Posts Tagged ‘facadism’

Former Danish Club at 177 Beaconsfield Parade before demolition began

The spectacular classical architecture of the Danish Club at 177 Beaconsf

ield Parade has been reduced to a facade held up tenuously by scaffolding.

Last year the Danish club was bought by a private owner Australia’s richest woman.  No sooner had the building been purchased than an applica

tion for a permit to turn it into the Bayside equivalent of a Toorak mansion was made.  The application which was approved by Port Phillip Council shortly after read:

“partial demolition, alterations and additions including restoration of facade including reinstatement of open air balconies, demolition of the Sport Centre and bar/lounge addition with external landscaping including outdoor terrace, swimming pool, two storey yog

a pavilion and studio and removal of two vehicle crossovers”

Scaffolding masks the skeletal remains of the landmark Danish Club. Construction is rising up behind on 18th November.

Somehow this misleading description became case of almost complete demolition than a renovation.  It seems that when you feel the urge to build a yoga pavilion that big, you might just take out a few heritage buildings along the way.

In any case the facade is exactly all that remains to restore.  Nothing survives of the interior, the roof or chimneys of the heritage building and just over two walls of the building remain as an empty open ghostly shell …

While the club’s interiors had experienced remodeling in the past, it has certainly never in its history been gutted to this extent and has remained one of Port Phillips largest and most impressive classical buildings sitting smack bang in one of the council’s most important heritage overlays.

It appears that the City of Port Phillip have not learned that keeping just the facade and excavating around it can be risky business, with several heritage buildings requiring complete reconstruction after this method went horribly wrong.

Lets hope this magnificent facade survives the ordeal and that a decent outcome is achieved for this Middle Park landmark ….

Equity Trustees Building from Bourke Street

One of Melbourne’s finest eclectic interwar buildings the richly detailed Equity Chambers at 472 Bourke Street is currently under threat.

The City of Melbourne has previously considered a sensitive 10 storey extension to the rear, however a revised application involves aggressive demolition to most of the distinctive and unusually designed building with an 18 storey tower rising behind – virtually facading the heritage building.

While the towers are stepped down to Bourke Street with the lower balconied section a 5 storey addition,  it will angle out over the top of the heritage facade just metres from the street.

Equity Chambers was built in 1930 – 31 and the architects were Oakley & Parkes who were most known for their stark early modern buildings.  In contrast Equity Chambers is a richly decorated,  distinctively and unusually designed six storey building which is part Romanesque Revival, part neo-gothic and part Art Deco in many ways similar to many North American office buildings of the era.   The words “Equity Trustees Company” emblazoned on the lower frieze in a gilded deco style, however Equity Trustees have since moved to more modern 1980s buildings (Equity Trustees House) further down Bourke Street.  The building itself currently functions as Monash University’s Law Chambers.

The ground floor loggia and Roman vaulted lobby interiors, along with the Regent Theatre on Collins Street are some of the finest of its kind in Melbourne.  Inside there is also a large original auditorium space.

Spectacular lobby interiors (from equitychambers.com.au)

Design showing rear with proposed tower from realestateview.com.au

The building was graded B, in Melbourne City Council’s 1984 heritage study and is situated within a heritage overlay on the Melbourne Planning Scheme, however to my knowledge it has never been nominated to the Victorian Heritage Register and definitely is not state listed.

Given the upgraded size of the project, the planning minister may have the final say on whether the building will be saved.  Should the council choose to defend the building it may go to VCAT, if not, then it may go straight to the minister.  In the last year he has already approved the demolition of two buildings of similar vintage and status in heritage overlays – the Princess Mary Club and Lonsdale House.

Perhaps we should be thankful that in this case the developer has not proposed to remove the whole building.

However it may be worth writing to the City of Melbourne if you wish to express concerns about this proposal.

Thanks to a last minute change to the heritage listing for Melbourne’s iconic art deco Myer building, the entire interiors are being gutted with the exception of the mural hall which is to be preserved.

Several previously boarded up frescoes at the Bourke Street Mall entrance that were revealed by construction workers this week were yesterday jackhammered to oblivion.

Demolition of Myer's entryway frescoes

The art noveau staircases and jazz era frescoes throughout the interiors of the art deco landmark will also now be stripped bare and modernised.   Old columns must go to pump more consumers through the building …  and an all glass entrance must replace the awning and Christmas windows dressed for the Olympic Games.

And according to Heritage Victoria, so long as you take photos (presumably like me they did) – its ok and thanks for the memories !

Ruined Frescoes closeup

The ABC television news recently ran a story about the demise of Dimmey’s in Richmond including the closure of the store, the planned hi-rise development behind the recently heritage listed tower, facadism and the demolition of the heritage listed “History of Richmond” mural to make way for a new multi-storey carpark.  The video footage features interviews with prominent locals including Mirka Mora.

The Age has also chipped in with an article specifically about the fate of the Hayden Dewar designed mural titled  “Dim Future for Dimmey’s Mural“.

The future of Dimmey’s is now in the hands of Heritage Victoria and a State Government whose planning minister Justin Madden has public stated his willingness to forsake our cultural heritage to stimulate the economy.

It would be a terrible tragedy for Melbourne to lose such an institution and important cultural landmark.

Former Collins Street Bank facade relocated to Melbourne University in the 1930s may be one of the earliest example of facadism.

I’ve read a lot of fors and against the practice facadism or facadomy (the practice of demolishing everything of a building but its facade), but what really disturbs me is the National Trust’s such staunch stance against it.

For some buildings it is the only change of retaining some heritage at all, and it would seem that the Trust’s fatalistic attitude would rather see a building demolished in its entirety than save anything. In fact, I find that ironically the Trust is so appalled by facadism, that it is these days is possibly more obsessed with stopping the practice than what I thought they did – save buildings and protect heritage for future generations.

An interesting article on the situation in Vancouver also points out the pros and cons, stating that “Developers are clearly counting on being allowed to façade more or less any heritage building they choose”. In many cases, facadism is the only compromise between preservation and complete demolition.

And are times changing, unfortunately the Trust aren’t changing with it. Are developers now expecting, particularly in Victoria, that they can use the attitudes of the conservationists to demolish buildings in their entirety ? A recent case in point is the now demolished Eastern Arcade. Amazingly the building had its wonderful Moorish Revival facade completely obscured in the 1950s by one of those cheap and nasty looking corrugated panels, only to be discovered intact underneath many decades latter. The building is now, after being hidden for so long, completely gone for the rest of time after agreement could not be reached between developers and preservationists. In the current climate of pro-development government – when no compromise is reached, the developer will always win.

Facadism was once rampant in my home town of Brisbane. Most of what you see on Queen Street Mall is “hollow heritage”. Brisbane’s love affair with facadism very much continues with the of the Queensland Country Life Building into the Aurora Tower complex. I was once very cynical of it and thought the only value was for tourists. Now, however I realise now that buildings weren’t all built to last forever – particularly in Melbourne. While Brisbane has a shocking record of demolition, facadism has spared it from losing its soul. While you can’t stop a building from falling down (a strategy that many developers use to force demolition), you can preserve a facade almost indefinitely. And in Brisbane at least, I can wander the streets and still get a sense of former streetscapes and relationships of buildings. At the Myer centre, I can see the names of the old hotels and appreciate their ornate cast iron balconies, even if it is no longer possible to have a beer there.

Then there is the false heritage which popped up in the 1990s. The fashion of post modernism was a great thing for protecting our heritage by blending in old and new. However extreme examples of post-modernism appeared which attempted to recreate buildings even grander than their original. Many of Brisbane’s Queenslanders have been “puffed up” this way. 333 Collins Street in Melbourne is a fantastic example of puffing up heritage in a CBD context. Many of the uneducated simply couldn’t tell the difference In many ways, postmodernism has contributed to the demise of true heritage by simply outdoing it. I mean, why buy a grand 19th Century doer upper in the inner city when you can have an authentic looking McMansion in the suburbs ?

There is also the issue of practicality. Most of the buildings that the conservationists want to conserve are no longer used for a reason. It is because technology has changed. You can’t always literally adapt an old building to new use without making some adjustments. It is a matter of fact that we don’t have saddliers or blacksmiths anymore. Virtually all of the old Carlton and United Brewery that remains is facades and I doubt that they intend to make beer there again. The shot tower at Melbourne Central no longer makes bullets and instead sells shirts and jeans. It is simply not practical for our cities to remain the way they were centuries ago, only to become museums.

Added to this is the fact that much of Victorian architecture, of which Melbourne is famous, focused not only on borrowing styles from the entire history of architecture, but heavily on facade decoration as being inherent to the architectural quality of the building. Ruskin wrote a great deal on the importance of the expressiveness of a building to its onlookers in conveying the craftsmanship of those who contributed to building it.

And the attitude is also at odds with the Heritage Council, whose own laws advocate the rebuilding of replicas in the event that a developer breaks the law and unlawfully demolishes a heritage listed building. I’ve seen quite a few instances of this around Port Melbourne, South Melbourne and works by Boyd which were perhaps unintentionally demolished due to poor knowledge or care. While the prohibitive cost of rebuilding may be seen as a deterrent, the result is simply hollow replicas, with even less heritage value than a facade. Perhaps in this case, it is the conservationists role to educate the public about the value of buildings.

The Bad - Facadism gone wrong. 188-200 King Street, clashing modern structures engulf a collection of facades of dubious conservation value creating a "stuck on" look.

Adding insult to injury is that the Trust, while their intentions have been great, have dug their own financial grave by purchasing buildings to preserve them. While the strategy was the only one to save some of our much loved buildings like Como and Ripponleas, the costs of complete preservation and operating as museum pieces will eventually cripple them. Not every Trust member can be expected to visit these properties more than once a year and practical uses need to be found. With such high property prices these days, the same approach would not be the slightest bit feasible. In my opinion, preservationists should be moving along the lines of the environmental preservationists towards the concept of voluntary convenants. Organisations that do this well include Trust for Nature and the Tasmanian Land Conservancy. Rather than simply buying ecologically significant land, they encourage land owners to become caretakers of the land. This sort of nuturing of heritage buildings can only be a positive thing toward the ongoing maintenance of them. For example, while Melbourne’s most iconic building – Flinders Street Station is heritage registered and legally protected, it still does not stop its owners and operators (State Government and Connex) from shamefully neglecting it in some cases to the point of disrepair.

Let’s not forget that Melbourne is home to some of facadisms landmarks. The Old Commerce building at the University of Melbourne is the relocated facade of a Collins Street bank which was superimposed to the front of a “new” campus. Then there is relocation, a process which has gone on since the city’s foundation. Examples include the old St James Old Cathedral, Latrobe Cottage and Captain Cook’s cottage (brought all the way from England) – several of our statues including that of Burke and Wills. These buildings have lost their original settings and relationships, so they are really just another form of hollow heritage – possibly even more shallow, except that they are examples of the use and interior spaces of a bygone era. But most of them are just that – museum pieces. And ironically these buildings are all Trust listed.

In the 1990s, the concept of podiums helped to offset the new buildings from the street and give the old facades an “integrated” appearance. Unfortunately, it was a loosening of these policies in the last decade which saw many “tacked on” appearance. This in my opinion is not acceptable, but only requires the slightest tweaks in planning policy and needs to be done at the state level to ensure that all local governments are on the same page.

There are countless examples of facadomy in Melbourne and our city has a long history of it. Like it or not, the practice is here to stay and I believe that it should not only be tolerated, but not get in the way of preservation of our heritage and history.