Total House is a heritage-listed

Brutalist Brutalist architecture is an architectural style that emerged during the 1950s in the United Kingdom, among the reconstruction projects of the post-war era. Brutalist buildings are characterised by Minimalism (art), minimalist constructions th ...

commercial building at 170-190

Russell Street, Melbourne Russell Street is a main street and thoroughfare in the central business district of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It runs roughly north-south and was laid out as a core feature of the Hoddle Grid in 1837. Russell Street is named after John ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

. It consists of retail premises at street level, a seven-level car park, four storeys of offices atop the car park, and a basement theatre. It was listed on the

Victorian Heritage Register The Victorian Heritage Register (VHR) lists places deemed to be of cultural heritage significance to the State of Victoria, Australia. It has statutory weight under the Heritage Act 2017. The Minister for Planning is the responsible Minister. H ...

on 29 May 2014 on the basis that it was "a landmark of post-World War II modernist design and...one of the earliest and best expressions of Brutalist architecture in Victoria".

Development

It was designed 1963 by Bogle & Banfield Associates, a partnership of architects Alan Bogle and Gordon Banfield, for the Savoy Car Park Company, a company controlled by Banfield, which had been established to develop the site, and built in 1964-65. The building's name stems from the original anchor tenant, Total Oil Products P/L (Australia), a subsidiary of French oil company CFP, whose offices were based in the building from 1966 until the 1970s. In 1991, it sold for $21 million, reputedly the largest Melbourne CBD property sale that year, with

KPMG KPMG International Limited (or simply KPMG) is a multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations. Headquartered in Amstelveen, Netherlands, although incorporated in London, England, KPMG is a net ...

among the building's office tenants at that time.

Demolition bid and heritage listing

Total House was at risk of demolition in 2014 after developer AXF Group purchased the site and sought approval to replace it with a 70-storey hotel tower. However, the building's successful heritage listing, following its nomination by heritage group Melbourne Heritage Action, saw the withdrawal of the proposal. The demolition threat sparked public debate about whether 1960s Brutalist architecture should receive heritage protection, amidst threats to a number of prominent Melbourne buildings of that era.

Basement entertainment venues

The basement has housed a succession of entertainment venues over the decades. It was first envisaged as a cinema with the capacity to stage live theatre, with the possibility of being turned into a nightclub if liquor legislation changed. From 1965, it housed the Lido Cabaret, described as "the first of its kind in Victoria", "providing dinner and a ‘Paris-type’ show, complete with feathers, high kicks and scanty costumes". After a period as a Spanish-themed nightclub, from the mid-1970s the basement housed the 600-seat Total Theatre, featuring theatre productions including the Australian premiere of ''

Guys & Dolls ''Guys and Dolls'' is a musical with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser and book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. It is based on " The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown" (1933) and "Blood Pressure", which are two short stories by Damon Runyon, and also b ...

'' and the controversial revue ''

Let My People Come ''Let My People Come'' is a musical with book and music by Earl Wilson, Jr. and lyrics by Wilson and Phil Oesterman. Subtitled "A Sexual Musical", the sexually-explicit show originally ran from 1974 to 1976 at The Village Gate theater in Greenwich ...

''. The theatre was operated by Banfield, who used the car park to subsidise the theatre. Since 1980, the basement has housed a nightclub and live music venue, initially known as Billboard until 2014, and then after a rebrand as 170 Russell, the building's street address.

External links

Heritage Council decision

References

{{reflist Brutalist architecture in Australia Office buildings in Melbourne Office buildings completed in 1965 1965 establishments in Australia