 | OBITUARY VALE RONALD LYON 1920–2006
| Neil Clerehan remembers Ronald G. Lyon AM, Dip. Arch., LFRAIA – Tiger to his friends. |
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Ronald Grant Lyon represented many of
the standards and attitudes of the prewar
era, although he had not graduated when
the profession closed down in 1941. In 1965
he was the last President of the RVIA and,
the following year, the first President of the
RAIA Victorian Chapter. He was also part of
the second generation of a dynasty that, in a
notoriously volatile profession, has every
chance of surviving until late this century.
Ronald Lyon was born in Creswick but his
family soon moved to Geelong. His father, a
respected teacher of chemistry in our
once-vaunted technical education system,
carried the inevitable sobriquet for a Lyon
and his younger son was also known as
Tiger. Ronald and his elder brother Eric were
educated at the Geelong Junior Technical
School (taught by their father), Geelong High
School and the Gordon Institute.
The final years of the Gordon course
merged with the Architectural Atelier, a
night school at the University of Melbourne.
In the big city, reached daily by the Geelong
Flyer, the younger Lyon worked in the
offices of two great Modernists: Edward
Billson and Frederick Romberg. He
continued his studies two nights a week,
and by day he worked on Billson’s
award-winning buildings for the Sanitarium
Food Company and later Romberg’s Queens
Road apartment block, Newburn. Later he
lived in that iconic building.
In 1941, before completing his course, he
enlisted in the AIF. As a lieutenant in the
Corps of Engineers he saw action in New
Guinea. Returning from the war he obtained
registration and became a corporate member
of the RVIA. In 1949, making the traditional
journey to London, he worked for Maxwell
Fry and Jane Drew. On his return in 1952
Lyon joined the office of Leslie M. Perrott &
Associates in Lonsdale Street.
Leslie M. Perrott Senior, from a trade
background, had become a dominant
architect in the inter-war period. A strict
teetotaller, he was, nevertheless, the leading
designer of Melbourne’s grand hotels. In
1929 his Alexander Hotel (now the Park
Plaza) boasted 200 bedrooms and 200
bathrooms. In 1934 he got Chevron, a
private hotel (unlicensed), built in sixteen
weeks for Melbourne’s centenary
celebrations. His moderne Hotel Australia
(1939) soon became the social epicentre of
Melbourne. Perrott Senior’s son, the
dynamic Leslie Junior (1926–2001), after
graduating in 1951, set about expanding the
office to encompass the postwar boom.
In 1954, Marietta Perrott married the
bright young man in her father and brother’s
office. She was a noted architectural
renderer, illustrating the family firm’s many
projects of the forties and fifties. The Lyons
had four sons, all of whom became
architects. Lyon also had a son from an
earlier marriage who became an interior
designer, based in Sydney.
In 1971 the firm became Perrott, Lyon,
Timlock and Kesa and grew over the years
to become one of the largest in the nation.
A great part of their practice involved
documenting and bringing to completion
the projects of other architects. One of their
earliest triumphs was the spectacular
Welton-Beckett-designed Southern Cross
Hotel, which opened in 1963. When it was
demolished in 2002, Lyon said that it had
occupied him entirely for three years.
At one stage in the seventies, the Perrott
office was working on no fewer than four
major Collins Street office towers that had
been “designed” by a talented draughtsman
in the office of Sydney’s Lend Lease
Corporation. One of them was the
controversial Nauru House, which achieved
a coveted Collins Street address by buying
an adjacent building and demolishing it.
For the same client, the firm designed
the Flinders Gate development. Never
popular, it was renamed Gas & Fuel Towers
by its developer, thus cleverly linking the
hapless tenant to those unpopular brown
brick buildings, now gone. During the
controversy over that project, Lyon, as RVIA
President, challenged the propriety of
Institute members criticizing the work of a
fellow member. This was unacceptable to
younger members of Council. Thus another
convention from a gentler age ended.
The Perrott office designed the Museum
underground station (now Melbourne
Central) and Telstra Tower, generally
regarded as the best commercial building to
come out of the construction boom of the
eighties. The firm also became involved in
the design of Colleges of Advanced
Education, notably the Janefield campus of
the Preston Institute of Technology (now
RMIT) and the Caulfield Institute of
Technology (now Monash).
In 1984 Ronald Lyon was awarded AM for
services to the community and his
profession. His wife died in 2003, ending a
marriage that had generated admiration and
respect in the profession they both served.
Ronald Lyon was a physically impressive
man, with military bearing and the manner
of a natural chairman. His neat beard would
have added to his authority had any
augmentation been necessary… or possible.
It was said on his retirement that had all
architects attained his standards of contract
administration, quality, cost and time
controls, there might have been less need for
quantity surveyors and no need for project
managers. He could run unruly site and
board meetings with equal skill and deal
with the demands of recalcitrant CEOs and
shop stewards. He took his various roles
seriously, but not himself. Although
physically incapacitated for the last five
years of his life he remained intellectually
fit, always ready to hear gossip from the
industry and to offer wise counsel.
Ten years ago the ineffable Tiger, at the
height of the criticism of his Flinders Gate
Towers, laughingly claimed that they had
also received an award. They had indeed.
The Building Owners and Managers
Association had premiated the twin
buildings for having the highest ratio of
lettable space.
Throughout four decades of successful
practice, Lyon was deeply involved in
professional, industrial and welfare
activities. He lived to see the establishment
of a third Lyon/Perrott generation. Ten years
ago two, then three, of his sons set up an
office that soon earned recognition for
professional excellence. Their work is
mainly in the field of educational and
commercial buildings. They were joint
designers (with Daryl Jackson) of the County
Court building and repeated its spectacular
canopy in the BHP headquarters at the other
end of Lonsdale Street. They received the
Victorian Architectural Medal in 2005 and
have won nineteen RAIA awards in their
first decade of practice.
Ronald Lyon is survived by his brother,
five sons and ten grandchildren. His eldest
granddaughter is studying architecture at
Melbourne University.
NEIL CLEREHAN.
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