Elischer Studio (fmr)

Statement of Significance

Elischer Studio (fmr) has considerable aesthetic significance as a fine example of a suite of well designed Late-Twentieth Century International buildings. Elischer Studio (fmr) has considerable aesthetic significance for their landmark qualities, as well designed Brutalist buildings. Elischer Studio (fmr)) has considerable historic value for its association with the well known Perth architect Julius Elischer. Elischer Studio (fmr) has rarity value as Late-Twentieth Century International buildings in the City of Nedlands.

Physical Description

Elischer Studio is an element of a complex comprising Julius’ Elischer’s former studio, now commercial premises, addressing Broadway, and Residence (fmr), addressing Kingsway, linked by a bridge. The Broadway commercial office is a three storey rendered masonry building, built in the form of a cube, with the first floor appearing to cantilever over the ground floor, and a front elevation that is largely a blank wall, with deeply recessed glazing set just under the deep flat roof and extending around the building. A second strip of glazing extends along the southern elevation of the first floor.

History

Julius Elischer was an émigré architect whose buildings played an important role in the adoption of international Modernism in WA’s post-war architecture. Two of his notable early buildings, dated 1964, are the former Foulkes-Taylor showroom on the corner of Broadway and Cooper Street, Nedlands and the Wollaston Anglican Chapel in Mt Claremont. He was also responsible for the extensions to the City of Nedlands Council building and Melvista Lodge. Built in 1969, his home on 28 Kingsway was designed to be linked at the rear by a small bridge to his office/studio at 97 Broadway. ‘Elischer always encouraged his family in his workplace especially when his children were young. The architectural offices reflected a practice that would have had all the related professions ‘in house’. It embodied an attitude to work and domestic life that planners have only relatively recently tried to incorporate in residential/mixed use zoning.’ (Julius Elischer Architect. Selected projects 1958-1985, exhibition catalogue, Cullity Gallery, Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Visual Arts, UWA, 2003, p. 46.) Elischer was born in Budapest in 1918 and immigrated to Australia in 1951. He came to Perth in 1957 and commenced his architectural practice in the early 1960s.

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