😮 I knew this was happening but still…this is the 1970 offices of #YunckenFreeman on King Street in West Melbourne, and it’s being facaded for a hotel development (which is better than it was going to be). The first example of modernist #facadism, and prob not the last, though new @cityofmelbourne guidelines very much say it’s not ok anymore. First image streetview from Dec 2020, then SLV, then the proposal, then Graeme Butler last week.
Feb 2022:
I knew that Melb modernist architects Yuncken Freeman very much channeled Chicago firm Skidmore Owings & Merrill, but I didn’t realise they also went back to their source, German transplant Mies Van der Rohe himself, who was producing his minimalist steel architecture in Chicago in the 50s/60s – just read a great biography from 2012, and his 1961 Bacardi HQ in Mexico City was clearly the inspiration for the YF king street west melbourne offices, now just 3 facades with a tower being built on top.
Images Barcadi x 3, YF x 3:
Storey of Melbourne 