Willoughby Reverberatory Incinerator
Lost Sydney: Incinerators
The years between the two World Wars were times of intense growth for the City of Sydney, and in spite of the Great Depression falling in the middle of it, plenty of substantial public works projects were instigated then. One such project was an incinerator for the disposal of rubbish, the volume of which was on the increase and became a major problem for Government. At the turn of the century, a Bubonic plague had swept through the city, fueled by the amount of rotting rubbish, particularly in working class areas. One of the steps taken by the authorities to ensure a plague of such proportions didn't happen again was to burn the rubbish in giant reverberatory incinerators.
A reverberatory incinerator uses a vertical top gravity feed process. It was an Australian patented design by Essendon engineer John Boadle. It achieved much higher efficiency preheating and partly drying the refuse whilst it moved down a sloping, vibrating grate within the combustion chamber. The combustion chamber was designed to reverberate heat on to the incoming refuse. The vertical top gravity feed process required incinerator buildings to be built on steeply sloping sites or embankments.
A number of incinerators were built around Sydney, the largest of these was on the side of Distillery Hill in the inner suburb of Pyrmont. It was close to much of the city's industry at that time, as well as the working class areas, which were concentrated on in what today are the inner suburbs. The Incinerator's basic function - to get rid of the city's waste - was unglamorous, so to make it look as pleasing as possible, the Government employed husband and wife architectural team Walter Burley Griffin and his lwife, ifelong professional partner and architect, Marion Mahoney, to design it. Fresh from designing the national capital, Canberra, the Burley Griffins had moved to Sydney and set up an architectural and town planning practice on the outskirts of Sydney at what is now the suburb of Castle Cove. The Burely Griffins rose to the occasion. Their brief was to come up with a design that represented the highest possible accomplishment of architecture, and they didn't disappoint.
Pyrmont Incinerator
Strongly influenced by the ideas of anthroposophy, Walter Burley Griffin was captivated by the very notion of a reverberatory, the 'alpha-omega' method of waste disposal, the final expression and dissolution of Matter, in which 'matter is practically reduced to primeval elements - heat, light, sound and magnetism'. According to Marion Mahoney, wife, lifelong professional partner and architect, and biographer of Burley Griffin's antipodean accomplishments: "The Sydney Incinerator erected on the high rock promontory of Piermont will stand we think as an historical record of 20th century architecture. It is as beautiful, as majestic as unique as any of the historical records of the past. Historically it records the basic fact of the 19th Century civilisation later emphasised by the smashing of the atom.
"The Incinerator did not seek to overcome nature, but simply to understand its truth as expressed through its essential forms, tuned to the evidence that time bestows:
The four formative forces which have already manifested in nature express themselves in four basic forms: the Circular, the Triangular, the Wave [or Crescent] and the Rectangular. Within this building, [which is] a powerful expression of substantiality, matter reverses its steps moving from solid to liquid to light to heat and disappears. (In reverberation) it would absurd to say that something has been destroyed (other than form or appearance)."
As befitted such a noble purpose, the Griffins incorporated richly decorative Art Deco detailed work based on Aztec motifs into the Pyrmont building's design. The physical structure of the waste disposal unit was in such a way also emblematic of the ideas of Louis Sullivan, mentor to Burley Griffin throughout the 1920s, who believed the mantra that form must follow function. As such the purpose of its design was to maximise efficient waste disposal - and as a result was far more cost-effective than any competing design. Burley Griffin and his business partner, Eric Nicholls designed and built 18 reverberatory incinerators for municipal councils across Australia, the first being in Holmes Road, Moonee Ponds, in suburban Melbourne. Twelve Griffin and Nicholls designed incinerators were built in Sydney, two of which are still standing (Glebe and Willoughby). None of the 18 ncinerators are in use today because of the toxic fumes they generated, and only six have survived the demolition hammer.
The derelict Pyrmont Incinerator in 1990
At the height of its activity the Incinerator would process more than 100 truckloads per day, each containing over eleven cubic metres of refuse. But with the post-war transformation of inner city Sydney, in 1971 the Incinerator was shut down. As no other use could be found for its ravenous furnaces, it was simply abandoned.
In 1992 the crumbling ruin that had dominated the Pyrmont foreshore for decades was demolished in 1992 amid howls of protest not just from Sydney-siders, but Griffin enthusiasts around the world. In its place today are the Meriton apartments. Surprisingly, there is nothing left on the site that recalls what was one of the Sydney's most impressive 20th century architectural wonders. All that were saved were some ornamental tiles salvaged from the rubble that are on display at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum as well as photgraphs that confirm its existence. The last operating municipal waste incinerator technology in Australia, the Waterloo incinerator in Sydney, was closed down in 1996 due to pollution levels and community opposition.
Willoughby Incinerator
The Willoughby Incinerator was constructed by the Willoughby Council at a stretch of bushland at the top of the Flat Rock Gully known as Kent's Paddock, Flat Rock, at what is now Bicentennial Park, Willoughby. As was the case with the first of the municipal incinerators designed and built by Griffin and Nicholls in Moonie Ponds, the site selected was adjacent to parkland which meant it was in close proximity to residential areas but generally hidden from the residential area. This demanded a building which would, as far as possible, harmonise with its surroundings, and that was Burley Griffin's forte.
The Willoughby Incinerator was dedicated in September 1934 based upon a design by Griffin and Nicholls. The Burley Griffins loved the solid granite and less-solid sandstone of the Australian bush that is found in abundance around the Castlecrag peninsula where they lived, so it is not surprising to find it was used liberally in the construction of the Willoughby Incinerator. Art Deco was the predominant architectural style of the inter-war era, so it is not surprising to find that the Griffins' incinerators display a variety of distinctive Art Deco embellishments.
Emptying garbage into the Willoughby Incinerator
The incinerator is set over three levels and cascades down the sloping hillside in response to the functional requirements of its operation. Distinctively a Griffin design, it carries panels of Griffin's geometric modelling evident in many of his other designs. A composite reinforced concrete steel and brick structure, it consists of four levels of roofed tiled pitched and skillion forms punctuated by a faceted flue tower. The stepped forms are clad with sandstone at the sides and architectural concrete panels decorated with pyramidal designs revealing the influence of Ancient Mayan designs on Griffin's work.
Even when it was being built there was considerable community opposition to having a glorified rubbish disposal facility in their midst. Changes in the way rubbish was removed and disposed of, along with continued complaints at the facility's location, led to the incinerator being closed down in 1974. The council was then faced with what to do with the building. Over the years it has been used as a restaurant, offices for an architectural firm, as well what seems like the obligatory rite of passage for buildings that no one wants to get rid of, but can't find a use for - remain empty for a decade before being either bulldozed, or turned into a public space. In August 1996 the building was damaged by a fire that was able to be confined to the upper level, which was completely devastated. The two lower floors suffered extensive water damage but little direct fire damage. In 1997 the building was restored to office space potential but remained unused until 2011 when Willoughby Incinerator turned it into The Incinerator Art Space. Location: 2 Small Street, Willoughby.
Glebe Incinerator
Prior to the construction of the Glebe Incinerator in 1936, the Glebe Council used load its garbage onto barges at its depot on Forsyth Street and have it towed 10 km out to sea where it was dumped. The Incinerator was seen as the ideal solution to the problem of waste management. Built in 1933, this was the smallest of the Griffin and Nicholls designed incinerators, and of alln of them, it had the shortest operational life (17 years). It was closed in 1949 and in 1952, the furnace and flue were demolished.
The incinerator was reinterpreted and restored in 2006. There are signs all around the incinerator explaining its operation, and they are well worth reading, as they won an Architecture award for their interpretation of an industrial site. The rows of columns extending from the incinerator to the walkway are an interpretation of Council sheds designed by Griffin as part of his landscaping of the site. The facility has a small room suitable for meetings and small functions. Location: 53 Forsyth Street, Glebe.
