Esmond Dorney

James Henry Esmond Dorney (17 September 1906 – 25 December 1991) was an Australian architect, known for a series of notable Streamline Moderne apartment blocks and houses in Melbourne in the 1930s, and a series of inventive Modernist houses in Tasmania in the 1950s and 60s. He is best known for the second house he built for himself, in 1966 (reconstructed after being destroyed by fire in 1978), a remarkable design perched on Porter Hill overlooking Hobart, Tasmania. Owned by the City Council since 2006, it is regularly open to the public.

Early life

He was born to Marie Louise Kiernan and James Henry Dorney in Melbourne, Victoria and spent most of his teenage life at their family home in Elwood. Dorney was employed by Walter Burley Griffin before he started his own practice in 1930. After World War II, Esmond Dorney moved to Hobart and continued his practice until his death in 1991.

Dorney studied Architecture briefly at the University of Melbourne, however quickly became disenchanted by the course, dismissing it as ‘a meaningless pursuit of Classical Revival.’ He was later expelled for racing his Delage around the university campus, presumably without regret.

In the mid-1920s Dorney trained with Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahoney, architects of significant note in Australia and internationally, specifically Chicago. Though he learnt through them a respect for the landscape which became a valuable element of his style, particularly in the design of his own residence on Fort Nelson, Tasmania, he rejected the Prairie School aesthetic and upon that premise discontinued his training.

In 1929, at the age of 23, Dorney, drawing on his training with Walter Burley Griffin & Marion Mahoney and the engineering firm Johns & Waygood (to whom he attributed an ‘understanding of the capabilities of new technologies’), established his own practice just in time for the Great Depression. Many architectural firms in Melbourne failed in this period due to the economic recession, Dorney's practice thrived due to his celebration of new architectural approaches that supported the expanding interests of the growing middle class. Much of his pre war design is heritage listed, but the hiatus of WWII brought about a transformation in his approach to architecture. His post war work evolved his clear expression of the qualities and the possibilities of structure and materiality.

World War II

Esmond Dorney’s career as an architect was interrupted by World War 2, when he enlisted and served as a pilot in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve from 1940-1945.

At the fall of Singapore, he was redeployed to Java and worked behind Japanese lines, establishing secret radar instillations. Spending some time in a POW camp, he eventually escaped and remained with Chinese guerillas until the end of the war. This period of forced design inactivity generated a revolution in his architecture.

Post World War II

Dorney returned to Australia, and moved from his home in Melbourne to Hobart, Tasmania, citing health and personal reasons. He designed a series of remarkable houses, beginning with his first tiny, circular house on the Fort Nelson site in 1950, and became the most noted post-war modernist architect in his adopted state.

Notable examples of his post war modernist residences include his own houses at Fort Nelson, the Young House, the Dorney Shack (beach house), and the Richardson House.

Notable Works

Victoria (Pre WWII)

Windermere, Esplanade Elwood

Windermere

The Windermere flats at 49 Broadway, Elwood were built in 1936. This celebrated block of flats in the Moderne style, with a dynamic interplay or horizontals, verticals and projecting curved balconies, creating a striking street presence, is one of the earliest Moderne flats added to the Victorian Heritage Register, in 1992.

St Kiernan's Flats

This striking block of flats at 51 Ormond Esplanade was constructed in 1939, and like Windermere employs a complexity of horizontals and verticals, but uses only rectilinear elements, including long horizontal windows, some wrapping around corners, reminiscent of European modernist design. The triple fronted façade is composed of a north and south wing and a projected central portion featuring a large brick chimney giving the building a strong vertical element.

St Kiernan’s was built as an investment for Dorney's mother Ms Marie Louise Dorney, née Kiernan. The same name was transferred to another development at 57 Ormond Esplanade in 1948. It was one of a series of apartment projects designed by Esmond Dorney in Elwood in the 1930s for his mother, beginning with their family home Chenier, which was converted to flats in 1934, and the Antigone flats at 34 Docker Street, Elwood,

Dalcrombie

Long mis-attributed to Harry Norris, this is possibly the most extraordinary Moderne private house in Victoria. Located on a large estate in the hills outside Melbourne at 11 Warwick Farm Rd, Olinda, it was built in c1939 for optometrist Earl Coles, a partner in the then well known optometrists Coles & Garrard, and originally called Lanhydrock.

The design exploits reinforced concrete to an unusual degree, with boldly cantilevered semi-circular window bays and an extensive first floor deck supported on just a few columns, allowing wide window openings below, and a tall circular stair tower largely composed of glass blocks. The house features multiple projecting semi-circular elements, a favoured element of Dorney's Moderne designs, projecting out from a central cuboid volume, with attached vertical elements, to create an elaborate dynamic composition.

A large 1980s single storey addition to the north side features an almost matching projecting semi-circular window element, adding to the complexity.

Tasmania (Post WWII)

The Young House

Built in 1959 in the Hobart suburb of Sandy Bay, this was Dorney’s most widely celebrated residential projects before his own house became publicly accessible. It is popularly known as the 'Butterfly House' because the most striking feature is the use of a long low steel arch which forms both roof shape and structure, with a secondary half arch rising from the centre in the opposite direction. Listed by Heritage Tasmania, internal alterations were permitted in 1999, and additions in 2009, in part because the family wished to keep occupying the house they enjoyed, the alterations were sympathetic, and because they were "based on the principles found in the existing house and in Dorney’s own writings...", for instance that "A house should be planned like a machine, but a home is much more than a machine, and can in many ways express its owner’s personality."

Dorney House

Probably Dorney's most well-known and celebrated design, "one of the great modern houses of Australia", is his own house built on the circular foundations of the former Fort Nelson gun emplacements in the foothills of Mount Nelson, south of central Hobart. First constructed in 1966, it was destroyed in a bushfire and rebuilt, almost exactly the same, in 1978. The design centres on a rounded form of 12 sides, each segment with an arched roofed, creating a flower like form. Supported on a light steel frame, the northern half is entirely glazed, providing the living spaces with panoramic views of the Derwent River mouth below. The City of Hobart purchased the house and site in 2006, and it has been opened occasionally for events and is available for public booking. The City Council is exploring options for a more permanent use for the house and land.

Victoria

• Windermere Flats, 1936, 49 Broadway, Elwood
• Colwyn Flats, 1937, 1263 High St, Malvern.
• St Annes Flats, 1937-8, 1 Park Street, South Yarra.
• Flats, 261-263 Williams Road, late 1930s, South Yarra.
• Dalcrombie (Llanhydroch), 1938, Olinda, Victoria.
• Antigone Flats, 1939, 34 Docker Street, Elwood
• St Kiernan’s Flats, 1939, 51 Ormond Esplanade, Elwood.
• Sandringham & District Memorial Hospital, 1956-1964 Sandringham

Tasmania

• Nazareth House Retirement Home, 1952, St Leonards.
• Richardson House, 1954, 48 Rosny Esplanade, Rosny.
• Dorney Beach Shack, 1957, Park Beach.
• Snow's Dry Cleaning, 1957, Glenorchy
• Pius X Church, 1957, Taroona
• The Dorney Houses, 1948, 1966, 1978 Fort Nelson
• Young House, 1958, Lower Sandy Bay.

Posthumous recognition

In 2008 James Jones, then president of the Tasmanian chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects posthumously awarded Esmond Dorney the President’s Prize, which was accepted by his son, Paddy Dorney, stating ‘Dorney returns us to the worth of the architecture, saying something about humanity, who we are through how we build and how we live in the landscape.’ The Tasmanian Chapter subsequently named their highest residential design award the Esmond Dorney Award. He is now possibly the most celebrated and well known Tasmanian architectural figure, credited with bringing modernism to the island state.