‘Everyone knows what a first-class town should comprise’

Grahame Shaw’s ideal new town, new community milieux

Abstract

Australian architect-planner Grahame Shaw (1928-1985) is perhaps best remembered in Melbourne as co-author of the notorious ‘Shaw-Davey’ report (1960), which consigned 410 hectares (1000 acres) of inner city housing for demolition purely on the basis of an apparently slapdash ‘windscreen survey’. These buildings were to make way for an intensive program of high rise tower blocks constructed by the state to house both extant locals and new migrants. However, even while he was working as Chief Architect for the Housing Commission of Victoria (HCV), Shaw was much more than a mere bean counter in the thrall of modernist planning. This paper examines Shaw’s involvement in two important early 1960s projects for the HCV: the rollout of the new industrial town of Churchill, 160km east of Melbourne, and the creation of the new high-rise Hotham Gardens housing estate, 3km from Melbourne’s centre. In both projects Shaw was interested in creating social spaces for new communities and eager to synthesise a global best-practice environment for community building. He brought a strong interest in high-rise housing (using London models such as Radiation House in Neasden and the proposals for a new town at Hook) to his HCV work, but also aspired to temper these with a ‘human touch’. The 1960s projects are contrasted with a later design from his private practice: the briefly notorious ‘Island City’, planned for construction adjacent to Port Melbourne. This paper is therefore an examination of international influence on, and the political and economic context for, Australian urban design in the early 1960s. It is also a study of Shaw’s particular approach. Additionally, it looks at the legacy of the Churchill and North Melbourne examples now in their seventh decade, with commentary on the future of these spaces in the 2020s.