10 candles for “Office Wrap” + Lacoste + Stevenson

Completed in 2000, NSW RAIA Chapter Commercial Architecture Award

I remember visiting Pessac, a suburb of Bordeaux in France where le Corbusier built an entire street, “La Cite Fruges”, in the 1924. Overtime, this row of houses have been altered dramatically. People personalized their house by adding vernacular architectural elements like pitch roof, pediments, capitals. From pure modernist houses they became a mixture of regional dwellings with American TV series influences! In the late 70′s, they were hardly recognizable and were cited as the perfect example of the failure of modernism. They disgust purists but delight post-modernists. I think time often adds layers, especially when it is spontaneous architecture mainly designed and built by the inhabitants. The essential qualities remain: scale, interrelation between dwellings, connection between inside and outside…Now a sign of our times is that most of these houses have been refurbished to their original design turning the street into a museum and one of them houses an actual museum!

“Office Wrap” is now 10 years old. The building has been used efficiently with no particular regard for the architecture. Surprisingly there are very little changes. A few signs have appeared here or there but nothing major.

The main change is the landscape. Now, it is hard to see the building from the street as the landscaping has grown so much. The corner of Bunnerong and Military Roads is almost unrecognizable. Glimpses of the longest façade appear between the trees and bushes. The intense red of the building may have faded but it is as sharp as ever, 10 years on …Happy 10th birthday!!