Momo to Pomo Modern Melbourne

MOMO TO POMO Assignment One: Modern Architecture in Melbourne 98 Nicholson Street - ‘Cairo Flats’

Michael John Stephenson 329784

MOMO TO POMO Assignment One: Modernist Melbourne 98 Nicholoson Street - ‘Cairo Flats’

The apartments at 98 Nicholson Street are known as the Cairo Flats. Built in 1935 by Architects Taylor, Solliuex and Overend.

We can consider this building to be of the modernist style due to its simple exterior appearance, and its curved balconies. The simple flat facade with recessed windows is typical of works by Le Corbusier and of Walter Gropius. Presenting a box like form, the windows serve only as a source of light rather than an embellished decorative feature.

The horizontal curved form of the balconies is typical Art Deco, though similarities can be drawn to the balconies of the Bauhaus, in which curvature is used vertically at the ends of the smaller balconies. The balustrades also bear striking resemblance to those on the Bauhaus.

Image from Goad, P. ‘Fabrications’ ‘Best Overend, Pioneering Modernist in Melbourne’ p 111

MOMO TO POMO Assignment One: Modernist Melbourne 98 Nicholson Street - ‘Cairo Flats’

Walter Gropius, Bauhaus, Dessau, 1926 Image from http://www.pbase.com/dyphotono1/bauhaus

Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1929-1930 Image from http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/cas/fnart/Corbu.html

MOMO TO POMO Assignment One: Modernist Melbourne 98 Nicholson Street - ‘Cairo Flats’

The composition of the design can be broken up into repeating patterns or sections.

The vertical supports of the rooftop balustrade line up with vertical components of the apartments below. The spacing between the apartments are even ordered. The location of the balcony mirrors on each apartment. The main window on each sun balcony is rectangular in shape, but when viewed from street level, the balcony appears to cut the window into a perfect square.

The edges of the windows in the apartments correlate to the above balustrade, in this case, the perpendicular direction of the balustrade.

MOMO TO POMO Assignment One: Modernist Melbourne 98 Nicholson Street - ‘Cairo Flats’

The boundary walls themselves also exhibit modernist ideas that were notably present in the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright. The top capping bricks are overhanging, and facing north, resulting in a year round shadow being produced on the face of the wall. The illusion is that the top row is floating above the rest of the wall, in a likewise fashion to the ‘floating’ roof on FLW’s Winslow House.

The overall simple form of the Cairo Flats is what most defines it as an example of the Modernist Style. Features such as service hatchways for waste removal, and humble ‘bedsitter’ rooms (Goad, Fabrications 1999-2001) which only consisted of a main room with bed, were the products of a ultilitarian ideal.

All images property of MJ Stephenson unless otherwise stated.