Frederick Romberg

Migration and early practice

To understand the experience of migration is of fundamental importance in understanding the architecture of Fredrick Romberg. While his commitment to Australia was absolute from the moment he arrived there, he brought with him memories, knowledge and attitudes that were European in general and German in particular. Arriving in Melbourne at Station Pier, he had an initial, brief visit to Canberra and Sydney, returned to Melbourne, and was immediately engaged by the office of Stephenson and Turner. He was seconded to the design section and worked there for a year.

Grounds, Romberg and Boyd: 1953-1962

In 1951 Romberg’s practice was in a precarious position. He had moved his office from La Trobe Street in 1949 to the front flat on the top floor of Newburn and the following year into a penthouse created from the roof garden. With his partners Roy Grounds and Robin Boyd, Romberg continued to explore local idioms in his schools, colleges and churches and to link his work to historical precedent in Australia. At the same time, he excavated his own past, resurrecting its latent classicism in order to affirm Australia’s earliest, and particularly Palladian, traditions.

Architecture style: The Central Plan

Romberg’s complex and varied approach to the central plan suggests a secure grounding in historical precedent (a subject he taught at RMIT in the late 1940s) and possibly some knowledge of the immensely influential text by Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism, first published in 1949 which dealt with both Palladian geometry and the central plan.

Architecture style: Brutalism

The relationship of Romberg’s work to be emerging Brutalist movement in England is one of the more intriguing aspects of his practice during the 1950s and early 1960s. Brutalism in Australia is generally understood as a style of ‘rational and robust’ concrete architecture, largely institutional, widespread in the 1960s and 1970s. Its forms derived from Le Corbusier’s later work and the Japanese new architecture.

The breakup of the partnership: Romberg and Boyd: 1962-1975

During the National Gallery of Victoria and Cultural Centre project, where the practice of Grounds, Romberg and Boyd was appointed as the architects; at a more personal level, it caused the breakup of the partnership. To some extent, Romberg believed the building would have been much more significant with the teamwork and contribution of three.

University of Newcastle, NSW

In 1965 Romberg was appointed the foundation Professor of Architecture at the University of Newcastle, north of Sydney and he held this position for the following decade.

Return to Melbourne

Romberg returned to Melbourne in 1975 where he carried on a small practice into the 1980s.

Stanhill Flats

Stanhill Flats, view from Queens Road.

• South Melbourne, Victoria; designed in 1943, completed after the war in 1950

The name Stanhill was first coined by Romberg as a combination of the names of the two brothers Stanley and Hilel Korman. It is a strong building with a powerful silhouette that responds positively to its urban context—— multi-storied urban housing which is both eligible as dwelling and as modernist monument. The idea of a penthouse on the roof of the tall building was put forward at this time. The building was initially arranged in four vertical stacks containing 4,5,6,8 flats; the genesis of the present building. However, the scheme of the building has been changed three times due to the changes of local building regulations. Although Stanhill was no longer an advanced design by the time it was completed, it is one of the works by which Romberg is now best known.

Newburn Flats

• Queens Road, South Melbourne, 1939

Newburn. Frederick Romberg's office was located for a time in the penthouse

The 26-year-old Romberg had been in Melbourne for little more than a year when he embarked on Newburn project. It was his first reinforced concrete multi—storey residential building. There are four storeys of twenty-four flats, with the living spaces on the sunny north side, each with an angled window bay and balcony so as to obtain a view towards Queens Road and park beyond. Stair towers at each end connect with access balconies on the south side. Romberg used the technology he was familiar with from his time in Salvisberg’s office, reinforced concrete.

Picken Court, Ormond College

• Melbourne, Victoria, 1959

Picken Court, Ormond College, University of Melbourne

Picken Court is designed to be a student and staff facility comprising three octagonal building linked together at each of their three storeys by semi-enclosed bridges. Each had a radial plan with a light and ventilation shaft at its centre, a ring of toilets, laundries and other utilities, a passageway and students’ rooms, and common study areas around the perimeter. Picken Court was a rare fusion of a 19th-century form and contemporary ideas that elucidated the common theoretical bonds between the two.

ETA Foods Factory

• Ballarat Road, Braybrook, 1957

ETA factory was designed for a client, Nut Foods, for the iricution if their ETA brand margarine. With its elegant, extremely long curtain wall presenting as the public façade, it was one of the most distinguished industrial buildings of the post-war period. At ETA, of interest is the handling of the curtain wall fronting Ballarat Road with its alternating bands of clear and black glass, tubular steel diagonal members (originally picked out in gold matte paint) and classical colonnade implied in the regular rhythm of expressed structural steel columns. Abandoned for many years, only part of the curtain wall facade and the entry courtyard area was retained when the majority of the factory space was replaced by a ‘big box’ retail building and carpark. Despite these changes, it is still considered one of the best post-war factories built in Victoria.

Other works

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Canberra (1960)

• Bruck House, Bruck Mills, Wangaratta, Victoria - 1955
• CSIRO - Division of Protein Chemistry, Parkville, Victoria - 1958
• Glenunga Flats, Armadale, Victoria - 1940
• Hilstan Flats, corner Nepean Highway and Marriage Road, Brighton, Victoria – 1947 (now demolished)
• Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Canberra – 1960
• ICI Staff Recreation Centre, Deer Park, Victoria – 1955
• Lutheran Church Hall, South Melbourne, Victoria - 1953
• MacFarland Library, and School of Microbiology of University of Melbourne - 1962
• Romberg House, Eaglemont, Victoria - 1941
• Sacred Heart Girls' School, Oakleigh, Victoria - 1954
• School of Architecture, University of Newcastle, New South Wales - 1968
• St Quentin, Ellery House, Upwey, Victoria – 1940-41
• Yarrabee Flats, South Yarra, Victoria - 1940
• Yarralands Flats, Hawthorn, Victoria - 1951