Urban Broadcast Collective

Ernest Fooks, Newlands Estate, & Melbourne modern design heritage by This Must be The Place

From Viennese Avant Garde to Newlands Pizza Plus: an episode of This Must Be the Place that’s about two things: a place, and a person who was influential in making that place. The place is the Newlands Estate, an area developed by the Housing Commission in the 1940s and 1950s, in Melbourne’s north. The person is Ernest Fooks – to whom Newlands owes part of its design. Fooks was an avant garde European émigré architect and planner, and Newlands was one of his first projects after emigrating to Melbourne from the war in Austria. The Newlands estate – known for its parks, topography, mix of housing types, ubiquitous red brick, and community facilities – was the beginning of an influential 40 year career in Australia for Fooks, whose work went on to include numerous luxury modernist homes for the Jewish community, and Jewish institutional buildings. In this episode David interviews architect Catherine Townsend, a Fooks expert. And Elizabeth interviews Cate Hall, an active member of the Newlands community who has been involved in campaigns to save the Coburg Olympic Pool (in Newlands), and to regain a high school for the area. The heritage value of modernist design is part of the story, as is the politics of investment in community infrastructure.

Welcome to the Urban Broadcast Collective.

We are a curated network of podcast and radio shows on everything urban. Our goal is simple, to bring together all the amazing urban focused podcasts on one site. In this episode you’ll hear from some of our podcasters and radio makers. We’ll also tell you how to get involved in the Urban Broadcast Collective. For more information, please contact one of our podcast producers: Natalie Osborne from Griffith University; Elizabeth Taylor from RMIT; Tony Matthews from Griffith University; Paul Maginn from the University of Western Australia; Jason Byrne from the University of Tasmania; or Dallas Rogers from the University of Sydney. You can also find us on Twitter at @urbanpodcasts and ApplePodcasts. So sit back and enjoy some fascinating discussions about cities and urbanism.