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Former Craig & Seeley Ltd

Other Name

Chef Factory

Location

Cnr Hope and Percy Streets,, BRUNSWICK VIC 3056 - Property No B7178

File Number

B7178

Level

State

Statement of Significance

What is significant? The administrative offices for Craig and Seeley Ltd, manufacturers of gas appliances, was constructed in 1962/63, to a design by Theodore Berman, as part of their factory complex located adjacent to the railway line in central Brunswick. The site had been first developed in 1891 as a gasworks by the Brunswick Gas and Coke Co., then occupied by a succession of gas appliance manufacturers after 1907, including Craig and Seeley from 1947, and Email in the 1990s, who sold the site in 2001. The original brick gas retort building also survives.
The office section of the factory is a striking and stylish essay in interpenetrating and overlapping volumes and elements, emphasised by bright colours and materials. The composition (and the street corner) is dominated by a large rectangular solid, entirely clad in metal panels (possibly made in the factory), enlivened by a mid green enamel colour and a shallow pyramidal shaping to each one. First floor office strip windows on both sides overlap this volume, and are expressed separately with bright red lower spandrels, and a projecting surround, with white enamel panels top and bottom, and applied vertical black fins.
How is it significant? The former Craig and Seeley offices are significant for aesthetic/architectural, and historic reasons at a State level.
Why is it significant? Architecturally, the factory offices are unique for their eye-catching volumetric and coloured playfulness within a modernist idiom. The use of brightly coloured metal panels, emphasising interpenetrating forms, including a dominating volume of green textured panels, is attractive and highly unusual in commercial and industrial architecture in Melbourne in the post-war period. The rectilinear volumes and detailing, and particularly the black metal fins over the office strip-windows, display a strong modernist influence, distinguishing this design from the often equally colourful roadside and retail architecture of the day.
Historically, the offices were the headquarters for Craig and Seeley, a local manufacturing company that produced the well-known local 'Chef' brand of kitchen appliances. The site is also important for a long association with the gas industry, being originally developed as the first Brunswick gasworks, then occupied by various firms manufacturing gas appliances.
Classified: 02/07/2002

Group

Manufacturing and Processing