Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees Union Building, Brutalist office building in Carlton, Australia.
The Plumbers and Gasfitters Employees Union Building is a three-level concrete structure in Carlton with deeply recessed windows and angular geometric forms. Its raw exposed surfaces and solid masses show hallmark brutalist design without any ornamentation.
The building was completed in 1971 by architect Graeme Gunn and replaced an earlier union headquarters that had become too small for the growing membership. Its bold design influenced architectural conversations across Australia at the time.
The building is listed at State level by the Australian National Trust as a Trade Union Office, and is regarded as one of Victoria's finest Brutalist works, a seminal essay in the development of a Brutalist vernacular alongside the Harold Holt Memorial Swimming Pool of 1969.
The building stands next door to Trades Hall at the corner of Victoria and Lygon Streets in Carlton. Upper floors are reached by stairs, and the lift-well is unfinished, so the interior is not set up for public visits; the concrete forms and smoked glazing are best seen from the street.
The building was designed so that an extra floor could be added later, and a lift-well was built in advance for that extension. Until then, the upper floors are reached by stairs, and the rough-sawn timber stairwell breaks up the concrete and glass.
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