Modernism had a big impact on the landscape of Sydney, evidenced by the city's splattering of minimal, functional buildings - to some an eyesore, to others a reminder of this significant style.
According to the great modernist Viennese architectural figure Adolf Loos, ornament is crime. He made this pronouncement when the world was swamped in that most decorative of styles, art deco. His reaction was hardly surprising. “It’s a very hard line to take,” says Dr Ann Stephen, principal curator of Modern Times, an exhibition of Australian modernism at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, “but it’s a good way to think about the modern movement.” It’s not an easy concept to define, she says, but what’s distinctive about modernism "is that it could take different forms at different times in different places. It was a way of looking forward, and tended to be informed by minimal aesthetics, functional requirements and have an egalitarian, utopian impulse."
One of the most significant movements of the 20th century, it was essentially a phenomenon that began around the beginning of the century and continued well into the 1960s, infiltrating the worlds of art and architecture, as well as many areas of design, from fashion to film. Sydney, a new world city, embraced modernism in its own way, influenced by its climate, topography, history and the influx of migrants who brought ideas from around the globe. Here the Powerhouse Museum’s curator of design and society, Dr Charles Pickett, guides us around some of Sydney’s finest modernist moments.
King’s Cross
With its abundance of apartments, the Kings Cross-Potts Point-Elizabeth Bay area embodies a modernist style of living in which functionalism and high-rise buildings play a key role. The landmark structure here – and one of the most popular backdrops for tourist photos – though, is something quite different: a fountain.
El Alamein Fountain
Fitzroy Gardens.
(Robert Woodward, completed in 1961)
Woodward designed a number of fountains in Sydney, but this is his “masterpiece”, says Pickett. His approach to design, greatly influenced by the time he spent working with Finnish architect Alvar Aalto in the 1950s, has been to turn to nature for inspiration – the modernist doctrine of organic functionalism.
St Ursula
5 Onslow Avenue.
Elizabeth Bay (Hugo Stossel, 1951)
Of this gently curving, understated building opposite Elizabeth Bay House, Pickett says: “Stossel was part of that great wave of émigré architects. He designed a lot of apartments around Sydney, but wasn’t particularly well-known – this was his first, and an elegant little building.”
17 Wylde Street
(Aaron Bolot, 1951)
“From the 1930s to the ’60s, Bolot designed more apartments than anyone in Sydney and in quite a range of styles.” 17 Wylde Street, a curvaceous and innovative building in which living areas are to the front, kitchens and bathrooms to the rear, is a Potts Point landmark and “by far the best” thing Bolot designed.
Gowrie Gate
115 Macleay Street, Potts Point.
(Dudley Ward, 1938)
When Ward returned to Australia from Europe after the Depression, he “designed a series of apartment buildings that picked up on what was being done over there, particularly in public housing in Germany and Holland. This block of bachelor apartments is easy to miss as it’s built in Sydney red brick, which people turn their noses up at.If it was rendered in white, you’d stand back and admire it. At the time, he was quite influential, but he’s dropped between the cracks.”
Deepdene
110 Elizabeth Bay Road, Elizabeth Bay.
(Stuart Murray, 1969)
“This is a really odd place,” says Pickett of the austere, castle-like building. “It contains only five large apartments in a sculpted concrete tower, built at the height of the brutalist period. A lot of architects were into cast concrete forms at the time, the Sydney Opera House being the pinnacle of that era.”
Ithaca Gardens
12 Ithaca Road, Elizabeth Bay.
(Harry Seidler, 1960)
One of Seidler’s first apartment blocks, it was designed several years before it was built and, like Seidler’s more famous Blues Point Tower, is both loved and detested.“It’s a classic of its time. The apartments are arranged in a line, allowing for windows on both sides and setting up cross breezes – that was something Le Corbusier developed in Europe and has been imitated by any number of architects over the years.”
Macleay Regis
12 Macleay Street.
(Pitt and Phillips, 1939)
The last of the grand prewar residential buildings, Macleay Regis, notable for its sweeping entrance foyer, has a complicated floor plan to allow light into all apartments. Based on the exclusive New York Rockefeller Apartments, the 10-storey Macleay Regis has a service kitchen on the eighth floor, which was designed to supply meals to residents.
City
Cahill Expressway and Circular Quay railway station (Public Works Department, 1962). Love it or hate it – most people hate it – the elevated railway and station were first proposed in the 1920s, but didn’t get built until the ’50s, with the Cahill Expressway, the city’s first freeway and an indication of Sydney’s modernist sensibilities, opening a few years later.
Qantas House
1 Chifley Square.
(Rudder Littlemore & Rudder, 1957)
With its double-glazed curtain wall, this was one of the buildings that formed Chifley Square. “The idea was for buildings to curve the whole way around the square, but that didn’t happen. However, this is a significant building and won a number of gongs.”
Liner House
13-15 Bridge Street.
(Bunning & Madden, 1960)
Commissioned for a Norwegian shipping agency, Liner House is a classic interpretation of the International Style, and possibly influenced by Giuseppe Terragni’s 1936 building, Casa del Fascio in Como, Italy. It would have been possible to build a tower on the site, but the company decided to respect the historic streetscape and slot something in of a similar height.
AMP Building
33 Alfred Street, Circular Quay.
(Peddle Thorp & Walker, 1962)
Until the late 1950s there was a 45m height limit on buildings. This was the first to break that, being twice as high as any other city building. Influenced by New York office towers, the AMP Building has a large amount of public space in front of it, with public art by Tom Bass.
AWA Building
45-47 York Street.
(Robertson, Marks & McCredie in association with DT Morrow & Gordon, 1939)
Pickett describes the little AWA office tower, also built while Sydney had its strict height restrictions, as “Manhattan style, but stunted – it’s more on a street-level scale than its American equivalents”. It was a landmark and still is to some extent because of the steel lattice radio tower on its roof, which made it Sydney’s tallest structure for about 20 years.
Seven Elizabeth Street
(Emil Sodersten, 1938)
Well-known for his apartment and office buildings around the inner city, Sodersten also designed a modest building of the most modernist concept possible – bachelor flats in the heart of the city. “It was the whole idea of creating a living space that didn’t waste an inch.” The original fit-out was by Sydney’s top interior designer of the time, Marion Hall Best, and one of the apartments still contains her furniture.
Sydney Dental Hospital
Corner Chalmers and Elizabeth Streets.
(Stephenson & Turner, 1936-40)
“This was the first expression of real European modernist looks in Sydney.” Its most outstanding feature is the full-height, curved wire and glass stairwell at the apex of the virtually triangular building.
Civic Hotel
Corner Pitt and Goulburn Streets.
(Prevost & Associates, 1940)
Hotels such as the Civic (and the Hollywood in Foster Street, Surry Hills) were built when major breweries ran the hotel trade. “It was a time of the temperance movement and six o’clock closing. The breweries thought that the best way to improve the trade’s image was to spend a lot on the hotels. A lot of young architects were commissioned to design what were basically modernist pubs – a strange meeting of design and function. There’s nothing like them anywhere in the world.”
Source: Qantas the Australian Way December 2008