More recent activity at the ACT Heritage Unit, as several places have been provisionally registered under the Heritage Act 2004. Among buildings included in the latest batch are works by Frederick Romberg, Enrico Taglietti, Ken Woolley and John Andrews.

The latest provisional registrations are for:

• Ken Woolley’s Woden Library and Phillip Health Centre (1977)
• Frederick Romberg’s Lutheran Church in Turner (1961)
• Enrico Taglietti’s Dickson Library (1969)
• The UC Student Residences designed by John Andrews (1973)

Recently included in Canberra’s Top Twenty, the UC Residences are the only houses among the latest additions. They have been provisionally registered for their significance as relatively rare examples of 1970s student accommodation constructed of off-form in situ concrete and for their association with the development of tertiary education in Canberra during the Whitlam years, with the establishment of the Canberra College of Advanced Education—now the University of Canberra.

They are also regarded as important examples of work by the internationally recognised architect John Andrews and are significant examples of brutalist architecture, with their strong, boldly composed shapes, expressed reinforced-concrete and large areas of blank wall. The way the residences are stepped down the sloping site is also a characteristic of the Sydney regional style of architecture.

The design also represented a new type of student residential planning called studenentheim, where modules comprising six student rooms were linked with a separate sitting room, kitchen area and shared toilet facilities. This was an ideal use for John Andrews’ additive style of architecture, where the basic building element of the student rooms is grouped around the shared facilities. The success of this studenentheim was such that the ANU then built Toad Hall following these principles, also with John Andrews as the architect.

This housing group is unusual, since there are very few residential examples of the brutalist style in Canberra or, indeed, Australia. The contrasting textures and patterns formed by the arrangement of the modules makes for a group of residences that are still quite startling in appearance, thirty-five years after their design.

So, Canberrans, if you haven’t seen these fine examples of late twentieth century brutalism, I highly recommend a trip over to Bruce, where the group can be viewed from Aikman Drive.