Not just any old skyscraper.(Ryan)(ICI House)

IT WAS THE BOAST of the Emperor Augustus that he found Rome a city of brick, and that he left it one of marble. There was much truth in his claim, even if it does betray all the off-colour overtones of an imperial usurper getting too big for his boots. Indeed, there is an uncanny foreshadowing of a later Roman orator: Mussolini, two thousand years on.

Honest brick had sufficed for the virtues of ancient republicanism under which Rome grew great. There is no evidence that civic standards grew higher behind imperial facades of marble, and a good deal to suggest the contrary. Come July, when this Quadrant article appears, glances will be exchanged within my family, eyebrows discreetly raised; there may even be sub-audible murmurs of: "Don't tell me--Father's off again in his Cato the Elder mode!" But they will be wrong.

It was not undergraduate memories of Suetonius and Tacitus that stirred these reflections, but the simple streetscape that confronts any pedestrian in Melbourne who looks up the Lonsdale Street hill towards Spring Street. Victoria's superb Parliament House can be imagined, rather than actually seen, just to the right of his direct line of eastward view. That view is halted by the blind, blue-grey glass facade of Melbourne's "first skyscraper"; it was opened some forty-five years ago as the Australia and New Zealand headquarters of British chemical giant ICI.

Until about 1960, it could fairly have been said that Melbourne's central city buildings were built mainly of bluestone, sandstone, brick, stucco or concrete, with the occasional addition of marble or granite. Today, any sizeable new building is bound to be yet another boring glasshouse. No use complaining--one might as well grumble about the weather; no doubt technical and economic advantages make these structures inevitable. But we are under no compulsion to like them. They have transformed our interesting streets into canyons of cheap and gimmicky glitz. Inside them, you will find responsible executives (for example, senior partners of big city law firms) doing their daily work in spaces which afford all the dignity and amenity of your average shower cubicle. But I digress: I intended to write about ICI House, where it all so unexpectedly began.

I say "unexpectedly" because although the building crafted with such infinite care by architects Bates Smart & McCutcheon certainly threw away every rule book of Melbourne building regulation and practice up to that time, it was nevertheless a "polite" pioneer. Its seventeen storeys were impressive without being overwhelming. Clear-standing on three sides, it did not crowd its neighbours. Its colours were subdued and tasteful, and every detail bespoke "class".

The new interior "open plan" didn't much appeal to me, but ICI House was (and remains) a distinguished building, and I was proud of it. Partly, of course, I was paid to be proud of it, because I was the company's public relations manager. But I also found real satisfaction in marching through its ground-floor revolving glass doors, or driving down into the then unusual carpark beneath. It wasn't just any old ordinary Melbourne office address.

The building was an unimaginable boon to any public relations manager. For a time, editors and journalists from all over Australia would do almost anything to be invited on a personal tour of inspection, accompanied by lunch in the splendid private dining room.