Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021C01223:front:0:p21
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021C01223
Segment Type: other
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Character Range: 55844–58862

Aubusson tapestry (1968) for the boardroom of the RBA Head Office, and won over fourteen awards and prizes.

    Her painting, Unobserved, was acquired by the Reserve Bank as part of its art collection in c1966.  Such was her reputation as an artist that she was retained, following the death of Gerald in 1962, to complete his copper installation for the wall of the Reserve Bank, Canberra.

3.7.5            Frederick Ward[22]
    Frederick Charles Ward (1899-1999) trained as an artist at the School of Art within the National Gallery of Victoria, later becoming a cartoonist and illustrator for several weekly magazines including The Bulletin.  Ward was influenced by the emerging modernist movement, which he considered  as the '…province of the young and radical…and a threat to the established social order'.  He began manufacturing furniture in 1927, and in 1931 was invited to open a modern furniture department for Myer Emporium (Melbourne).  His role with Myers continued to c1950, although it ceased temporarily during the World War 2 when Ward served with the Department of Aircraft Production, assisting in the manufacture of wood-framed Mosquito aircraft.

    Ward established 'Patterncraft' in conjunction with Home Beautiful Magazine in 1947.  The concept was designed to enable the home handyman to make furniture using basic hand tools.  Instructions, including full-sized patterns and lists of materials and tools required, continued into the 1950s.

    In1949 Ward was appointed as Design Consultant to the Australian National University, and later provided advice to other universities and government departments such as the National Capital Development Commission in Canberra.  In the mid-1950s Ward publicly criticised the state of furniture design in Australia and advocated patronage by government departments to provide a stimulus for growth in the design industry.  His comments were noted by Dr HC Coombs, and Ward was commissioned to design furniture for the Head Office building in 1961.

3.8                Stylistic Context
The Reserve Bank of Australia Head Office building, Sydney, was designed by the Commonwealth Department of Works in the Late Twentieth-Century International style, although the design of the podium draws on the characteristics of the Late Twentieth-Century Stripped Classical style.

The Late Twentieth-Century International style was a continuation of the post-war International style of the 1950s, a style that was widely published in architectural magazines of the time, and initially was influenced by Walter Gropius.  By the 1960s the style had proliferated under practitioners such as IM Pei in the United States of America and a number of practitioners in Australia where the style was largely associated with commercial and institutional buildings.

The eight buildings designed for the Reserve Bank generally incorporated similar materials and architectural devices to provide a cohesive public image for the Bank however they were each designed to