Facadism in Spencer Street

30 July 2024, photos from March :

A rather dramatic example of facadism on Spencer Street West Melbourne, completed in 2017. When first proposed in 2006, they were going to demolish it completely, since heritage listings were way behind, but the art deco & modernism society and the @nationaltrustvic successfully got the facades preserved, with substantial setbacks, but still … It was originally built in 1937 as the admin offices and showrooms of Australian Glass Manufacturers, which started out as a bottle works in Spottswood; the pics I found in the mag Decoration & Glass of the showroom show they stuffed it with probably their whole range of glassware products. They were mostly not very modern, unlike the nicely streamlined building, one of the later works by Tompkins & Tompkins, which also used glass blocks, one of their products – though not as much as their bigger HQ in Sydney of 1939 (last pic). The offices here were very restrained modern, with some glass blocks inside to boot.