ANATOL KAGAN: PIONEERING MELBOURNE MODERNISM

January 2024

Across Melbourne there are wonderful concentrations of mid-century architecture. An early protagonist of this movement was Anatol Kagan, an architect with a distinctive European Emigre palette that he imprinted on the burgeoning post-war suburbs of Australia. Kagan’s work, especially his residential projects, continue to be poignant examples of human-focused, crafted and functional projects. Remarkably seventy years after the completion of these houses they are still continuing to shape the trajectory of Australian architecture.

Anatol Kagan was born in St Petersburg in 1913. His father was part of a group of intellectuals who were forced into exile after the 1917 revolution. The Kagan’s were Jewish by race but not religion and the family resettled in Germany to come under political hostility once again as the Nazi regime took hold. In 1932 Anatol Kagan began studying architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin. He had intended to transfer to the Bauhaus the next year, however its closure due to political stresses stopped this. This caused him to remain in Berlin and complete his full architectural studies and graduated in 1937.

Kagan worked briefly as an architect in Germany before swiftly moving to Australia via a brief stint in London. Australia and Argentina were the only two countries accepting migrants who intended to start an architecture practice. Kagan was fluent in many languages including English, but not Spanish, so Australia was the selected destination. He arrived in Australia in early 1939, at the spry age of 25, ready to focus his abundant life experiences on the architectural setting of Melbourne.

Soon after arriving in Melbourne Kagan found work in the architectural office of A & H L Peck before shifting across to the noted firm of Seabrook & Fildes. The work of Seabrook & Fildes had recently rose to prominence with the completion of the MacPherson Robertson Girls High School in 1934, a project later cited by Robin Boyd as the building that started the modernist movement in Melbourne. Whilst working in their office Kagan worked on significant projects such as the Warracknabeal Town Hall, a design with clear links to the work of Dutch architect Willem Dudok. Over the coming years Kagan would also work for the office of Joseph Plottel and the firm Buchan, Laird & Buchan.

During the beginning of the Second World War Kagan made the bold move into private practice with George Blumin, first casually and then formalised as Blumin & Kagan in 1941. The duo worked on a range of projects with clear links to Kagan’s time at Seabrook & Fildes, including two neighbouring apartment projects in East Melbourne and a new factory for Broons & Sons in Brunswick. Unfortunately, as the stresses of wartime began to take full hold on Australia the offices work dried up and Kagan found himself teaching Russian in the city to get by.

As the wartime shortages progressed Kagan began working as the in-house architect for ACI who had won a large contract to produce missiles and required an upgrade and extension to their Spotswood factories. As the war finally ended the focus shifted to post-war housing and he began working for the Department of Works & Housing on the Beaufort House scheme. The project looked to develop a prefabricated modular steel home that could be utilised to solve some of the post-war housing shortages. The prototype of the Beaufort House was displayed in Treasury Gardens in 1946 and the government committed to 5,000 units. Sadly, only a limited few were actually completed, with a small group still remaining in Pascoe Vale South in Melbourne’s north.

Kagan in the years that followed the war developed a casual collaboration with Bert Young, a developer/builder. One of their earliest residential projects was the Shipman Residence, a confident two-storey modern dwelling on a prominent corner along Burke Road in Kew East. The project features a bold vertical central volume that the horizontal elements use as a mounting point to expand off from. The palette links to European Emigre modernism, a style that was evident during Kagan’s study in Berlin and is a palette that he would revisit regularly, most explicitly in the Broons Residence II in Kew.

The project was heralded with a lush colour spread in the Australian House and Garden magazine in 1948. A key part of the article was the praised the solar planning of the house, which included a section drawing to demonstrate that summer sun was restricted and winter sun obscured. A novel idea for the time that is now an innate element of architectural design.

The success of the Shipman Residence is best exemplified by the series of nearby projects that it spawned for Kagan in the coming years. This ability to leverage one project into numerous others was a key strength that he would utilise throughout his career and speaks to the proud street presence and enduring functionality of the houses.

In 1949 he officially formed his own architectural office as Anatol Kagan & Associates. A practice that operated in Melbourne for over a decade and created an enviable array of mostly residential projects. One of the offices first projects was a small house in Studley Park for David Bell, an accountant and friend of the Broons family.

The Bell House was completed in 1950 when the supply restrictions on construction were still evident and can be seen in the scale of the two-bedroom dwelling. The house is situated on a small wedge-shaped corner site and to disguise the small footprint it is elevated above the ground plane to embolden the houses stature. This gesture is exaggerated by the elongated height of the leading corner massing, which is also cantilevered out to frame the carport below.

Kagan’s projects often recess the entry deep into the plan and identifies its location with a stone or masonry element. At the Bell House this sequence is via a staircase up to the street facing terrace and entry vestibule. The entry leads into the upper-level living spaces, which positions all the key rooms back towards the street and Yarra River tree canopies. The project has been recently renovated by Kennedy Nolan. The scope of the renovations has notably left the major design elements of the house untouched, developing the skilful bones of the original Kagan design. Adding flourishes of colour and texture that weren’t initially allowed for under the initial wartime supply shortages.

During the 1950’s Anatol Kagan became the one of the leading residential architects in Melbourne. He openly acknowledged that he never marketed his services widely and instead found work through two forms of word-of-mouth clients: repeat clients from the European refugee community and professional collaborators.

The prevalence of Kagan’s projects across Studley Park has led to the area often being referred to as ‘Kaganville’ and a key element of this being realised was the strong family connection with the Broons family that initially began with their Brunswick factory. In addition to the connection to the initial 1950 Bell House, the Broons family commissioned not one, not two, but three separate houses for different members of the family that are all located in Studley Park.

Interestingly the three Broons residences are all rooted in European modernism but differ in completed outcomes. Broons Residence I is an evolution of the clean modular form of the Bell Residences that is located just down the street. The Broons Residence II embraces the strong vertical and horizontal juxtaposition that was successful in the earlier Shipman Residence. Whilst the Broons Residence III hints at the Art Moderne maritime inspiration of the nearby Lyall Residence, but in a more understated manner.

A substantial portion of Kagan’s work was for professionals that he worked with across his projects. One example, which potentially became the highpoint of his Studley Park residential projects, was the Lyall House. James Lyall was an artisan plasterer and commissioned Kagan to design a luxurious family residence on a unique corner block at the base of Yarravale Road, a section of Studley Park already abundant with Kagan houses.

The Lyall House is located on an awkward corner block which led to a house with two distinct faces, a sharp and narrow side face and an elongated north facing front façade. The overall form sits on a stone plinth of Lilydale stone and allows for the dramatic twin-level full-length balconies that hover out towards the street. The assembly of these elements give the house an Art Moderne ocean liner character that creates a dramatic and sophisticated street presence. A design that is truly captivating and frames the entry to ‘Kaganville’ perfectly.

The Lind Residence in Caulfield North became Kagan’s most recognisable project thanks to its prominent position on a major arterial road into the city. The side elevation celebrates the butterfly roof form thanks to the houses angled orientation to the road. The projects layout exemplified Kagan’s strong preference for the upside-down house, with the principal living areas all located on the upper level free of the complexities of the ground plane. A portion of the front facade is recessed back from the street and features a full-height window wall that oozes mid-century charm with a pattern of mullions and openings to bring in an abundance of natural light without losing the human scale of the design.

The key elements of the Lind Residence demonstrate Kagan’s shift away from early European modernism to a more mid-century palette. This included the increased use of circular steel posts to elevate the upper living forms replacing the stonework motif of his previous designs. The open metal balustrades of Kagan’s earlier projects also began to be more solid, reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s later houses, such as his Sturges House, that got renewed publicity around his passing in 1959.

Whilst the office of Anatol Kagan & Associates largely focused on residential work there was one major exception: the Mount Scopus War Memorial College development. The Jewish day school was originally located on St Kilda Road before outgrowing this in the 1950’s and moving to an entirely new purpose-built campus on a ten-acre site in Burwood East. Kagan was selected in collaboration with fellow Jewish architect Dr Ernest Fooks. The substantial project was first theorised as a masterplan and was gradually realised over the subsequent decades.

The partnership of Kagan and Fooks was not a clear division, with the attribution of Mount Scopus remaining a contentious topic that has never been conclusively clarified. Although the difference in their palettes can be seem in the two key buildings of the original masterplan: the sloped roofed and cross planned forms of Kagan’s junior school (recently demolished) and the crisper flat roofed modernist form of Fooks’s senior school.

Given his tumultuous political upbringing Kagan enjoyed the philosophies of the socialist leanings of the John Cain Victorian Labor government tenure, however as the leadership transitioned to Henry Bolte, Kagan became upset with this new direction. Such was his discontentment that it prompted a shift in setting and the Kagan family moved to Sydney. During this period Kagan looked to expand the Melbourne office to Sydney, but this struggled due to his disposition to not go out and chase work.

Around this time the Sydney Opera House international design competition was announced. Kagan was very passionate about classical music, so the opportunity was one that he could not resist. Over a series of months Kagan delved deeply into the riddle of the brief and developed a scheme that was submitted. His proposal focused heavily on the flexibility of the acoustics to achieve a high-performance opera venue in all scenarios. The main detraction was that to achieve this flexibility it prompted a rectilinear form that has been unfortunately compared to a supermarket. Given the focus on function over form in Kagan’s design he was left to bemoan the eventual Utzon selection that flipped this paradigm and prioritised form over function.

After several years in Sydney where he predominantly worked on Melbourne projects remotely, the Kagan family moved back to Melbourne in 1957. The office of Anatol Kagan & Associates upon his return featured two key associates Bill Millar and Ray Bernard-Brown who were both pushing to work on larger scale projects. This led to the office working proportionally on the most non-residential projects during this period than at any other time. This included continued expansion of the Mount Scopus masterplan, the Sher Power Tools factory in Collingwood (recently demolished) and several community centres that were not realised at the heart of housing schemes in Melbourne’s south-east.

The split between commercial and residential work in the office reached a tipping point and in 1959 Bernard-Brown and Millar decided to leave the office and start their own firm. This move refocused Anatol Kagan & Associates back on residential work and they completed a series of new residential projects across Melbourne’s inner south-east. This included the Witten Residence in Toorak and Buckstein Residence in Kew that further featured the evolving toolkit of modernism that was seen at the Lind Residence.

In dramatic fashion in 1961 Anatol Kagan made the big decision to shut his architecture practice and move northward to Sydney once again. The main reason for the shift was his own conscious. As a strong socialist he was not feeling fulfilled by the work of designing bespoke residences for wealthy clients and wanted to focus his time on items that created larger public good. The active projects in the office at this time were split into two parts. A portion were taken over by Millar & Bernard-Brown including the Karana Flats in South Yarra. The other jobs were continued in a new incarnation of the Melbourne office renamed Kagan, Lyall & Associates Architects and Designers that was led by Peter Lyall (son of James Lyall) and Julie Walsh.

After arriving in Sydney again in 1961 Kagan was appointed as an architect within the NSW Department of Public Works. His work initially focused on school projects, before shifting to the State Hospital & Psychiatric Section. This role included upgrading the Rydalmere Hospital and the consolidation of the Coroners Court, State Morgue and Division of Forensic Medicine into the one precinct in Glebe. Kagan stayed within this role until his retirement as he found a keen interest in the architecture of psychiatric institutions, which included several study trips and research reports into the typology.

Upon reaching the compulsory retirement age in 1973 it offered him the ideal context for a much deeper exploration and contemplation of his diverse passions for several more decades until his passing in 2009. These interests included lecturing at the Theosophical Society, regular engagement with the ALP (he was appointed a life member in 2002) and the theoretical reworking and masterplanning of his birthplace Leningrad.

The career and life experiences of Anatol Kagan were uniquely diverse and helped to foster a profound architectural career. Whilst Kagan’s residential projects are often cited as some of the best examples of mid-century design in Melbourne they are regularly under regular attack by developers. Their combination of humble sized dwellings on generous blocks is sadly readily seen as an opportunity to demolish and rebuild for profit. Recently both the Alessio Residence at 6 Kilsyth Avenue Toorak and the Holmes Residence at 49 Cascade Street Balwyn North have been demolished. Thankfully the importance of Anatol Kagan’s work in demonstrating a occupant focused form of modernism is once again finding increased reverence. This momentum will hopefully lead to more of his projects finding their way or remaining in the hands of owners who appreciate the marvellous work and are able to harness their positive energy to ensure Anatol Kagan’s legacy can be maintained for generations to come.

FURTHER ANATOL KAGAN PROJECTS:

REFERENCES:

• Gentle Modernist: The Nine Lives of Anatol Kagan, by Simon Reeves, 2014

• Assessment of Heritage Precincts in Kew, Lovell Chen (prepared for the City of Booroondara), 2013