancher

Sydney Ancher was the winner of the 1975 Gold Medal for Architecture as one of the Australian pioneers of the Modern Movement, His houses in the landscape evoke the essence of Australian buildings by the use of horizontality, uncomplicated flat roofs and pergolas in the contemporary mode resembling the traditional verandah function. Robin Boyd stated, ‘Sydney Anchor’s houses … are in the best Australian tradition of horizon bleached colours and decorative shadows … an undeviating search for simplicity.’The first house he built in Villara won the Sulman Medal in 1945. This house, his third for his family, was built as a sophisticated post and beam, flat roofed pavilion-in-the- landscape with a Japanese influence.

Sidney Myer Music Bowl | 1959 | VIC

Kings Domain, Melbourne Victoria
1956 | 1959
Yuncken Freeman Brothers

Named for its retailing benefactor, whose family took a keen interest in the project, the Sidney Myer Music Bowl was the first major purpose- built outdoor venue in Melbourne. The design, with its tent-like roof supported by two tapering cigar-shaped masts, resulted from project architect Barry Patten and his assistant Angel Dimitroff experimenting with various structurally expressive ideas. A model of 6″ nails, cotton thread and rice paper was used to develop the idea. The draped structure covers a stage, orchestra pit and fixed seating. An extensive uncovered lawn rises to the south, increasing the capacity of the Bowl to approximately 20,000. The structure reflects the limited means of engineering analysis then available.

CB Alexander College | 1965 | NSW

Tocal, Paterson NSW
1965
Philip Cox & lan McKay

Designed for the Presbyterian Church of Australia in 1963 as a post-secondary level agricultural college it was the first major com- mission for Cox & McKay, establishing their design reputation for environmental sensitivity. They adapted the principles of vernacular architecture to a large-scale complex, reflecting the grander vernacular of the silos and barns in the region, which was alien to the prevailing modernist institutional architecture of its time. They also incorporated the aesthetics of Japanese architecture in the composition of external spaces and timber detailing through- out the complex. The college epitomises the Sydney School whose principles include loose extendable planning, integration with the landscape.

Council House | 1962 | Wa

St George’s Terrace, Perth WA
1962
Hewlett & Bailey Architects
Fraser Consultants (engineer)

Council House – the outcome of a national architectural competition – was designed to contain the new city administration, town hall and council chambers of the city of Perth. Set back from principal city streets and corners, Council House composes a discrete modernist object within a civic square of gardens and reflective water-ponds. Via the granite podium, the building is entered through a Miesian-like open and transparent foyer, elevated by a series of white marble T-shaped pilotis. The fagades are clothed in a unique T-section, tiled brise-soleil which appears to float proud of the sheer glazed surface.

Council House is considered an exemplary, yet inflected translation of the International Style to Australia. The building survives (after much campaigning) as an important modernist landmark building within the civic street-scape of the city of Perth. It has been recognized and awarded nationally and internationally as reflecting the vision, prosperity and progress of Australia, post World War II.

Woolley House | 1962 | NSW

34 Bullecourt Avenue,
Mosman, Sydney NSW
1962
Ken Woolley

The architect’s own house stepped down a steep, treed site in a harbourside suburb of Sydney showing the influence of nature and the site on this example of Sydney School architecture. The School was epitomised by modern, rationally planned buildings which were unpretentious, responded to climate and site and used simple, logical structural systems. Architect and writer Robin Boyd described such houses as “a tamed Australian romantic kind of brutalism’ and the Woolley House’s use of clinker brick, timber, glass and tile shows this influence as well as the influence of Alvar Aalto. The Woolley House is struc- tured around a 3.6×3.6m grid which is offset 1.2m vertically and horizontally to create a building which steps down the site.

Liner House | 1960 | NSW

13-15 Bridge Street,
Sydney NSW
1960
Bunning & Madden

Liner House was erected in 1959 to house the Australian headquarters of Wilh Wilhelmsen Agency Pty Ltd, Norway’s largest shipping organisation. The company decided to restrict the building to the company’s own use and the building height to that of the neighbouring properties and immediate streetscape. The external walls and ground floor shipping chamber were faced with stone to harmonise with the major part of the street. The RAIA awarded the building the Sulman Award in 1961. The building is dominated by the horizontal louvre framed facade which aligns with the adjacent facades. The facade is set back one metre and comprises aluminium curtain waft patterning and an aluminium panelled cantilivered awning.

Summerhayes House | 1960 | Wa

3 The Coombe, Mosman Park,
Perth WA
1960
Geoffrey Summerhayes
Graham Glick (engineer)

This locally renowned house is situated on a steeply sloping, limestone cliff site overlooking the Swan River in Perth, the cliff-face forming a natural wall to the undercroft space below the house. A slender steel frame supports and elevates the concrete slab and calcium silicate brick clad structure. The thin, flat roof plane is timber framed. Local dark Jarrah hardwood framing composes a mono-chromatic contrast to the white planar walls. Extensive glazed panels form a transparent end elevation and balcony, orientated towards the river. Interior planning enables open-plan, flexible living, with functional spaces separated by sliding screens.

Japan Architecture Tours

Robert Day is leading an architecture tour to Japan in association with the UIA (World Congress in Sept /Oct 2011. The tour will visit architectural sites of Docomomo interest as well as contemporary design. For further information see http://japanarchitecturetours.wordpress.com/

Download a flyer here: Tour Flyer UIA 11

DOCOMOMO International Conferences

The 11th International Conference was held in Mexico City, August 2010. Papers exploring modern architecture and its conservation through the theme of ‘Living in the Urban Modernity’ were delivered from many international perspectives. The conference location was the Faculty of Architecture of the National Autonomous University (UNAM), declared World Heritage by Unesco in 2007. Post-conference tours of the architecture of Mexico City, Luis Barragan and Felix Candela were a highlight. Australia was represented at the DOCOMOMO International Council Meeting.

The next international conference is planned for August 2012 in Helsinki, Finland – stay posted for further details.

Latest DOCOMOMO International Journal

Journal 42 – Summer 2010 ART & ARCHITECTURE

Articles examine the synthesis between Art and Architecture in modernism. This theme was provoked by the setting of the  International Conference in Mexico City, 2010 on the UNAM campus, where buildings and mosaic murals work together to striking effect.

Financial Australian members should have received Journal 42. To purchase copies see DOCOMOMO International website.

http://www.docomomo.com

ICI House | 1955-1958 | VIC

ICI House
1 Nicholson Street, East Melbourne, Victoria
1955| 1958
Bates, Smart & McCutcheon

ICI House was one of the first free-standing fully glazed curtain wall skyscrapers in Australia. As one of the nation’s most stylish commercial buildings, it represented the most refined example of Bates, Smart & McCutcheon’s efforts to perfect high-rise office design. Raised on pilotis, the blue-glazed linear stab of open- plan offices, with its clearly differentiated lift core, pierced the city’s 132ft (40m) height limit and changed Melbourne’s skyline forever. It was the provision of the garden at ground level – designed collaboratively by the architects, sculptor Gerald Lewers and landscape architect John Stevens – which enabled the height limit to be exceeded.

Rose Seidler House Group | 1948-1956 | NSW

Rose Seidler House Group
69-71 Clissold Road, Sydney NSW
1948 | 1956
Harry Seidler

The Rose Seidler House was the first Australian domestic commission of Vienna-born, USA-trained architect Harry Seidler. By 1956, he had designed and built three houses for Seidler family members on a 16 acre (6.5h) bushland estate on Sydney’s northern fringe, linking the sloping site with a curving driveway among tall eucalyptus. Rising from natural bush rock foundations, the Rose Seidler House is a flat-roofed, floating cube built of reinforced concrete and timber, featuring extensive use of glass. All twelve rooms have wide views of surrounding bushland with direct or close contact to related outdoor areas. Moveable dividers maximise the flexibility of internal living spaces. The Rose Seidler House was awarded the Sulman Award in 1951.

Wylde Street Apartments | 1948-1951 | NSW

Wylde Street Apartments
17 Wylde Street, Potts Point, Sydney NSW
1948| 1951
Aaron Bolot

This apartment building, containing 38 apartments, was developed as an urban co- operative housing project, which is unusual in Australia. Bolot’s Wylde Street apartments was one of the most innovative apartment buildings of its day, with the planning and methods of construction clearly showing the influence of European modernism on Australian architects. Prominently located on a corner, it is one of the first Sydney buildings to employ a segmental radial plan. The sweeping curve of glazing and the spandrels is articulat- ed by the use of breakfronts. The pivot and fixed steel window frames are contained with- in projecting sills and heads which create shadow lines. The parapet is also accentuated by a shadow-creating capping.