8 karma chameleons

Setting aside the issue of operational energy used throughout a building’s life cycle, the adaptive reuse of buildings, at least in the construction phase, is creative eco-design. Warren McLaren looks at examples of what is possible when it comes to relifing existing buildings.

Construction on Waratah Flour Mills began in 1923. Within 25 years the mill was one of NSW’s largest and most modern flouring milling operations with its six distinctive silos towering above Sydney’s inner city suburb of Dulwich Hill.

Eventually, however, the mill was no longer in operation and it fell to CPG Developments and architects Nettleton Tribe to convert the disused silos into 18 apartments over eightstoreys, with the nearby warehouse also renovated, yielding a total of 84 residences. Windows were cut into the concrete silo walls, with new curved balconies added that look as if they were simply swung out from walls.

Winner of a 2003 award for adaptive re-use in development, Waratah Mills is now slated to be one of nine stops on an extended light rail service from Sydney’s CBD, as well as part of a green corridor of regenerated bushland and cycleways. Other silo adaptations can be found in Newtown, Richmond, Hobart and Bunbury.

Often, small country churches are resurrected as rural residences. Also common is for churches to find new life as restaurants, as is the case in Brisbane, Glebe, North Mackay, Tintenbar and North Adelaide, and no doubt many other areas. It is more unusual for former places of worship to be turned into suites of luxury apartments. But that is the case with Cairns Memorial Presbyterian Church in East Melbourne. Construction of the buttressed and pinnacled sandstone church commenced in 1883, and almost 100 years later it was added to the Register of the National Estate by the Australian Heritage Commission in 1980, with the interior of the church later burning to the ground. The sandstone shell was found to be sound and in the mid-90s the stone outer wall provided the structural olde world façade for a series of luxury apartments that were constructed within and sheathed in modern plate glass.

Section 8 is the loophole that Klinger from the TV series M*A*S*H was always trying to exploit for a discharge due to insanity. It’s also the name of bar in Melbourne that exhibits its own form of wacky behaviour by transforming two shipping containers into a trendy urban watering hole. Plonked in what was a vacant block used for car parking, Section 8 comprises one container as the bar and another as the toilet and storeroom. Large holes cut into the sides of the container form the actual bar, with the hatch openings doing double service as awnings. Initial set up was managed for around $60,000. The Australian Interior Design Award winning firm of DireTribe Studio (since disbanded) assisted with the industrial look of the décor, which includes seating fashioned from shipping pallets. The raw look of the building and associated furniture suits the location in Tattersalls Lane in the heart of the city.

Warehouses and factories are ideal spaces for innovative reuse. Their expansive open plan interiors once housed large machinery or vast storage. These vaulted spaces now provide a blank canvas on which designers and architects can paint a fresh history. We could’ve selected any number of examples, for this section but were drawn to the renovation of the Crago Flour Mill in the inner city Sydney suburb of Newtown for its careful retention of the industrial artefacts from the building’s previous life, along with its original timber floors, structural steel, masonry walls and windows. In operation for 90 years as a wheat milling factory from its erection in 1896, the building then spent 20 years as an artist workshop before being fashioned by architects Allen Jack & Cottier and construction firm Built P/L into 47 commercial studio offices. The Crago Flourmill won a 2008 MBA Excellence in Construction Award for adaptive re-use of an historic building.

Oftentimes building adaptations are so successful that we can easily imagine their current use has always been thus and we give a building’s earlier history little thought. Sydney’s iconic Powerhouse Museum is one such example. Although opened back in 1988, the museum – Australia’s largest and most popular, with a collection of over 385,000 objects – occupies a building with an even older heritage. Originally built almost 100 years prior, the Ultimo power station generated steam power to run Sydney's new electric tram system at the turn of the previous century. When trams ceased running in 1961, the building was decommissioned a few years later and left vacant until given a makeover by Lionel Glendenning, then principal architect (public buildings) for the NSW Department of Public Works. Glendenning’s adaption utilised the old power station’s large spaces like the boiler and engine halls to house large exhibits, such as a Catalina flying boat, a locomotive and Boulton and Watt steam engine.

The Crossing Land Education Centre is perched on the bush banks of the Bermagui River, in the far south coast of NSW. This outdoor education facility for young people, has a strong focus on sustainability. Its first structure was a remodelled Bedford bus that became the Director’s bedroom and office. A kitchen was built around the bus, which sits as a rather striking feature wall, at one end of the dining area. Later a derelict 1930's red rattler train carriage rescued from a paddock in Gippsland, Victoria for $500, loaded on a semi-trailer using a log lifter on one side and tow truck on the other. Then trucked up and carefully poised upon massive redgum trunk posts. Many hours of volunteer labour followed, including engagement by local Lions and Probus clubs, until the train finally metamorphosed into bunkhouse accommodation for 24 students. They learn sustainable design by literally living in it.

Riddel Architecture has recently received a lot of coverage for its extensive renovation of a house in Brisbane’s Hill End where 80 per cent of the old home was reused in the new. But it is its much earlier adaptation of a water reservoir tank in the suburb of Balmoral that interests us here. The water tower was built during the World War Two years as a gravity fed town water supply.

With its massive circular structure (12m high and 22m internal diameter), the structure was deemed too expensive to demolish, especially as the concrete in its base approaches 1m in thickness. So Riddel Architecture designed window and balcony openings to be cut in the upper most section of the tower. Rooms were suspended within the structure, offering not only scenic exterior views but a covered internal courtyard set off by the original central support column. Exposed concrete and retained industrial pipes provide an old/new atmosphere.

Much of the well-known Pentridge Prison is considered “historically, socially, aesthetically, architecturally and technically important”. This is the prison where Ned Kelly is buried and where Australia’s last hanging occurred in 1967. Having operated for just shy of 150 years before being decommissioned in 1997, Pentridge’s fortress-like bluestone walls give it a rather foreboding appearance, possibly one reason why its adaptation to a new urban hub for the suburb of Coburg has not been entirely straightforward. Moreland City Council have approved residential dwellings, offices, shops and a supermarket for the proposed Pentridge Piazza, with more of the same envisaged for the nearby Pentridge Village redevelopment.

However, developers have experienced financial hurdles, including millions lost in delays as Heritage Victoria exhumed prisoners’ remains. If all eventually goes to plan, much of the heritage buildings will be retained, along with around 90 per cent of those notorious blue-stone walls.