10 October 2024
Prompted by the death of architect Graeme Gunn, Ive got some 2008 photos of the concretey delight of his 1971 Plumbers & Gasfitters Union, located right next to Trades Hall on Victoria Street (behind a pesky tree), plus pics 3,4 from 1971. It’s got all that chunky angular raw now streaky concrete that defines the style, but also a good amount of dynamic massing, with the big window of reception thrust forward, supporting the glass wall of the meeting room above, with the entry stair leaping off one side. Changes are afoot here; late last year they sought a permit from Heritage Victoria for various alterations. Firstly an extra floor, well set back, so you probably won’t notice it. Then a new level entry, rather ingeniously inserted in the undercroft, and putting a lift in the shaft where one was intended but never installed. The architects are @kennedy_nolan, and they proposed timber framed elements, which are nice and feel rather 70s, but actually the finishes of the building originally were sort of space age, with frameless dark glass and flat panels with rounded corner openings, so I made a submission saying perhaps something else. And don’t just pull out the first floor corridor which has the only bits of original left. The @library_vic has a pile of great photos of the interior, the reception desk was rather stark, but now gone, and HV have some of the corridor with rounded lights and windows, and the last is the big dark glass front door, still there as far as I can tell. They got their permit in March, but no idea if they changed it at all.
4 October 2024
Architect Graeme Gunn passed away a few days ago; he was a big name from the mid 60s into the 80s, and I know him most for the baldly brutalist 1971 Plumbers & Gasfitters Union in Victoria Street right behind Trades Hall. Pic 1 is a portrait of him later in life by John Gollings. He was a very early convert to Brutalism, with his 1963 concrete block courtyard style Richardson House in Essendon, currently an abandoned wreck, pics 5,6. From the mid 60s he started an involvement with David Yencken and Merchant Builders, designing a holiday house ‘Baroda’ for Yencken in southern NSW made out of logs looking more like a tree house 😊 in 1968, and a series of bricky bushy houses notably the cluster houses in Winter Park in Rosanna for Merchant Builders amongst many. He went fully Postmodernist in the early 80s, for instance the now demolished Moonee Ponds Market. A long rich career. Photos via Facebook. (Many people with direct experience of him or his projects commented on my Instagram to say he was a great architect).
Storey of Melbourne 