Design and Art Australia Online

Samuel Lipson (1901-1995) was born in Leeds to Lithuanian parents and began architectural training at the Glasgow School of Arts in 1916. In 1918, he became an articled pupil and assistant draughtsman with Honeyman and Keppie, later called Keppie and Henderson (where Charles Rennie Mackintosh had also worked) and afterwards joined the office of Sir John Burnet. In 1925, he was elected an associate of the RIBA (by examination) and came to Australia on an assisted passage and won a job with the Commonwealth Department of Works at Customs House, Circular Quay, where he worked with the Chief Architect for the branch, EH Henderson, and assisted Professor Leslie Wilkinson on building the School of Tropical Medicine and the School of Veterinary Science at the University of Sydney. He also designed the Commonwealth Bank head office on the eastern corner of Pitt Street and Martin Place. In 1932, he set up his own practice and was employed to transform the old Daily Telegraph building on the corner of King and Castlereagh Streets, into the Trust building, working with Stuart Bros. In the mid 1930s, he went into partnership with Peter Kaad, and Lipson and Kaad became a fashionable interwar practice, designing the Californian Café at Potts Point, the Normandie café at 7 Elizabeth Street (1935) and many other cafés in Art Déco style, as well as the Sea Breeze Hotel at Tom Ugly’s Bridge and the They were also influenced by Dutch architect Willem Dudok – especially evident on the Hoffnung Building in Clarence Street (1938) and Temple Emmanuel in Woollahra. They also designed the Hasting Deering car service station (1937), which incorporated a double helix ramp for the cars (precursor for the Sydney Opera House carpark). During the war, Lipson was seconded to the government to design air raid shelters and hostel buildings for war workers. After the war Lipson and Kaad found work documenting new branches of the Commonwealth Bank and low cost housing for the Housing Commission. During the 1950s, they designed Northcote Tower, a public housing high-rise in Surry Hills which Lipson later claimed was the biggest project in Australia at the time. Other 1950s projects were the United Carpet Mill, Five Dock; the Rex Hotel, Pagewood; the Sebel Townhouse Hotel, Kings Cross; the Israeli Embassy in Canberra (1961) and the Central Synagogue and War Memorial (1961). After the death of Peter Kaad, Lipson travelled to Europe, Israel and the United States.
Sources
—Staas, Robert. 1994. ‘Samuel Lipson’, in Architecture Bulletin May 1994.
—Various press clippings archived by the NSW RAIA Heritage Committee.

Writers:

Date written:

2015

Last updated:

2015