There was a time when recycling building materials was not as fashionable or well regarded as it is today. Reusing a second hand door or window was regarded as doing things on the cheap rather than being environmentally responsible. While this time has fortunately passed, the challenge of effectively employing recycled materials in building remains.

The practitioners at Six Degrees Architects began to develop the skill of using recycled material early in the life of their practice. With a group of friends, they designed and built one of Melbourne’s first stand-alone bars in Meyers Place in 1992, mainly from recycled materials. They won the RAIA Melbourne Award for their work.

In 1995, they were commissioned to design the Blue Bar in Melbourne’s Chapel Street and decided to pursue the aesthetics and opportunities of recycled material further. Yet expression with recycled elements relies on what is currently or likely to be available. Using contacts in the recycling industry and visiting recyclers’ yards, they found a demolisher stripping out Melbourne’s BP House who was assembling a large stock of quality plywood faced doors. The architects acquired almost one hundred of these for the project and transformed them into a high grade lining in the walls and ceilings. Rejected and recycled timber was used for counters and lining. Cast iron drainage grates were converted into a patterning sidelight screen.

The architects enjoyed this process. In part, this came from a delight in incorporating materials that might otherwise be discarded or not used as well as they could. As designers and makers, they respect the value of the objects they use and did not want to see them wasted. The joy also came from knowing that they could take a resource that was ready to be discarded and transform it into something surprisingly different and playful. They found unexpected freedom in using recycled materials. Barriers of cost and expectation are removed. Due to the cost alone, it would normally be unthinkable to line a wall and ceiling with quality doors. However, it can be acceptable and economic to transpose a second hand office door into a wall-lining panel, leaving the marks of the handle and door hardware to intrigue the viewer.

Sometimes, a designer will find elements at a recycler’s store for which they do not have a current use but which they know they want to feature in a composition. Before receiving the commission to design the Three Below Bar in Melbourne’s City Square, Six degree’s Simon O’Brien discovered and acquired a set of finely made panelled doors and screens, complete with their original stained glass. When the Three Below project eventuated, they formulated the detail design of part of the bar around them. Transforming the doors and panels into the major elements of an enclosing and separating ceiling, they made a special home for high quality timber objects.

The Blue Bar is a combined bar and dining venue constrained in a long, thin plan. The architects recognised that to service the variety of expected customers, they needed to create a diversity of separate spaces within the whole. They also saw that the potentially least popular space, and therefore the most important to make attractive, would be the one furthest from the front door. So the design sets up a transition: from open and transient areas at the front of the Bar, to more comfortable and enclosed ones in the centre and finally to private and almost secretive corners at the back near the kitchen and meals counter.

The entry is set back, away from the thoroughfare to make room for tables, chairs, outdoor counters and other amenities. Beneath a stepped white bulkhead, the entry wall is a timber framed, glazed screen with a large pivoting window opening over a central counter. This and the other outdoor counters are hardwood trimmed and set on solid bases clad in 35 mm deep shiplap boards. The visual weight of these surfaces grounds the composition. The shiplap base continues inside, facing the lower part of one wall and the main counter. To highlight the rough and smooth of the new and reused material, cast iron drain covers face the wired sidelight to the aluminium entry door.

Delineation of space inside and out is achieved as much in the walls and ceiling as in the ground plane. The walls below door height to the front of the bar are bagged and painted brick. However, above the walls and upper ceiling plane are lined with the flush faced timber doors retrieved from BP House. Cleaned and given a light polish when delivered, the doors are set out in a regular grid. Lights and other fittings are either fixed to the faces of the doors or worked into the grid. To provide enclosure and disguise the necessary air handling equipment, large white plaster clad bulkheads sit below upper ceiling plane. Along the wall leading to the very back corner of the bar, greater intimacy and enclosure was required, so the lining of second hand doors runs down to provide the backing for a long bench seat, and the last, and most private of the tables. Recycled doors face the screen wall to the kitchen.

For the Three Below commission, the architects explored similar themes. Diverse spaces are established by elements in the ground and ceiling plane, recycled materials are mixed with the new ones in ways that belie their original purpose, and the differing feel and texture of materials are set to contrast with each other. The Three Below Bar includes a restaurant, dining area, and an outdoor servery but the heart of the design focuses on a central bar.

As the floor area here must accommodate the maximum number of patrons, the sculpturing of space happens in the ceiling where the found doors are incorporated into the canopy of an abstract forest. Concrete columns form the boles of the trees and painted steel, the lower braches. The doors, with green fabric covered bulkheads form the upper branches and leaves. The doors subdivide the room while the bulkheads conceal mechanical systems and provide the acoustic baffling necessary to counteract reflection from the exposed concrete in the walls and ceiling.

The floor, expected to be full of revellers, has much simpler inclusions and surfaces. While the floor to the entry way is stone, red ironbark parquetry is used in the main area. This wood is sourced from a Bairnsdae saw miller's paddock and reminscent of the redgum blocks originally used to pave the space between Melbourne’s tramlines. Unlike the door however, these blocks could not be used without resawing and reprocessing into the required forms. Solid recycled jarrah benches project simply from the concrete columns, matching the tables in the two booths. These booths have concrete enclosing walls and rich leather covered seats. The blond plywood panels used in the walls, spaced like the lining of trams, are faced in clear finished pale Victorian ash. A line of mirrors set below them provides a vibrant reference. Richly coloured wall panels round off the composition.

Recycling building materials well in architectural design takes dedication and a developed eye. When elements are pulled out of a building and collected in a recycler’s yard, they retain a connection to their past, through their shape, the marks that they bear of fixture and handling, and the stories of their origin told by the demolisher. However, they lose this reference context. Recycled materials in a store have a potential for reuse but they could just as easily be used to patch an old fence as feature in a new building design. Also, recycling yards are not necessarily delicate or careful places so the potential for creative reuse can be short lived.

As with many materials, timber can be recovered from previous applications and reprocessed into new, useful products. These connotations complement more pragmatic considerations: solid timber elements are relatively easy to clean, recoat and repair yet generally retain their appeal once they have been repaired. They are also relatively light and remain easy to fix and work.  However, high quality timber elements have a greater potential. They seem to collect a richness and patina during their normal service life which survives the shock of removal and storage. When reused, timber elements can enliven a design, representing a time when different skills and more time were committed to assembly and making.

Written by Greg Nolan

timber schedule

Blue Bar

Bar bench tops

Duraloid & Victorian ash edge strip, Eucalyptus delegatensis

and Eucalyptus regnans

Counter facing

recycled Victorian Ash, E. delegatensis and E. regnans

Door face veneer Oak Veneer with walnut stain french polished

Three Below

Parquetry floor

Red ironbark, Eucalyptus sideroxylon ssp Rosea

Bench tops and booth tables

Blue stone, recycled jarrah Eucalyptus marginata

Plywood walllining

Victorian ash, quarter cut, clear stain, E. delegatensis and E.

regnans

Recycled doors

Malvern Mansion, 1920's French polish