Sitting on a prime beachfront headland and centre of a current demolition debate sits an Australian Mid-century beauty the locals like to call ‘The Spaceship House’. In the red corner sits the owners and their agents Precorp Design, who see this home as a 45 year-old dilapidated shell, just begging to be gone from this world. In the blue corner sits The National Trust, MA and, surprisingly, the editors of the Illawarra Mercury who feel this house deserves more than a date at the wrecker’s ball. The middle ground is occupied by the Shellharbour City Council who are yet to decide the fate of this building and, of course, the usual peanut gallery who like to comment on local paper stories.
This house is one from a bundle of controversial project home options released by Lend Lease in the 1960s and reputedly built in 1964. It was constructed with a raised a concrete slab in a design called ‘Safari’ (oh take me back!) by their chief Architect Nino Sydney, yet another of the European diasporas who played such a crucial role in the advent of Modernist Australian Architecture.
According the National Trust it’s status as one of the few homes left from these times combined with it’s unusual slab engineering marks it for heritage significance.
“Nino considers this his best design. Few examples of such high calibre remain in NSW or display a sophisticated application of style elements and commercial building technologies to a residential house, using an elevated concrete slab atop tapered columns. This was unusual in 1964 and remains so today. It is the only example in Shellharbour, the only known example in a seaside setting, and one of 4 known to be extant (others being in Sydney’s north side suburbs). The Le Corbusier design influences, intent and philosophy remains high readable and intact.”
Submission to the SHELLHARBOUR CITY COUNCIL Ordinary Council Meeting – Tuesday 02 February 2010
But getting down to it, who really wants to see a fondly regarded local landmark (and a outstandingly groovy Mid-Century one at that) make way for yet another McMansion by the sea?
Only time and maybe your input, dear readers, will decide…
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