470 Northbourne #1

INFO

The TransACT House located on Northbourne Avenue in Dickson opened in September 1978. Originally meant for the ACT TAB’s new $10 million headquarters it was opened by the Minister for the Capital Territory, Mr Ellicott. Designed by Sydney architect Kevin J. Curtin it was meant to look as if it had grown out of the ground. Vertical folded concrete fins, deep set balconies and a smooth, monolithic precast facade put it squarely in the same brutalist register as Churchill House just down the street.

The building’s design credit backstory is a bit complicated. Partway through construction in 1977 architect Curtin sold his Canberra practice to the office manager at the time Ernest Munns and newcomer Robert Sly who renamed the practice to Munns, Sly and Associates. The name now most associated with the building.

The title of TransACT House was picked up after the telecoms carrier’s short stint as a tenant in the late 2000s and has stuck since despite iiNet and TPG also changing hands in the building. Currently TransACT is in use as a data centre on the ground floor with a few private tenants occupying the other levels. It stands now as a solitary architectural gem on the northern end of Canberra’s CBD’s main road, Northbourne Avenue.

I photographed this project at midday, an unusual time typically for my photoshoots but necessary in this case to make use of the shadows created by the fins. This particular image was the hero shot and first image from my visit. Rather than a wide angle focal length, I opted for a 35mm equivalent using my 24mm and teleconverter to compress the scene and make the building fill the frame. Luckily on that quiet sunday Canberra afternoon some pedestrians walked by creating scale with the monolithic structure.

470 Northbourne #1

TransACT House with passing pedestrian passing by Dickson, Canberra