page_title: West's Furniture Showroom
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: West's Furniture Showroom / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: View through shopfront (2015)
context_page_description: West's Furniture Showroom is a heritage-listed former shop at 620 Wickham Street, Fortitude Valley, City of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Karl Langer and built from 1952 to 1953. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 4 December 2015.
context_section_description: The former West's Furniture Showroom occupies part of a 344-square-metre (3,700 sq ft) urban block on the northeast edge of Fortitude Valley, Brisbane. Addressing the major thoroughfare of Wickham Street to the southeast, the building is bounded to the northwest by Knapp Street, and to the northeast and southwest by commercial properties of a similar scale. The terraced block is divided into three distinct sections, with the showroom occupying the southeast end. Buildings to the rear of the showroom are outside of the heritage boundary and are not of cultural heritage significance. A cantilevered awning projects from the showroom, over the Wickham Street footpath.
  The showroom is a long, lowset, masonry and timber structure with a narrow street frontage. Primary access to the building is via a door at the northeast end of the main shopfront. A pedestrian arcade, running part way along the southwest side, allows access to the rear of the showroom via a secondary entrance. The shallow-pitched roof, constructed of deep timber trusses, is clad in metal sheeting.
  The Wickham Street shopfront is largely transparent and sheltered by a large, cantilevered awning that has a tongue-and-groove, v-jointed timber board-lined soffit with a stained finish. The timber entrance door is painted yellow and set within a timber and glass frame, adjacent to a masonry wall clad in random rubble stone. The shopfront comprises reconstructed floor-to-ceiling, steel-framed angled windows, standing on concrete and rubber pads and supported by timber mullions. Angled at 60 degrees, these windows reduce the reflection of light from the glass to pedestrians on the exterior footpath, and reflect the sky from a distance. An irregular-shaped shallow pond with a raised concrete kerb forms the base of the shopfront, with the bottom edge of the glass panels set just below the water's surface. The pond continues around at a right angle to follow the base of a reconstructed glass wall that defines the side pedestrian arcade. The pedestrian arcade has an exposed concrete floor and rectangular ceiling voids which allow light to enter the space. It is partly enclosed by the adjacent property's masonry wall, which is painted in a contrasting colour to distinguish it from original walls.
  Shopfront features added as part of the 2008 reconstruction works that differ from the original design include: a metal entrance gate to the pedestrian arcade; a wide glass door at the end of the arcade; metal grates set below the surface of the pond; and a signage display outlining the building's reconstruction. These features are not of cultural heritage significance.
  The showroom comprises a large, open space with plasterboard-lined walls and ceilings, and a polished concrete floor. A single row of hardwood timber columns, stained dark brown and standing on metal pin-joints, runs from the front to the rear of the space. These align with plaster-lined pilasters along the northeast wall. The space is naturally spot-lit by skylights: a row of three small, oval-shaped skylights are located just inside the shopfront windows; and three large, rectangular skylights with a curved southwest edge run the length of the showroom along its central axis. The lower portion of the rear wall of the showroom acts as a retaining wall, with banks of aluminium-framed awning windows above. In the centre of this wall is a steep concrete stair with tubular steel handrail, which leads to the rear building. Separating the showroom and the rear building is a wide, earth-floored void and a second retaining wall. This void is protected by a roof overhang, and access is gained from the stair, through openings in the walls. The showroom roof overhang is set at a steep angle to allow natural light to enter the space, and louvres within its soffit are part of the original ventilation system for cooling the roof space.
  Showroom features that are not of cultural heritage significance include: partition walls at the rear of the showroom; a curved partition at the front of the space that defines an entry foyer; re
caption: View through the angled shopfront windows, 2015
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