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Alliance Insurance Co. Building, 410 Collins Street, Melbourne

Butler, Graeme1985

Record details

Title:

Creator:

Butler, Graeme (Name details)

Date of work:

1985

Reference number:

BIF-CITY 102128

Level of description:

Item from Collection: Heritage Collection (HC)

Type of materials:

Graphic materialsTextual material

Part of:

Series: Central City (BIF-CITY)

Access restrictions:

UnrestrictedOpen access.

Use restrictions:

UnrestrictedPlease contact City of Melbourne Libraries about obtaining permission to reproduce images.

General notes:

Period: Post-Second WarConstruction date: 1954-1956 (building has been altered since 1985, 1987?).ASSOCIATED RESEARCH ADDED BY GRAEME BUTLER:.GRAEME BUTLER 1985 MELBOURNE CENTRAL ACTIVITIES DISTRICT CONSERVATION STUDYStatement of SignificanceHistoryOn behalf of the Alliance Assurance Company, architects A.C. Leith, Bartlett and Partners applied for Keith Hooker to build this Belgium blue glass facade in mid 1954. It was at the recommencement of post-war city building. As an announcement of its arrival, the building was illustrated beside the products of pre-war(s) times, the old State Insurance Office and the Atlas Insurance Building. Its comparative transparency and lightness was evident in the drawing if not reality, once built. Facade transparency was to become de rigour once Gilbert Court (1954-5) was complete but the sealed facade and full air-conditioning of Alliance Assurance were new for office buildings. `Cross-Section’ thought it `...eminently washable', admiring its all double- glazed face and the now essential equipment of roof tracks for window cleaning hoists. Absence of heavy opening sashes potentially made framing of glass facades more subtle but the corollary of air-conditioning was a false ceiling space which was concealed behind opaque spandrel glass. The all-glass wall was no longer all-transparent.Alliance Assurance had offices on this site since early this century and so had their architects, then G.B. Leith and his typist associate A.G. Leith.DescriptionIn contrast to Gilbert Court, Alliance Assurance was not a `glass box', neither was it fully transparent. However with no opening sashes and no evaporative coolers suspended from the facade, it provided a slicker solution which by its sophistication seems to have bypassed the post-war enthusiasm for expressed visible structure and 100 per cent glass. Tile cladding to the west wall both faced and emulated the State Insurance Building opposite; its cream colour countered the spandrel blue and conjured up a Modern substitute for the faience of the 1930s. Glass bricks in the same wall inspired the same feeling of déjà vu.External IntegrityGenerally externally original.StreetscapePart of a Modern and Moderne commercial group.SignificancePerhaps the first sealed, all-glass curtain wall for a Victorian office building and in near original condition also part of streetscape.

Names:

City of Melbourne

Topics:

Central Activities District Conservation Study 1985Conservation studiesPostwar periodInsuranceOffices1950-1959Twentieth Century Architecture Register (RAIA)

Places:

Melbourne (Vic.)

Form/Genre:

Building Identification Forms (BIFs)

Record types:

Research and reports

Record number:

1196886