Foyers of Adelaide: In the City of Adelaide in South Australia
They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. Nor a building. But what about what is just inside? Welcome to a quirky city tour where you get to be the voyeur in the foyer.
In a search for some notable vestibules, you would think there are plenty on North Terrace, but in spite of several promising facades an interesting and original foyer is hard to find. Mercifully, opposite Government House, Shell House reveals a 70 year old treasure. In fact, it has a rare heritage listing, as Rainer Jozeps reminded us when he joined in the foyer foraging. The state’s National Trust Director, he noted that everything was original with its very clinical and angular design details evident in the dark wooden banister posts and wrought iron of the stairwell stretching all the way up. An internal mail-chute with brass fitting in the foyer also serves all ten storeys.
“The building’s lift is listed too,” Rainer noted. “It’s still as it was when it was installed in 1932, except we get to press our own buttons.” We took a museum ride up and down to return to the art deco foyer. There are very few that are untouched and the changes have often been done unsympathetically, but Rainer identified three more that are well worth the detour.
It was constructed as a Commonwealth building about a decade ago, and now 55 Currie Street has been bought by a big superannuation fund. On our foyer tour, we found it’s just undergone a makeover. As you come in the entrance, it surprisingly opens up into a huge central atrium - probably the biggest in the Southern hemisphere when it was built. It was also a landmark in energy conservation, with natural light flooding in through the sloping glass roof and cooled air spilling from the multi-level office floors into the central space. Even the tall waterfall that’s a feature on the way in helps to humidify the atmosphere.
No quick-return developer is going to spend space (and therefore money) like this. It has been government or institutional territory in recent times, with some striking examples in the city. The all-the-way-to-the-top multi-faceted middle of the Roma Mitchell Arts Centre on Light Square, the celebrated glass-walled curving foyer of the Convention Centre on the Torrens and the cathedral-like National Wine Centre are all worthy contemporary additions in the last year.
Back at 55 Currie Street, the building now has a mixed government and private sector clientele and so to help visually direct the visitors to the western lift well, architect Rod Roach came up with a winding stone pathway through a specially woven ribbed carpet. He originally envisaged real greenery, but the owner preferred carpet, and its unusual colour and texture has attracted the affectionate nickname “muddy waters” from the 1000 or so staff.
The tall glass “objects” with changing fibre optic lighting strands are whimsical works by the architect along with glass artist Steven Skalitsky. They are scattered through the vast inner quadrangle overseen by banks of kentia palms overhanging small balconies at each end. They are originals, bringing a touch of South East Asian hotel and Nature to a light-filled cavernous space in a major city building. (Banks and corporate entities don’t build such monuments for posterity anymore - they rent!)
Our Postcards search for city foyers with attitude inevitably leads us to the improbably embellished Edmund Wright House on King William Street, which is also notable for its heritage-watershed rescue from the wrecker’s ball by people power. Small is beautiful here. It is a hallway that is no larger than some grand houses - but is certainly sumptuous. On top of his Adelaide Town Hall, GPO and Parliament House, this is the elaborately detailed design of Edmund Wright, and it was saved and named for him thirty years ago.
As sculptor John Dowie said when it was under dire threat, “this is irreplaceable. Even if you could assemble the craftsmen and artists capable of such work, the cost today would be quite prohibitive”. They brought a Scotsman out to make finely-wrought statements in stone work for the Bank of South Australia, and a London sculptor carved the Sicilian marble tablets over the doors to tell its colonial tale of humble beginnings in a tent and on to substance and success.
Within twenty years, however, the great drought and depression of the 1890’s ruined the bank. A couple of mergers later, it was ANZ Bank customers who marvelled at the décor on their way to the banking chamber within. The state government’s eleventh hour purchase saw its transformation into “hatch, match and dispatch” - Births, Deaths and Marriages - and the foyer made a lovely entrance for the brides. Sadly, they’ve moved on too, but you are most welcome to call in for brochures from the History Trust of S.A. office and take in a foyer extraordinaire.
Beneath Adelaide’s tallest building - Santos House - is where we find our final city foyer on this trip, and we enter via the Currie Street facade of the century-old Savings Bank of South Australia headquarters, the florid ceiling above attracts attention. If “architecture is frozen music”, then this is symphonic, but it fades and is over-ridden by the grandeur that was the great foyer of the ill-fated State Bank. As National Trust Director, Rainer Jozeps put it, “this is a big statement. The bank went down the gurgler, but this is a beautiful, permanent legacy”.
He pointed out the pressed metal ceiling panels on high and the ornate cast-iron-grille air vents in the walls from the original bank chamber. There are also several major art commissions that are very symbolic. Greg Duncan’s past, present and future sculpture in wood has old steam-driven industrial cogs, a present use of fossil fuels and a future that harnesses the sungod’s powers.
Studio weaver Margie Patrick has two large works in the foyer. One is vibrant with the ochres of the earth and reds of the state floral emblem, Sturt’s desert pea, while the other is an epic piece called “Flinders Songlines”. The ancient past of the ancient rocks and satellite imaging meet in the timeless weaver’s craft. In another tall section of the voluminous space, Silvio Apponyi’s work in Queensland maple goes back to the Old Gum Tree and moves forward in its bas-relief imagery.
The building tower is now owned by a Malaysian family, while major lessee Santos has the naming rights. Its foyer remains a precious piece of beautiful internal public space in the city. With thanks to Rainer Jozeps, now it is over to you to enjoy some of our special city foyers.
National Trust of South Australia
PO Box 8147
Station Arcade
Adelaide, SA, 5000Ph: (08) 8212 1133
Fax: (08) 8212 1141
Email: admin@nationaltrustsa.org.au
Web: www.sa.nationaltrust.org.au
