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Incinerator Gallery
Designed by Walter Burley Griffin.
The City of Essendon commissioned world-renowned architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony, and engineering company REICO in 1929 to build a state of the art and world-leading incinerator. They wanted a building to house the furnaces that would burn the city’s waste but not look like an industrial facility.
The Griffin’s proposal achieved this by following the principles of Prairie School architecture that were developed earlier in their careers in Chicago with local architects including Frank Lloyd Wright. Their aim was to create a building that fitted harmoniously into its environment with Walter Burley Griffin stating that “the final test of modernism is the replacement of industrial eyesores”.
The City of Essendon’s new building was lauded for its beauty and effectiveness and used until it was decommissioned in 1942. It was left to deteriorate until 1984, when the City of Essendon reopened the facility as a community theatre before closing again after a few years due to funding issues. Its arts legacy was not long forgotten though, with the site undergoing a conservation program, reopening as a multi-arts facility in 2004 as the Incinerator Arts Complex.
The venue was renamed the Incinerator Gallery in 2011 and refocused on a new plan to establish it as a premier visual arts destination in Melbourne’s West.