Perrott Lyon Mathieson

Perrott Lyon Mathieson is an Australian architecture firm based in Melbourne.

History

It was founded by Leslie M Perrott in 1918.[1] Leslie M. Perrott Senior gained dominance in this field during the inter-war period. He started his firm Leslie M. Perrott & Associates in 1918 which slowly gained popularity with his 1929 design for Alexander Hotel (now the Park Plaza)with 200 bedrooms and 200 bathrooms. In 1934 he got Chevron, a private hotel constructed in sixteen weeks for Melbourne’s centenary celebrations. His modern Hotel Australia (1939) which soon became the social epicentre of Melbourne. Perrott Senior’s son, Leslie Junior (1926–2001), took over the firm, to expand the office during the post-war boom. In 1971 the firm became Perrott Lyon Timlock & Kesa. A great part of their practice involved documenting and bringing to completion the projects of other architects such as Welton-Peckett's design for the Southern Cross hotel in 1963, one of their earliest works. It grew over the years to become one of the largest in the nation that during the seventies, the Perrott office was working on no fewer than four major Collins Street office towers. One of them was the controversial Nauru House.[2] The Perrott office designed the Museum underground station (now Melbourne Central) and Telstra Corporate Centre, regarded as the best commercial building during the construction boom of the eighties. The firm also became involved in the design of Colleges of Advanced Education, notably the Janefield campus of the Preston Institute of Technology (now RMIT) and the Caulfield Institute of Technology (now Monash University). The firm also designed the Flinders Gate development which was renamed Gas & Fuel Towers by its developer.[2] In 1974, the firm was renamed to Perrott Lyon Mathieson, after John Timlock and Kesa retired, thus making Brian Mathieson the named partner, who is currently in-charge of the firm, which has lasted for almost a century since its beginning in 1918.[1]

Key architects

Leslie M. Perrott Senior

Leslie M. Perrott Senior, from a trade background, had become a dominant architect in the inter-war period. A strict teetotaler, he was, nevertheless, the leading designer of Melbourne’s grand hotels.[2]

Leslie Marsh Perrott Senior (1892 – 1975), born in Gippsland, Victoria, moved to Melbourne, after the death of his father, with the family. Perrott studied architecture at the Melbourne Technical College.

In 1914, Perrott established his own practice which was specialized in the use of concrete in residential work. The practice flourished focusing on hotels, after the fact finding tour of the United States, which he accompanied with Jimmy Richardson, in 1926.

Since early 1926, Perrott was a part of government housing policy commentary. During the Great Depression, he became the president of the Building Industry Congress. He also was an active member in RVIA where was elected as vice-president, in 1935 and president, in 1939.

In 1955, he was awarded the Barrett Memorial Medal for his contribution in town planning.

Perrott retired in 1966 and the firm survived as Perrott, Lyon, Timlock & Kesa. Later, in 1974 the firm became Perrott Lyon Mathieson.

Ronald Grant Lyon

Ronald Grant Lyon represented many of the standards and attitudes of the pre-war era. He has played an integral role in all three generations of the Lyon-Perrott Practices Ronald Lyon was born in Creswick but his family soon moved to Geelong. Ronald and his elder brother Eric were educated at the Geelong Junior Technical School (taught by their father, a respected chemistry teacher), Geelong High School and the Gordon Institute.The final years of the Gordon course merged with the Architectural Atelier, a night school at the University of Melbourne. In Melbourne, Lyon worked in the offices of two great Modernists: Edward Billson and Frederick Romberg. In 1941, before completing his course, he enlisted in the AIF and served as a lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers in New Guinea. He obtained registration and became a member of the RVIA after returning from the war. In 1949, he worked for Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew in London. On his return in 1952 Lyon joined the office of Leslie M. Perrott & Associates.[2] Ronald Lyon got married to Marietta Perrott, daughter of Perrott Sr, who worked in her father's firm as an architecture renderer and illustrator, and had 4 sons, all of whom became architects. She died in 2003. In 1996 three of the sons set up an office, Lyons Architecture which is one of Australia's leading architecture firms today. Their work is mainly in the field of educational and commercial buildings. Throughout four decades of successful practice, Lyon was deeply involved in professional, industrial and welfare activities. He was the last President of the RVIA in 1965 and the first President of the RAIA Victorian Chapter in 1966. In 1984 Ronald Lyon was awarded AM for services to the community and his profession.[2]

Brian George Mathieson

Notable projects

Benalla Campus project

The Melbourne contemporary architecture team of Perrott Lyon Mathieson collaborated with Carey Lyon (an ex co-director of PLM), designed and built the first building on the new Benalla campus for the Goulburn Ovens Institute of TAFE. This building acts as a multipurpose training facility, which includes a research center, conference theater and study facilities for a range of different fields such as resource management, business, hospitality and teaching facilities. This project won a BHP COLORBOND Award and was also featured in a range of architectural magazines. The steel structure was one of its most architecturally recognised qualities, as it spread across the site with a cruciform plan that placed training spaces in the four wings and a ‘crossroads’ entry foyer at the centre junction, complemented by an adjacent restaurant used for hospitality training.The site is a flat, relatively featureless landscape in central Victoria. Architect Carey Lyon stated that the team found themselves mythologising about the site as the archetypal interior landscape: "We were interested in reading this ‘interior’ landscape as having a meaning appropriated by our cultural occupation of the landscape rather than as an authentic natural phenomenon. In particular the team distilled the horizon as an archetypal image in our cultural and aesthetic representations of this interior landscape. In thinking of the horizon as an image, almost in a painterly tradition, a recurring or repeating horizontal line or motif became the dominant element of the project."[4]

Telstra Corporate Centre

The Telstra Corporate Centre is a sleek, black signature for a corporatised government monopoly, to some extent comfortable and very recognisable that sits well in the skyline. The design at the corporate scale is to accept a complicity with the value system of the city that is to accept the primary role of the other discourses such as the economic and speculative.The aerial view of the telecom building shows us the glazed tower wrapped around the core. The overall configuration of the tower, as an object, is sculptural rather than elevational with the smoked class curtain walls that cover the majority of the building's exterior facade, reflecting the city on its surface as well as keeping its interior private. Its glass curtain walls coil around the grey tilted lift core, offering the different aspects of its composition as the viewer circles the city. The telecom corporate building by Perrott Lyon Mathieson is an evolution of the tower type in Melbourne as it is able to reconfigure the tower as a response to the city in the round, or a reading of the city as an object. As part of the skyline, this view of the collective aspirations of a society is critical in placing that society within world culture, but also in designating its difference.[5]

The Eastern Institute of TAFE

The Eastern Institute of TAFE, Lilydale Lake campus, Lilydale, Victoria, designed by Carey Lyon in collaboration with Perrott Lyon Mathieson, is famous for its polychrome brick design and won an Award of Merit in 1998.

Crown Casino, Melbourne

Awards

Gallery

References

  1. 1 2 Mathieson, Brian. updated 2 April 2014, Retrieved 2 May 2014
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 [Clerehan, Neil. http://architectureau.com/articles/obituary-15/ Ronald Lyon "Neil Clerehan remembers Ronald G. Lyon AM, Dip. Arch., LFRAIA – Tiger to his friends."], Architecture Australia 1 July 2006, Retrieved 2 May 2014
  3. ↑ Retrieved 4 May 2014
  4. ↑ Architecture Australia Vol 88 No 2 Mar 1999
  5. ↑ Architecture Australia Vol 81 No 6 Sep 1992
  6. ↑ Architect July 1993
  7. ↑ Architect July 1994
  8. 1 2 3 Architect June 1998
  9. ↑ Architect June 2001
  10. ↑ Architect June 2002
  11. ↑ Architect June 2004
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