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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
I had fun exploring the different angles and moods of the fountain.
Depending on where I was standing, it looked like two different days.
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.
And, a random piece of trivia. The UK’s Roundabout Appreciation Society called the railway roundabout the World’s Best Roundabout in 2015.
straightlinesgirl images 