Reviving old buildings reaps benefits

Peddle Thorp has called on developers to stop knocking down buildings and look instead to reviving existing structures and points to highly successful projects by the practice in both Melbourne and Launceston as a path to the future.

Design director Peter Brook says Australia was suffering because there was a "tear it down mentality".

"Australia has some superb old buildings that with a little imagination and creative thought can be revived," he says.

"People genuinely like old buildings as they have character, history and resonance. We should be working harder to keep them."

The $6.8 million refurbishment of the museum building at Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Royal Park in Launceston is an example of bringing a building back to life.

The original floors and dado walls, as well as timber trusses dating back to the 1890s, are now gradually being revealed.Dormer windows are also being refitted in the attic that faces out to Wellington Street (a dormer is a structural element of a building that protrudes from the plane of a sloping roof surface).

Brook says Peddle Thorp had also played a key role in reviving a Melbourne icon — the Chevron Hotel — built in 1934, one of the few pre-war buildings now remaining on St Kilda Road.

"During its height, the Chevron Hotel was prestigious and many international figures, such as singer Frank Sinatra, stayed there while touring. It was even the home to the Logie Awards in 1962," Brook says.

Another example is Denton Mills, originally designed and built in the late 1880s, which housed Australia's first steam-powered hat factory. The original building has already been listed by Heritage Victoria and the National Trust and is on the Register of the National Estate.

The building's architect, William Pitt, also designed some of Melbourne's most notable buildings of the era, including the Princess Theatre and the Olderfleet Building in Collins Street.

Brook says the building was one of the key buildings from the 'Marvellous Melbourne' period of the 1880s.

"Many of the key features will be preserved in the development such as the façade that stretches for 95m along Nicholson Street, the cast iron columns within the building, the bluestone stairways and the wooden roof trusses — all reflections of Marvellous Melbourne."

The old chimney, which was connected to the steam boilers of the 1880s, will also remain as a landmark.

Brook says the refurbishment solution could also mean lower costs for the community than would be incurred if the structures were simply knocked down and built again.