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The refurbished
anteroom at Newman
College carefully
organizes a collection of
Griffin furniture, along
with 1950s bookcases.
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Looking into the anteroom
from the oratory, on the upper
floor of H Wing. A gateway is
formed by two 1950s
bookcases. The design of the
new acoustic screens attached
to the rear of the bookcases
draws on an office wall the
Griffins designed for Nissen
Leonard-Kanevsky in 1922,
but at an amplified scale.
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The open-plan main
administration area, on the
ground floor of H Wing.
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A new study-bedroom
interior in the Kenny Wing.
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The Dean’s room, located in
the H Wing ground floor,
showing the Griffins’ original
furniture.
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The law library.
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Paul Morgan Architects’ recent refurbishment of part of Newman College respects the heritage fabric while also generating a range of productive dialogues between old and new. Review by Tracey Avery.
Heritage architecture is not for the faint-hearted. This
is doubly so when the architect is confronted with the
interiors and furniture of one of Australia’s most iconic
buildings of the twentieth century: Newman College,
the women’s residential college at the University of
Melbourne, designed by Walter Burley Griffin and
Marion Mahony Griffin between 1915 and 1918.
Bound by the principles of the Burra Charter, the
philosophy for any new work is a central concern for
heritage projects. The charter argues that new work
should be clearly distinguished from the old. The more
common approach to achieving this visible difference
is to introduce contemporary elements devoid of detail
that would refer to the existing styles of decoration.
An alternative position is to make that difference more
subtle by referencing the existing design. The latter
can be achieved purely through colours or materials
or, more daringly, by adapting design details.
A combination of these approaches has been used in
different parts of Newman College in recent
conservation work by Paul Morgan Architects.
Each of the spaces tackled by Morgan raises different
dilemmas for conservation philosophy. The main
administration area is now open-plan. Later partitions
were removed from this area, successfully revealing the
window arches, which give a rhythm to the entire
space. A modern white paint has been applied, and the
greater light reflected from the relatively small original
windows reduces the reliance on artificial light. The
main meeting room for the college has been created in a
partially glazed space carved out of the former reception
area. This area is of intimate dining proportions.
Surrounding glass and white walls plus original table,
dining chairs, framed prints and drawings contribute
to a modern Arts and Crafts appearance.
The college’s oratory has had its function revived and
extended to become a multipurpose communal space.
Entered from the rear of the room, the initial space
functions as an inner hall or anteroom, which is
enclosed by a bank of two bookcases that form a
gateway screen to the lecture space. The bookcases,
which date from the 1950s, have had their leaded lights
conserved. Attached to the rear of the bookcases is a
newly designed acoustic screen, patterned with
intersecting, deeply moulded chamfers. Griffin’s
manipulation of these elements was more finely
dispersed in the office wall for Nissen Leonard-
Kanevsky at Leonard House, Melbourne (1922).
Nevertheless, the proportions of the chamfers on the
screen are bold enough for this cavernous space.
Consequently, the detailing of the servery is less
successful – a plain surface would have been an option
given the form of the surrounding furniture.
Again, the anteroom contains a selection of the
Griffins’ original furniture for the college, which has
been reassembled from previously stored pieces to
create what Morgan refers to as a mise en scène.
Although disparate items of furniture have been
gathered to fill this space, the scale and placement of
the pieces, including two commodious sofas, avoids
any hint of the stage-set quality sometimes found in
museums and historic houses. They are clearly “in use”.
The final block to be built at Newman College was
not designed by the Griffins, but allowances had been
made for its placement. This came in the late 1950s
with the Kenny Wing for more student accommodation,
which echoed the original style. Its interior consists of
exposed brick walls and plainly moulded wooden
doors and architraves, which is more utilitarian in feel
but characteristic of the time and lacking the
“distraction” of decoration. The brief to Paul Morgan
Architects for this block was to create study-bedrooms
with new fitted furniture and paint schemes.
Although this building is itself a reinterpretation of
the Griffins’ original design language, some historical
underpinning was again sought for the style of new
work. Under the direction of Sophie Dyring, inspiration
for historical reference was taken from the work of
prominent women designers of the early twentieth
century, including Eileen Gray. However, the built-in
cabinetwork has a pattern of cupboard doors in white
with some framework in black, more akin to a De Stijl
construction. Functionally, the whole unit contains
bookshelves and a washbasin, plus cupboards and
drawers. The arrangement and colour scheme resembles
the myriad storage compartments in Gerrit Rietveld’s
1924 house for Truus Schröder-Schräder in Utrecht.
Though the style has been employed successfully, it
does raise the question of whether such a choice needs
to be justified because it is part of a heritage project.
Viewed through the lens of Modernism, the more
historicist approach has been avoided in recent times,
possibly for fear of comparisons with the
nineteenth-century architectural “restorers”, who
were much derided for their mixing of old and new
work by critics such as William Morris and the Society
for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). Yet
Arts and Crafts architects were not averse to gaining
design inspiration from conservation projects. For
example, Scottish architect Sir Robert Lorimer
disliked over-restoration, but freely designed new
architectural elements and furniture based on earlier
models, often taken from collections in South
Kensington and the Rijksmuseum.
Paul Morgan Architects is to be congratulated for
confronting and testing a range of solutions to
conservation and the introduction of new elements.
Creating a dialogue between the old and new work
reduces the harshness of the “stripped modern” approach. A degree of design homage here generally
respects the original and gives the interiors of the
college a greater feeling of gradual evolution, one in
keeping with the significance of the original design and
the buildings’ continued occupation.
TRACEY AVERY IS A CURATOR AND PHD CANDIDATE IN
ARCHITECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE.
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