Document ID: chunk:federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306:reg:33:p2
Version: federal_register_of_legislation:F2021L01306
Segment Type: reg
Provision Reference: reg 33 (pt 2/3)
Character Range: 71988–74749

a lack of a top-class designing architect, as the FCC saw it, was overcome in November 1927 when Walter Hayward Morris, just returned from a visit overseas, was appointed as the FCC's Principal Assisting Designing Architect. Butters immediately assigned him, as his first job with the Commission, to the museum project. Before the month was out, Morris, armed with the scheme approved by the Public Works Committee and with Butters's criticisms of it, was dispatched to Melbourne to discuss the new proposals with MacKenzie. MacKenzie readily agreed to Butters's proposals to reduce the size of the museum and to eliminate one of the two entrances. This latter change, in fact, allowed the inclusion in the design of a small research room, a literature room and a room for the hall attendant. But MacKenzie also proposed some alterations of his own. These were: the provision of a small strong room, a basement workshop, a waiting room next to the Director's office and an elevator from the basement to the first floor; an increase in the size of the lecture theatre to accommodate an audience of 150 as against 114; the combining of the spaces reserved for the artist and photographer into one room and the creation of a separate dark room; and the omission of all windows and addition of a gallery to the library to allow greater wall space for shelving and to allow for 'the possibility of lighting from the roof'.

  At Morris's suggestion, MacKenzie later sent him five sketches of Australian animals – the kangaroo, koala, echidna, platypus and reptiles – to serve as models for Art Deco figures that Morris had in mind for the exterior of the building.36

  It is extremely likely that Morris's inspiration to adorn the exterior of the building with fauna and flora figures derived from the Sydney Technical College at Ultimo in Sydney. Built in 1891–93, the building's exterior featured sandstone sculptures of native Australian animals and plants. The use of such distinctively Australian ornamentations was strongly influenced by the French- born artist Lucien Henry, who was a teacher at the temporary premises the college occupied before the Ultimo building was erected. Henry was a fervent advocate of the incorporation of nationalist elements such as representations of native fauna and flora in local art and architecture.

  The actual precedent for ornamenting the exterior of buildings with figures of animals and plants was set by the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London, which opened in 1881. Drawings of the building by its architect, Alfred Waterhouse, had been displayed at the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 where they excited much local interest and admiration, notably from Henry. When Morris came to design the