Council House
Opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 25th March 1962, Council House is home to the offices of the Perth City Council. Situated on Perth's main business street - St Georges Terrace - it was one of the first of Perth skyscrapers to have walls of glass on all sides.
With the news that Perth would be hosting the 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, Perth City Council in 1959 launched an international competition to design its new building. The brief in the competition was to design a "creative building that marked where Perth was at the time" and have the building ready in time for the opening of the Commonwealth Games. 61 designs were submitted and the winning design was by Jeffrey Howlett and Don Bailey of Melbourne, who subsequently moved to Perth to set up practice for the design and construction of the building.
Part of Howlett and Bailey's plans for the complex included the extension of Terrace Road westwards across the sites of the Old Court House and the Supreme Court, but this was never done. Also part of their plan was the construction of an elliptical auditorium called the "Public Suite" behind Council House; the plan to build this was dropped after the completion of Council House, with the design reformulated by Howlett and Bailey and the building eventually built on the opposite side of Government House as the Perth Concert Hall.
The buildings distinctive external T-forms were included to achieve a degree of thermal control without compromising the desired aesthetic of the building's transparent form. Nevertheless, soon after its opening, blinds had to be fitted at great expense to all windows.
In the late 1960s the building was known as Tom's House, not only because of the T-shaped forms on its facades, but also because the Lord Mayor of Perth at the time was local millionaire grocer, Tom Wardle. In 2002, the interior was gutted and remodelled to remove asbestos which had been used to insulate the building's steel frame.
Council House is a copybook example of the international architectural style which flourished in the mid 20th century. The end of World War II brought a clean sweep in many aspects of life, not the least in architecture. Contemporary architectural styles were treated as part and parcel of the new beginning. Just as New York's Empire State Building was looked upon as the post-World War architectural icon for the world to follow, the now destroyed United Nations twin towers, two rectangular prisms with walls of glass, became the look to follow after World War II.
Built around a steel and reinforced concrete frame onto which floors and walls were attached, the International style was found to be highly functional, allowing the flexibility of open planning, as well as being lightweight and inexpensive compared to older building styles.
A "curtain wall" effect, comprised of a horizontal strip of windows in between thinner horizontal strips of panelling, was quite common and can still be seen today in office towers, low rise office blocks and schools across the country.
The use of "curtain wall" windows and venetian blinds were a fundamentally important component of the original design in 1960 in order to reduce the sun loading on the essentially glass facades on all sides. In addition, the blinds were also employed for inexpensive night illumination of the building by means of fluorescent lighting at the floor level window sills lighting the building all around. The projecting hoods and fins were designed as a 'brise soleil', to minimise heat gain without obstructing the "dress circle" panoramic views over the city and river.
The uninterrupted floor to ceiling double glazing provides the building occupants with spectacular views of the city and the river, while the building has a unique appearance of transparency, particularly at night, prompting one journalist to write that it has the effect of a glittering diamond in the city when night falls.
Located at floor level on each storey and installed like stage lights, concealed illumination lit up the drawn venetian blinds giving a stark and dramatic effect on the sun hoods and fins, which appeared to stand end-on-end up the four walls of the building. There were a number of details incorporated in the design of Council House that attracted particular attention at the time of construction. The area on which Council House, Perth stands is floored with local grey Mundaring granite and the building was designed so that natural and artificial lighting has maximum visual effect, both internally and externally.
Some parties, such as the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, consider the building to be an important example of modernist architecture in the city, whilst others consider it ugly. These conflicting views led to animosity in the 1990s, when the State Government refused to heritage list the property, and instead recommended its demolition. Despite this, the City of Perth opted to renovate the tower and keep it as its headquarters. Following this, the building was admitted to the State's Heritage Register.
