open house richmond 2024

Open House Richmond was a one-off Open House event held in February 2024 as part of the Richmond Bicentenary.

Located on the land of the Mumirimina people of the Oyster Bay Nation, Richmond hosted a number of events between December 2023 and February 2024 to commemorate the history of the town.

Having attended many Open House Hobart events in the past, my sister and I decided it was well past time that we volunteered at one of these weekends, so we put our hands up to help out on the Saturday morning.

You can read about what we did here.

I finally got to hold a clipboard! (NB not the building I was volunteering at) Photo by Carryl M.

We were allocated to the St John the Evangelist Church precinct for three hours on Saturday. Our job was to tally the number of visitors and ask them for their postcodes. If you’ve been to Open House events before, you’ll know this drill.

St John the Evangelist Church

The church (dating back to 1835) and the old school house (1843) were open to the public. The 1959 presbytery wasn’t open, but visitors were invited to walk around and admire its modernist excellence.

Wesley Stacey Exhibition

Before we headed off to the church, we took a look at the Wesley Stacey photo exhibition of Richmond in the 1960s. Wes Stacey (1941-2023) was an Australian architectural and documentary photographer who came to Richmond in 1968 to document the town.

Wesley Stacey 1968 Richmond

The exhibition notes tell us

Wes was in Richmond for a few days in 1968 during which he brought an artist’s eye to the town just prior to its emergence from a century in the doldrums. Bypassed by roads, rail and causeways, Richmond settled into a period of reduced relevance and quietude, which saved it from unsympathetic development. Wes’ photographs record a very locally-focussed Richmond and present a perspective on the village just prior to its reinvention as a heritage tourism hot spot.

It was cool to see this photo of the church we were about to visit.

Wesley Stacey’s 1968 photo of St John the Evangelist Church

The exhibition was curated by Richmond Bicentenary Creative Director, Noel Frankham. The photographs form part of the “Wes Stacey archive of architectural photographs, 1968-1972”, held by the National Library of Australia.

It’s an amazing collection of almost 3,000 photos.

St John the Evangelist Precinct

Three hours was a lot of time to explore the area in between visitors. Here’s some photos.

Old Catholic School House (1843)

Old School House

Old School House

Old School House

Old School House

St John the Evangelist Church (1835)

Church toppers

Church seen from the road

The church and the presbytery

The Presbytery

The original church presbytery (date unknown) eventually become a convent and was subsequently replaced by in the 1930s by a new catholic school and convent. In 1929, the old school house was converted into a presbytery, presumably temporarily.

The current presbytery was designed by Paul Fox in 1957. The newly appointed parish priest, Rev Fr JB Reed had the design approved by the Archbishop Most Rev G Young DD, and it was completed in 1959 by the builder Mr E H Hewitt of Lindisfarne.

Presbytery front door

It’s a two-bedroom house with, we were told, an ensuite bathroom, which was apparently very uncommon in the 1950s.

Presbytery seen from the old school house

At the building’s blessing and opening on 15 March 1959, The Mercury observed that, ‘although modern in design, the presbytery has been built so that it in no way interferes with the antiquity of the church’.

A pair of crosses

Windows

The end

Detail

Lines

Strong verticals

More strong verticals

I had a lovely morning exploring what I could of this wonderful building and meeting and greeting visitors to the school house. It was interesting to hear some of the stories people shared.

I think part of the fun of Open House is to meet people with common interests (or even uncommon interests!) and to learn interesting things about our built heritage.

And the day wouldn’t be complete without . . .

The Richmond Tourist Amenities

This was presented as an example of ‘contemporary architecture within a historic setting’. 

 The complex was commended in the 2004 and 2005 Tasmanian architecture awards:

“This building deserves recognition because it seeks to contextualise, within an historic setting. Through means other than imitation of historic forms. It is a well-considered approach, which reworks components of the familiar without pastiche. It also provides an innovative plan for an often maligned building type.”

From 1+2 Architecture

Thanks to everyone who made this weekend possible, especially Katie and Jen from Open House HQ, who do an amazing job of putting the program together.

exploring the suburbs (january 2024)

the suburb and the sky

industrial colours

black and white

scenes from the street

open house hobart 2023— the new spirit of modernism (part 2)

2023 Open House Hobart posts

• Architectural Drawing
• Signs of Hobart
• Crisp & Gunn (The Forestry Dome)
• The Railway Roundabout Fountain
• The ABC Building
• The New Spirit of Modernism (Part 1)

The New Spirit of Modernism (Part 2)

Featured buildings – Former M.L.C Building, Lands Building, and former AMP Building.

Former MLC Building

Leaving the State Library behind, our wonderful guide, Bronwen, led us down Murray Street past “Murray House”, to the corner of Liverpool Street, where we found the former MLC Building.

Former MLC Building 65 Murray Street

It was designed by Philp Lighton Floyd and Beattie for MLC. I had to google ‘MLC’ as I’m not sure what it stands for (other than knowing it’s easily confused with CLM, whose building on the corner of Macquarie and Elizabeth Street was where we saw a ghost sign on Saturday). I suspected the words “mutual” and “life” might make an appearance and, indeed, MLC was once known as Mutual Life & Citizens Assurance Company Limited.

The building was constructed in two stages, with the first five storeys built (according to my records) in 1958, which means it pre-dates the library. The remaining floors were added in about 1977.

Looking down Murray Street, early 1970s (Tasmanian Archives PH30-1-9754)

I found the above photo in the library, which shows what the MLC building looked like before the top floors were added. (It looks like it might have been taken from the library.) There are a few other buildings in Hobart where this approach was taken. What is now Construction House in Bathurst Street and former 34 Davey Street are two that come to mind.

Looking up

I was lucky to have had a tour of this building through Open House in 2018, which took in the view of the city from the roof.

Looking back up Murray Street at the State Library and the Stack (November 2018)

The building also has this interesting extension on the first floor, which I think Bronwen said was part of the original design. And of course, the obligatory relief sculpture to show MLC’s care for their customers.

First floor of the MLC Building, currently home to the Bett Gallery

Jaffa House

Further along Murray Street is Jaffa House, which wasn’t on our official list of stops but we stopped there anyway.

It was designed by Jim Moon of Bush Parkes Shugg and Moon, and built in 1971-72. It was originally the Savings Bank of Tasmania headquarters, and is known as Jaffa because of its colour.

Reflections of the T&G Building in the windows of Jaffa

AMP Building

Our next stop was AMP House on the corner of Collins and Elizabeth Street. It will always be AMP to me, never NAB, despite what the sign on the side says.

It was designed by Richard Crawford of Crawford Shurman Wegman Architects and competed in 1968.

AMP Building tower

This is a delightful building that can almost be seen in two parts: the tower and the podium on which it sits. I’ve often thought that the podium by itself would make a lovely small brutalist building.

You can see the relationships between the tower and the podium more clearly from higher up, like in this photo I made from the roof on the neighbouring CML Building during Open House 2018. (I did a lot of rooftops that year!)

AMP Building from the top of the CML Building

AMP is the Australian Mutual Provident Society, and it had a small office building on this site prior to 1881, when its new building was constructed.

AMP’s 1881 Premises on the corner of Elizabeth and Collins Street (Tasmanian Archives)

This building was extended and had another floor added in 1913. Bronwen said that in the 1960s, AMP decided it wanted to own the tallest building in Hobart, so it had the 1881 building demolished and replaced with the current one. One of the archways from the old building is now located in the Botanical Gardens.

The facade features the Tom Bass relief sculpture “Amicus certus in re incerta – A sure friend in an uncertain event”, which is similar to the one on the side of Sydney’s AMP building. This one has a stylised map of Tasmania in the centre of arms encircling the Goddess of Plenty watching over the father, mother and child.

Looking up at the AMP Building

Reserve Bank

Just around the corner on Macquarie Street, is the Reserve Bank Building, which we learned about on a 2020 Open House walking tour.

The Reserve Bank Building, Macquarie Street

This building was completed in 1978, and Bronwen noted its recessed corners. (She loves recessed corners and pointed them out everywhere we went). What I remember about this building is that they wanted to keep it simple and inexpensive because money was tight at the time, and it wouldn’t have been a good look for the government to go splashing cash around for a fancy new bank building.

It was awarded the ‘Enduring Architecture Award’ at the 2012 Tasmanian Architecture Awards.

The void

Bronwen pointed out the recessed area to the left of the building that was kept aside for the public artwork, which in this case is Stephen Walker’s wonderful Antarctic Tableau.

Antarctic Tableau (detail) by Stephen Walker

Lands Building

Our final stop was the fabulous Lands Building in the next block.

It’s a very neat symmetrical design with some kind of escape hatch on the second to top floor that no one has ever been able to explain. (Look closely!)

The Lands Building, Macquarie Street

Another example from the 1970s (1976, I believe), it is, like other brutalist structures, grounded and earthy, which, Bronwen observed, seems appropriate for something called the Lands Building.

I think it could be taller.

The Lands Building, Macquarie Street

And that was the end of the tour.

It was great to meet someone who loves these buildings so much, and I agree with Bronwen that we need to find out more about them. I’m certainly enjoying uncovering their history from random places, but often all I can find is little snippets, as there isn’t a lot of readily available information about many of these buildings. It’s fun to search though! There are many rabbit holes . . .

Before we left, Bronwen asked if there was any interest in more tours of other modernist buildings and the answer was a very enthusiastic ‘yes’, so hopefully next year we’ll see her again.

open house hobart 2023— the new spirit of modernism (part 1)

2023 Open House Hobart posts

• Architectural Drawing
• Signs of Hobart
• Crisp & Gunn (The Forestry Dome)
• The Railway Roundabout Fountain
• The ABC Building

The New Spirit of Modernism (Part 1)

Featured buildings – State Library of Tasmania and The Stack.

If you can’t already tell from the majority of my photos, I’m rather fond of modernist buildings. So I was very excited when I saw there was a modernism walking tour on Open House weekend.

I’d told Lil Sis when we were negotiating the booking system that I didn’t care about anything else as long as I got onto this tour. We had booked onto a modernism tour a couple of years ago and it had been cancelled at the last minute because the architect had broken their toe and couldn’t manage the walk.

But no such disaster this time, and we met architect Bronwen Jones outside the State Library on Sunday afternoon.

The State Library Stack

Bronwen describes herself as a flâneuse, a female flâneur, the person who walks around the streets, observing urban life. I’ve often felt connected to this term but the one I use more often to describe myself is ‘urban bushwalker’. To my mind, it’s the same thing. Though maybe the original flâneurs walked with a sketchbook and I walk with my camera.

Bronwen is passionate about modernism and observed that, unlike the old sandstone buildings that dominate Tasmania’s landscape, there has been very little research done into these mid-20th century structures. As a result we don’t know a lot about them and there’s a real risk of them being demolished with their stories untold. It’s happened to far too many of these buildings already.

Behind the State Library

We began our tour at the Stack, the wonderful 1970s brutalist addition to the State Library (which you might recall was originally housed in the Carnegie Building we saw on the Signs of Hobart tour). It’s a most distinctive building, and there’s a video floating round in the archives that shows it being built.

Stack detail

It took me many years to work out that when an item’s location in the library catalogue said “Stack” it actually meant the item was in this building not, as I’d imagined, that it was sitting in a stack of other books on the floor . . . That only happens in my house. The library would not do this.

Textures and shadows of the Stack

Now that we have that cleared up, we were accompanied on the first part of the tour by Nina, one of Open House’s official photographers, who I’d met at the drawing workshop on Friday.

And at last, finally, several years after she had photographed me photographing a building completely unaware, I got my chance to return the favour. You have to be quick to do this though. She knows exactly what you’re doing most of the time!

Nina in action. Lil Sis is possibly aware this is happening

So, back to the Stack.

This building is raw, honest and, as Bronwen pointed out, designed with minimal windows to keep all the precious archival records away from the sunlight. She said it was always the intention for this section to be added when the library building was designed in the late 1950s, but it wasn’t completed until around 1971.

Minimal windows

The State Library building itself was designed by the Melbourne architect John Scarborough, who also designed the Morris Miller Library at the University. It was opened in 1962.

As we admired this fabulous building, Bronwen spoke about the context within which the modernist buildings came to be. There is much written on this. It was a time following post-war austerity, when architects (and everyone else) were able to travel internationally and bring back new ideas, and new immigration waves of people bringing ideas from their homelands with them. This included new design concepts, new materials like glass, steel and concrete, and new technology, including pre-fabrication.

Bronwen talking about the design of the State Library

And standardisation. There’s a lot of that. Fin. Glaze. Panel Repeat.

Bronwen said there is a lot of horizontal lines and regularity in these designs, but not necessarily with the axial symmetry you’d see in a Georgian design. The idea is that these buildings are stripped back to the essentials so the form comes through without any ridiculous (my word, not hers) fancy ephemera to distract you.

It fits the concept of “tabular rasa”: sweeping everything clean and starting over (I had to google that because I spelled it wrong). And it’s a very minimalist aesthetic: To achieve the most practically and aesthetically with the least possible means.

The other concept big in modernism was “form follows function” which in its simplest sense means the building should be designed so it can do what it’s meant to do. The Stack is an obvious example of this, I suppose, with its design that excludes the light so the archival artefacts aren’t damaged.

I tried to take notes but it’s impossible to do that and make photos at the same time AND listen to the person talking. (Can anyone tell me what “Groused Harvey” is supposed to mean? I wrote that in my notes and I have no idea!)

State Library glass curtain wall

Bronwen spoke about glass curtain walls, of which this is Tasmania’s first example. She noted that this type of wall is non-structural; it is ‘pinned’ to the slabs, which themselves are built on columns which give the structural support. This is unlike older architecture, which is built brick-on-brick, put in a window and keep building. (Reminds me of my Lego days.)

A problem with these structures today is that this is very thin, light glass that was intended to deliver natural light and warmth into the building, accompanied by flexible “shape-shifting interiors” that could easily be altered to the required layouts.

But open plan offices suck (again, my words), and the glass isn’t exactly thermal glass, so it’s not super efficient.

The building, like many others of this era, is elevated, and with so much glass it appears light and weightless, almost like it’s floating, in direct contrast to its grounded heavy neighbour, the Stack. I can’t say I’d ever paid attention but Bronwen pointed out how the building is set back from the street front and it sits at a slightly different angle to the street.

View of the library from the 1960s (Tasmanian Archives PH30-1-2205)

With the building sitting above the ground there is potentially a great public space at street level. It’s a car park, which is not great use of the space, but, as Bronwen said, in this era everything was being designed around the “car is king” principle. (I don’t think much has progressed there . . . though there are shifts that are upsetting car drivers, so there is hope for us urban walkers.)

State Library Bathurst Street facade

After stopping to admire the buildings from Murray Street, we headed down the road for the next stop on the tour.

State Library and the Stack from Murray Street

To be continued . . .

open house hobart 2023—railway roundabout fountain

2023 Open House posts

• Architectural Drawing
• Signs of Hobart
• Crisp & Gunn (The Forestry Dome)

The Railway Roundabout Fountain

My first Open House Hobart stop on Sunday morning was the Railway Roundabout Fountain, which is located at the roundabout formerly known as the Railway Roundabout. I still call it that, even though the railway station is long gone (and is now the site of my next tour, the ABC Building).

Here’s a video of the roundabout from 1961 before the fountain was built.

Railway Roundabout Fountain

The Open House people had left a great history of the fountain on the site, which gave some of the context for the time in which it was built—including the Space Race—and the story behind its design.

The roundabout itself was designed to smooth the traffic flow that the intersection of Brooker Avenue and Liverpool Street. This was more difficult because of the large numbers of pedestrians in the area, travelling to and from the railway station on one side and, the swimming pool and the university campus on the Domain side.

To deal with this, they built four tunnels underneath the roads, which met in a sunken garden in the middle. We are told,

At this focal point, something bold and dramatic is needed – a monument, a structure, a statement – something that reflects the mood of change in the world, the optimism and excitement that is gathering momentum.

The view from underneath the fountain

Hobart Council ran a competition to design a fountain for the space. The winning design was from three workers from the Cadbury chocolate factory: graphic designer Geoff Parr, engineer Rod Cuthbert, and advertising administrator Vere Cooper.

Chris Viney, writing the blurb for Open House describes it as follows

A slender white 12-metre needle springs upward from its base in a circular bowl at ground level, passing through a wide, shallow dish, supported by slim pillars. Jets of water shoot skyward to play on the needle, then cascade down through holes into the lower bowl, which is tiled in a mosaic design.

Sunlight forms patterns through the holes—at night, floodlights illuminate the needle and the falling water. It’s a fountain for the Space Age, an exciting, forward-looking, upward-thrusting design for the decade of change that has just begun.

The fountain at night (Photo from 2019)

Another thing I didn’t know was how they’d designed the anemometer to stop the water spraying over passing cars and pedestrians. The original design hadn’t worked, and Rod Cuthbert said he developed his own based on one of his son’s toys.

“A weight suspended on a stainless steel wire ran through a small hole in a brass disk. When the wind moved the weight, the wire touched the disk and closed an electrical circuit, lowering the water jets.”

Closeup of the spire

The fountain was refurbished in 2013, with new computerised LED lighting providing 17 million colours instead of the original four. Totally appropriate for such a space-age design.

Watching the water

I had fun exploring the different angles and moods of the fountain.

Underneath the fountain

Depending on where I was standing, it looked like two different days.

When you can’t make up your mind which sky to use as a background, use them both

Cloud cover

More of those water jets

Water chaos

Thank you, Open House, for the history lesson. I’ll be paying more attention to the fountain (and the Tom Samek mosaic on the walls) next time I’m passing through.

The mural at the fountain

And, a random piece of trivia. The UK’s Roundabout Appreciation Society called the railway roundabout the World’s Best Roundabout in 2015.

sydney city – the wrap up

After I’d spent more than an hour with Town Hall House, I wandered around briefly before deciding to call it a day.

First was the entrance to this building in Druitt Street, which was once, according to the real estate website, Australia Post’s central agency warehouse and also a gym operated by Madonna.

48-58 Druitt Street

And I couldn’t help this photo of the Western Distributor coming off the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

I did come back into the city later in the week, to visit the Art Gallery of NSW.

Art Gallery of NSW

I wrote about what I saw there on my travel blog.

While I was making my way back to the city, I saw this building from Hyde Park, which I later found out was 201 Elizabeth Street, a 38-storey building that is about to be redeveloped.

201 Elizabeth Street (Kann Finch & Partners, 1979)

In the 1880s, this site was occupied by a five-story tobacco factory, which was demolished in the 1928 for a T&G Building designed by A&K Henderson. At 68 metres, it was the tallest building in Sydney at the time. That building was in turn demolished in 1975, with the current building completed in 1979. (Urbis, 2016)

201 Elizabeth Street

Walking though the city I was surprised at how many of the older buildings were scaffolded and being redeveloped. I wondered how many of them were featured in the Sydney Modern and Sydney Inter-War walking tours and how many I wouldn’t have been able to see if I had gone looking for them.

One that wasn’t was the Commonwealth Bank building in Pitt Street and Martin Place. This is the building that the Commonwealth Bank used on its money boxes.

It was built in 1916 and was the first fully steel-framed structure in Sydney.

Commonwealth Bank Building (John Kirkpatrick, 1916)

According to Sydney Inter-War, the building had a major addition from 1929-1933 along Pitt Street (not pictured) and again in 1965 along Martin Place, which can be seen at the back of the photo.

That was the end of my Sydney city adventures. I’m happy with what I saw on my two trips into the city, even if some of it was shrouded. 

I’m never sure if Sydney actually is a more complicated city than Melbourne, but it seemed to be a lot harder to find buildings in the Sydney books than it had been in Melbourne. It might be that I’m geographically challenged. It’s been more than once I’ve headed off in the opposite direction to where I’m supposed to be going in Sydney, and I would have ended up on the tram back to Circular Quay if I hadn’t looked at the signs on the platform as the tram was arriving.

Sydney racetracks run backwards so maybe everything else there does too!

I suspect it’s more likely to be me though.

Surry Hills art from a passing tram

university of nsw part 2: a bit of brutalism

One of the references I took with me on my recent trip to Sydney was the Brutalist Sydney map. It covers a massive area of Sydney from Penrith to Pennant Hills and Circular Quay to Sutherland. This is way more ground than I was intending to cover in the week I was there, when my main plan was to explore Randwick.

The map was developed by Glenn Harper of @brutalist_project_sydney, who writes

At a point where many Brutalist buildings within Sydney are either being ‘disfigured’ or demolished, this map reveals an incredible and inspiring range of late modern projects that contribute to a functioning and modern-day city. Many of these buildings while being listed as significant on various heritage lists, have limited owner support due in part to a shift in socio-political thinking especially away from government led design and government owned projects. For many of these buildings, their current failing is they once symbolised government investment and a desire for civic inclusiveness. Given this current political climate and the pressure for ongoing development, the Brutalist buildings of Sydney indeed require our attention as we will never be able to match this level of craftsmanship again.

Glenn Harper, Brutalist Sydney

Not being familiar with Sydney architecture, I don’t know how many of these buildings might be in this situation. There is one that I’m very aware of, which I’ll talk about in a later post, but I’m sure there are many many others. I don’t even know if all the buildings on the map even still exist, given it was published in 2017. I’m sure many of them will have been “modernised”.

Glenn describes how, as these buildings were design and constructed, many of them through the NSW Government Architect and architects of the NSW Public Works Department, there was a need for “access to high quality concrete, artistry which combined a variety of concrete or brick textures, and appropriate engineering advice and structural detailing to convey ‘memorable form’.”

As I was sitting in my hotel room in Randwick staying out of the heat, and wondering what buildings to visit next, I noticed there were two University of NSW buildings listed that had somehow escaped my attention on my previous visits.

Decision made!

Sir John Clancy Auditorium (1971)

The first was one I must have walked past and not noticed. This is Sir John Clancy Auditorium, designed by Fowell Mansfield Jarvis and Macluran, with M S Holmood as project architect. It was built in 1971.

Its original sculptural form was “overshadowed by later developments” around it, and it was refurbished in 2019, with new canopies added, including this new, very visible glass entrance. So it looks significantly different to its original design (which you can see at the UNSW website – look for the top picture, Kensington Campus 1970s on the time line).

They also seem to have this thing at UNSW for painting concrete.

Substantial alterations plus paint equals I totally missed this on my earlier visits.

The second UNSW building to feature on the map is Goldstein Hall. It was designed by the NSW Government Architect (at the time, Dr Edward Herbert Farmer), with Peter Hall as project architect and built 1962-1964.

Goldstein Hall (1962-1964)

This building (some sources say the dining room) won the Australian Institute of Architects (NSW Chapter) Sulman Medal in 1966.

Goldstein Hall

Note the paint. I say no more.

Goldstein Hall

Goldstein Hall is a residential college and you can see some early photos of it from the 1960s here. It sounds like the building was updated in 2012-13 and the dining room has also been upgraded.

Goldstein Hall

The redesign project by TKD Architects also “saw the revitalisation of the original 1964 Bert Flugelman sculpture courtyard, a vibrant outdoor space within the expanded residential college”.

Bert Flugelman sculpture courtyard, Goldstein Hall

Completely random fun fact, Bert Flugelman also created the Spheres (aka Mall’s Balls) sculpture in Rundle Mall in Adelaide and the Cones in the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery in Canberra. This UNSW sculpture from 1964 was one of his early pieces.

university of nsw part 1

University of NSW was officially founded in 1949, but can trace its origins back to the Sydney Mechanics Institute in 1843 and the Sydney Technical College. It was originally known as NSW University of Technology.

Its main campus is in Kensington, where it takes up the entire block between Anzac Parade and the Prince of Wales Hospital in Randwick.

UNSW archives tell me that when the university was founded, classes were still being held at the Sydney Technical College buildings in Ultimo. The administration moved to the Kensington site in 1952 and some teaching commenced there in 1953, but it continued at Ultimo until the late 1960s.

From what I’ve read, it sounds like a lot of the early buildings have now been replaced, and the campus has been expanded considerably. But there was still a lot of the mid-20th Century architecture that I’m fond of to explore.

Here’s some random buildings that caught my eye.

New College, Anzac Parade

University Terraces

Warrane College, Anzac Parade

Morven Brown Building (opened 1966)

UNSW Global, Anzac Parade

School of Electrical Engineering & Telecommunications

UNSW Library

UNSW Library

Brick detail near Central Lecture Block

Morven Brown Car Park

Basser Steps

The Fig Tree Theatre (below) is one of the oldest buildings on the campus. It’s located on the lower part of the campus, which was originally the Kensington Racecourse. The site housed a military camp during the Boer War and World Wars I and II and later, a migrant hostel.

The theatre was built in 1948 as a recreation hall for the migrant hostel. NIDA used it as a theatre between 1963 and 1987, and it’s now a performance space for the university and the wider community.

Fig Tree Theatre (1948)

wandering at utas

The University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay campus has been the main base of the university since 1961, following moves that started in the 1940s to provide a larger campus for the rapidly growing university.

It now houses a wonderful collection of modernist buildings constructed during this period. It’s a beautiful campus, not far from the city, set between nearby Mt Nelson and the River Derwent, with views to kunanyi/Mt Wellington.

This site gives some of the history of the early buildings on the campus, and you can see some more early photos of some of the buildings I love photographing, including Chemistry, Humanities, and the Morris Miller Library here.

This post by Tasmanian Modernism photographer Thomas Ryan provides some background on the glass curtain walls that feature on many of the university buildings, as well as some more contemporary photos of these structures.

While the university sought to consolidate its presence in Sandy Bay in 1960s, it has now announced its intention to vacate this campus and move into the city, where some of its specialist faculties such as the medical school (near the hospital for obvious reasons) are already located.

This hasn’t been a popular decision, and there’s a strong community of opposition to the university’s move into the CBD and its plan to abandon the campus and turn it into housing, details of which I don’t have space to go into here.

I love the campus and I find an almost inexhaustible supply of photo opportunities every time I visit.

On my most recent trip, I took my 50mm lens and wandered round the campus looking for little details I don’t always see. What struck me as I walked was the overwhelming tranquility of this place, the green spaces, the trees and the birds. These are things that, working in a city, I don’t have easy access to. While there are green spaces in town, the constant traffic noise eats into the serenity they try to provide. It’s not the same thing at all, and being here in this space made me think of how much I would love to have an office in an environment like this. I think it would benefit my mental health as well as my capacity to think deeply and creatively.

But my mission was not to contemplate the potential loss of this beautiful environment, much as I disagree with the plan. I was here to walk and explore. To look at buildings from different angles and find things I’d not seen before.

Here’s some of what I saw.

I also learned that the sculpture in the fish pond was by Stephen Walker.

I can forgive myself for not knowing this when I was actually attending the university because I didn’t know who he was or how much he had contributed to public art in Tasmania. But I’m not sure what my excuse is now . . .

50 in 50: week 4

I’m past the half-way point of my 50mm challenge and I have no real wish to go back to any of my other lenses. I’m struggling a bit with taking a photo every single day, but I’m loving the days when I have the time to go out and spend some time wandering round with the lens.

Day 22: Cull the corrupt

Day 23: Morning yellow

Day 24: Diagonal light

Day 25: Mount Stuart Hall

Day 26: Tiny house

Day 27: A duet of daisies

Day 28: Morning solitude