Former Torin Building

photo by: Max Dupain, September 1976. © Penelope Seidler

Site Overview

Current name of the building:
Former Torin Building
Location:
Penrith, Sydney
Address:
23 Coombes Drive 2750, Penrith,
Designers:
Marcel Breuer (1902-1981), Herbert Beckhard, Harry Seidler & Associates
Commission:
1974
Completion:
1976
Type:
Industry
Editor fiche:
Noni Boyd

Status of Protection

Whole Building: AIA Register of Significant Architecture, NSW State Heritage Register, LEP Heritage Item

Related sites

Industrial area established as a subdivision of grounds of Coombewood
Visual relations:
Located within a light industrial area
Functional relations:
Located in one of the post-war industrial areas on the Cumberland Plain
Other relations:
One of a series of buildings worldwide that Marcel Breuer designed for the Torin Corporation

Site history

Chronology

commission or competition date:
Correspondence file from Seidler’s office started in 1970 – Penrith Factory Project
design period(s):
1973 as job no is 7303
start of site work:
Building Permit issued 1974 Revised Building Application January 1975
completion/inauguration:
1976

Summary of Development

commission brief:
Early 1970s
design brief:
Early 1970s
building/construction:
Building Permit issued 1974 Revised Building Application January 1975
completed situation:
1976
original situation or character of site:
Industrial area north of western rail line

Relevant persons or organisations

original owner(s)/patron(s):
Torin Corporation
architect(s):
Marcel Breur and his partner Herbert Beckhard in association with Harry Seidler & Associates.
design architect:
Marcel Breuer
landscape/garden designer(s):
Bruce Rickard however his scheme was largely not carried out
other designer(s):
Harry Seidler – consulting architect (supervised the construction)
consulting engineer(s):
Murray W. Low
building contractor(s):
Prodecon Pty Ltd

Important changes after completion

type of change:
External paint colours altered. Chimney has been added (not dated, post 2008). Site subdivision that has resulted in a loss of the service area to the rear. Alterations to the main façade including the addition of two small single storey rooms and an additional door. There have also been a number of minor accretions to the main façade such as vents and lights. These elements have not been well detailed and are contributing to the staining problem.
The current internal configuration is unknown.
date(s):
Unconfirmed, but mostly post 2000
circumstances/ reasons for change:
Painted in club colours whilst in Penrith Panthers ownership
effects of changes:
Original form is still evident, when compared to the Dupain photographs
persons/organisations involved:
Subsequent owners including Penrith Panthers

Description

Site Character

Penrith Factory Project

The files held at the State Library indicate that the correspondence regarding the “Penrith Factory Project” began in 1970. The drawings were probably undertaken in 1973, as indicated by the 7303 job number for the drawings prepared by the New York based Architect Marcel Breuer and the local consulting architect Harry Seidler. The Penrith factory was the last of a series of buildings Breuer designed for the Torin Corporation. Harry Seidler had worked for Breuer in his New York office before travelling to Rio de Janiero and onto Sydney so was an ideal choice of collaborator. The drawing titles show that the initial scheme submitted to Penrith Council was prepared by Marcel Breuer & Associates in New York. An undated perspective held on Council’s files includes similar linework to other designs by Breuer in the mid- 1970s. A photograph of the headquarters building in Torrington which includes similar motifs was also submitted to Council. The building permit was issued in 1974 and the revised building application is dated 29 January 1975. This revised application was by Marcel Breuer with Harry Seidler acting as a consultant architect as Seidler was registered as an architect in NSW.

The Torin building was completed in 1976. The completed Torin Manufacturing Complex at Penrith was described in detail in Architecture Australia in June/July 1977. The article was based on information supplied by the architects.

The site is part of an industrial sub division on the flat plains of the Nepean river basin. A high tension electrical reticulation easement cuts across the site but the placing of the building near the intersection of the two streets avoids any conflict. Car access is from one street, trucking from the other. Buildings in the area are widely spaced and there are no special elements that would affect the outlook or disposition of the buildings on the site.

Program requirements and solutions
The company manufactures a wide range of blower units and axial and centrifugal impellers for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning industry. Many of the products are also manufactured in Torin’s ten other factories throughout the world. In these locations it has been realised that, as labour costs continue to rise, the materials handling activity becomes an important candidate for automation. Therefore an integrated handling system was developed that dictated the basic shape of the 3,800 metre Penrith factory. The building consists of three basic components: a high rise storage unit containing the integrated handling system; a basic two-floor structure which contains manufacturing, assembly and office areas, as well as a well- equipped laboratory for air flow measurements and tow service cores, three storeys high, but of the same total height as the two manufacturing storeys. These cores project from the façade free of the manufacturing space. One module provides an entrance for plant employees and support facilities: toilets, locker rooms, stairs. The other contains an entrance for visitors and officer personnel and mechanical space, toilets and stairs.

Access to the high rise storage unit is provided at both manufacturing levels. The multitude of components required in the manufacturing process are moved in and out of the 20 metre high storage system by a single rail-guided vehicle as the various manufacturing operations are performed. Because processing lines are adjacent to container racking on both floors, load distances are very short. Once positioned in a pick-up station, loads can be moved by a storage vehicle for a weight check and storage in less than a quarter of the time expected of a conventional fork-lift truck. Storage is accessible only to a special vehicle. This ensures parts, quantity and location integrity and eliminates the shutdown usually required for taking of inventory .

Materials and Structural System
All walls of the complete steel-frame structure, except the north/south walls of the high-rise storage unit, are of concrete block, cavity wall construction, the outer skin consisting of split- face block. Office areas and the lower floor manufacturing areas include precast concrete window units first developed by the architects for the Torin Technical Centre in Torrington, Connecticut. These units in all cases face north and have been designed to provide adequate sun shade. North and south walls of the high-rise storage unit are clad with corrugated metal panels painted white to contrast with the rough textured, warm, grey split block used elsewhere. A further use of this corrugated metal is in combination with the window-wall treatment at the two entrances to the building. The sloping form of the north walls of the services cores is a departure from the horizontal/vertical lines of the building, giving dynamic lines to the composition of building forms.

Max Dupain’s series of photographs of the completed building include two internal shots, one view of a staircase (presumably the staircase in the office service core) and the waiting area. The waiting area contained chrome and leather furniture, including the Wassily Chair, originally designed by Marcel Breuer in the 1920s, and a tapestry mural by Alexander Calder. The blockwork to the walls was painted white. The sculptural stair was built of off-form concrete with dark [stone or terrazzo?] open treads. The only colour was within the tapestry, the characteristic primary colours that Calder employed in his tapestries and large mobiles.

Landscaping
The article on the completed building that appeared in Architecture Australia in June/July 1977 lists Bruce Rickard as having designed the landscape. Correspondence also survives in the project files in the Seidler collection at the Mitchell Library regarding the proposed landscaping. Breuer was not in favour of the Australian native trees proposed by Rickard and a more severe scheme consisting of small shrubs spaced at regular intervals on a grass lawn was implemented. This scheme can be seen in the 1976 photographs by Max Dupain. Rickard also collaborated with Seidler on landscaping schemes for commercial buildings in the 1970s. None of the documentation submitted to Council makes reference to Rickard’s involvement, his scheme having already been largely abandoned.

Design Influences
In the early 1960s Marcel Breuer contributed an introduction to the Living Architecture series publication on Egyptian Architecture by Jean Louis de Cenival entitled “The Contemporary Aspect of Pharonic Architecture.” In Vie des Arts (No 43 1966) Claude Beaulieu noted that: “He [Breuer] points out that one of the basic elements of Egyptian art is one that is present in contemporary trends. The element is simplicity.”

It was not until after the Torin building at Penrith was completed that Breuer undertook a series of commissions in Egypt. Architectural historians have described the factory as being “A powerful work of almost windowless cuboid forms of rough textured stone [sic] and concrete, the Penrith factory is ‘Egyptian’ in its bold geometries and in its composition as a long rectangle fronted by a pair of truncated mastabas. ” (Hyman, Marcel Breuer Architect : The Career & the Buildings)

Although described as being stone, the building is constructed of split concrete blocks, as were the other Torin buildings. A mastaba being a mud brick tomb built by the Ancient Egyptians along the Nile, examples of which survive today. When describing the building on its completion neither Breuer or Seidler appear to have referred to design influences. The comparison between a number of Breuer’s buildings and Egyptian tombs was made by Isabelle Hyman when the complete list of his works was being compiled. Hyman described ‘Breuer’s mastaba building type, a low compact structure with a flat roof and canted sides’. Not all of his designs of this type were constructed, and an unbuilt competition entry from the early 1970s also draws on sculptural Egyptian forms.

It was during the 1950s that Breuer began to receive larger commissions and his work was defined by the transition from small-form, residential projects in wood and stone, to monumental sculptural form rendered in patterned concrete and steel (Syracuse University Finding Aid to the Marcel Breuer papers).

The first of a series of low sculptural buildings for the Torin company was their new technical centre, a photograph of which was shown to Penrith Council. The precast concrete window hoods may have first been used on this design however precast elements had already been used in the Torin factory at Nevilles in Belgium.

Characteristic motifs such as the sunscreens also appear on the Australian Embassy, which was another collaboration between Breuer and Seidler. The first examples were designed for the Torrington Corporation technical centre at Torrington, and an image of this building was submitted to Penrith Council (and remains on file).

Breuer is often described as being a later modernist, however, he began designing in the 1920s, at the start of the Movement Movement. The work is also often described as being Brutalist, but is much more complex in conception. His commissions gave new architectural identity to urban and suburban institutions…. the trapezoids, hexagons, y-shapes, and faceted window bays that mark many of Breuer’s buildings distinguished the institutions they housed… (Marcel Breuer and Post War America: Drawings from Marcel Breuer’s papers, 2011)

Breuer also moved beyond using ‘the smooth industrial materials of International Style modern architecture’ to ‘imbue his buildings with contrasting textures and qualities: heavy and light, massive and delicate, rough and smooth, archaic and modern’. (Marcel Breuer and Post War America: Drawings from Marcel Breuer’s papers, 2011) To this juxtaposition can be added the interplay of light and shade. The factory building was quite unlike any other factory erected in Australia in the post-war years, most of which adhered strictly to the International modernism.

Current Use

of whole building/site:
Factory /Warehouse
comments:
The Torin Corporation have sold the premises

Present Condition

of whole building/site:
The building is relatively intact and is generally in good condition, with th exception of some water staining
comments:
The subsequent owners of the building have not appreciated its architectural qualities.

Notes indicating potentials developments

The site is proposed for subdivision.

Evaluation

(from the 2014 Inventory form prepared as part of the study of Modern Buildings in Penrith by Robertson & Hindmarsh)

Technical

Demonstrating Breuer’s progression from International modernism to a more personal architecture that combined modern materials and construction techniques with monumental yet traditional forms that reflects his initial training in sculpture.

Social

Breuer designed a suite of buildings for Torin, as well as houses for senior executives over a 25 year period.

Cultural and Aesthetic

A rare example of an American architect working in Australia, a design that demonstrates how Marcel Breuer raised the quality of industrial architecture, encasing rationalized production lines and warehousing in bold architectural forms that repeated precast elements first used at the Torin head office in Torrington, Connecticut. A rare example of a factory building containing purpose-designed tapestry and the Breuer- designed furniture, features more usually found in commercial head offices in the city. Detailed documentation of this design survives in the Marcel Breuer archive in America, at Penrith Council and in the Harry Seidler collection now held at the State Library of NSW including sketch designs for unbuilt elements and colour schemes.

Canonical Status

The former Torin Building is an important work by notable architects Marcel Breuer (and his partner Herbert Beckhard) who were architects for the Torin Corporation of the USA designing nine buildings worldwide from 1952 until 1976 including in the USA, France, Canada, Belgium and England. The Torin Factory is the only building in Australia designed by the New York-based architect Marcel Breuer and was the Torin company’s only Australian outlet. The design is the only collaboration in Australia by Harry Seidler with his former mentor, Marcel Breuer. At the time of construction the design, including Max Dupain’s photographs, was published in both Australian and American architectural periodicals.

Historic and reference values

The Torin factory demonstrates the industrial development that occurred in Penrith following the introduction of the Cumberland Plan. Following years of pressure on the Woodriffe family to allow factories to be built on their farmland, it was not until the death of P H Woodriffe that part of the Woodriffe’s original 1000 acre land grant was zoned industrial. The former Torin Building has important associations with the multi-national Torin Corporation, one of a number of international companies who established their manufacturing plants at Penrith post World War II and that played a part in the economic development of the expanding town of Penrith.

Documentation

Archives

Listing & files
Australian Insitute of Architects, NSW Chapter
Harry Seidler – Western Sydney projects ML MSS 7088
ML PDX 613
Architectural Drawings
Local Council / Building Application
Penrith Council holds building files including sketches and photographs sent from New York by Marcel Breuer.

References

Architecture Australia, June/July 1997 Architectural Record, August 1977
Marcel Breuer Architect: The Work and Buildings compiled by Isabelle Hyman, c. 2001
An article by Glen Harper on Breuer’s only Australian building appeared in the Architecture Bulletin in May/June 2008.
Anne Watson article in Monument, 2008

Visual material

original visual records/photographs/others:
Photos by Max Dupain 1976, presumably now in the Dupain collection held in the Mitchell Library
Original drawings
Held in Seidler Collection at the Mitchell Library. Material also held by Penrith Council (now in their local studies collection) including a perspective.
recent photographs and survey drawings:
AIA NSW Chapter holds recent photographs, as does Scott Robertson of Robertson & Hindmarsh Architects. Harry Seidler’s office also retain material including the Dupain photographs
film/video/other sources:
The building appears briefly in Harry Seidler’s 1980 lecture given at the UNSW. Copy at the AIA NSW Chapter
website
www.sl.nsw.gov.au manuscripts & pictures catalogue

Documents included in the supplementary dossier

Torin Corporation; Site History (from the 2014 inventory sheet prepared by Robertson & Hindmarsh for Penrith Council); Project Documentation – a summary of the known sources of drawings
Statements of Significance; Floor Plans (as published); Images; Articles and Publications; Marcel Breuer and Harry Seidler; Marcel Breuer and his archive.

Fiche report

name of reporter:
Noni Boyd
Information provided by
Scott Robertson, Penrith Counci and the AIA NSW Chapter
date of report
Fiche updated June 2014, originally prepared in 2008

Supplementary Dossier

1. The Torin Company

The first building designed by Breuer for Torin was the Torin Technical Centre in Torrington, Connecticut erected in 1970. In 1969 the Torrington Manufacturing Company had changed its name to the Torin Company. Based in Torrington, Connecticut, the firm had eight manufacturing plants in five countries. The manufacturing firm dated back to the mid 1880s and initially manufactured tacks but became more well known for its air moving equipment. In the Twentieth Century the firm produced propeller blades and impellers for aircraft.

Torin Corporation Buildings and Projects, 1952 – 1976 (from the AIA NSW Chapter)

Breuer’s work for Torrington Manufacturing Company (the name was changed to Torin Corporation in 1969) raised small-scale industrial architecture in postwar America to a new aesthetic level. A manufacturer of air-moving equipment (Fans and impellers), Torin had its corporated headquarters and manufacturing division in Torrington, Connecticut, wher by 1963 the company owned 60 acres. Breuer’s longtime connection to the company began in 1950 through Rufus Stillman, who was then vice president and later chairman of the board. Rufus and Leslie Stillman’s enthusiasm for Breuer’s architecture led to three Stillman Houses, two Gagarin Houses, the Ceasar Cottage, the Becton Center at Yale University, several schools in the vicinity of Litchfield, Connecticut, and nine buildings for Torin. A tenth Torin project, the Still River Division, was built by MBA after Breuer’s retirement. Stillman documented the history of the Torin buildings through 1971 and his client-architect relationship with Breuer in an article in the March 1972 issue of Architectural Forum. The company eventually was sold, and all the buildings in the original complex in Connecticut and elsewhere were changed or adapted for other uses.

A photograph of the headquarters building is held on file at Penrith Council, sent by Breuer’s office to indicate the intended character of the proposed building. Refer to the study of modern buildings in Penrith by Robertson & Hindmarsh, a study commissioned by Penrith Council.

2. Site History

The Torin Factory was erected within an industrial estate built between the depot and the sewerage farm. The land was part of the grant of 1,000 acres made to Captain Daniel Woodriffe in February 1804. This part of Woodriffe’s land was bounded on the south by the Western Road, to the west by the Nepean River, to the north by William Neate Chapman’s grant (and a large lagoon) and on the east by the grants of Captain P.P. King and John McHenry. The land remained in the Woodriffe family for generations. Woodriffe himself spent little time in Sydney, returning to England with a cargo of colonial timbers a few months after obtaining his grant. Rodley farm, as the property was known, was leased until Woodriffe’s grandson Daniel James Woodriffe came to Penrith to settle on the estate.

Around 1890 Francis Henry Woodriffe built a substantial house known as Coombewood to the west of the Castlereagh Road. This house survives today, surrounded by a small parcel of land. Subdivision of the estate occurred in 1899 when Mr F D Woodriffe subdivided 300 acres of his river frontage into small farms (Western Champion 20 October 1899)

In 1925 a speedway was established on land to the southwest of Coombewood, just north of the railway line. This site was used as an Engineers Supply Depot during World War II. The Commonwealth resumed the land in 1945 and the use as a depot continued, as a supply depot in case of mobilisation for war. Industrial areas were proposed for Penrith and St Marys in the late 1940s, however, the Woodriffe family were not keen to sell land (Nepean Times, 7 September 1950). Following the death of P H Woodriffe the Department of Local Government proclaimed an industrial estate to the east of Castlereagh Road (Nepean Times, 24 March 1960).

The Lemongrove Progress Association agitated for a link road between Castlereagh Road and Lemongrove Road. This road, Coreen Avenue, was built during the 1960s. To the north of Coreen Avenue an industrial area was established. The industrial area seems to date from the 1970s however no layout has been located. Coombes Drive is presumably named for the nearby house built by the Woodriffes.

3. Project Documentation

At the time of completion, the building appeared in Architecture Australia (June/July 1977) and in the American Architectural Record (August 1977). In both cases Max Dupain’s series of photographs were used. This set of images may have been included in the photographs donated by Eric Sierens to the Mitchell Library (part of the State Library of NSW) as the Max Dupain and Associates Records and Negatives Archive however this has yet to be confirmed.

Harry Seidler donated his correspondence with Breuer, drawings and other documents as part of his architectural archive donated to the Mitchell Library (State Library of NSW). Included are drawings, specifications and correspondence regarding the construction of the Torin Factory at Penrith.

MLMSS 708 Harry Seidler Project Files 1959-1981
iii. Torin – Penrith factory project, 1970-1976
1970-1976; ‘Torin – Penrith factory project’, being correspondence, reports and papers (Call No.: MLMSS 7078/11)
1974-1976; ‘Torin factory contract administration’ (Call No.: MLMSS 7078/12)
1974; Agreement and conditions of building contract concerning Torin Pty. Ltd. and the Penrith Factory Project (Call No.: MLMSS 7078/13)
1974-1975; ‘Torin 7303’, including correspondence; sketch plans; product brochures (Call No.: MLMSS 7078/13

PXD 613 Harry Seidler Collection : Western Sydney Projects

Harry Seidler Architects
Copies of the photographs are held by Seidler’s office and the office also took their own photographs. Photographs from Seidler’s office were scanned in 2008 and are now in the Digital Archive of the Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter).