Philip Rupert

13/06/1884

Philip Claridge was a founder of what has become one of Australia’s largest architectural practices, Hassell. Claridge also made a large impact on the architectural profession through his work in establishing the Royal Australian Institute of Architects.

Philip Rupert Claridge was born in Crystal Brook in rural South Australia on the 13 June 1884 to storekeeper and pastoralist Philip Henry Claridge and Hannah (nee Bray). Philip was the youngest son of five children, three sons and two daughters. In 1911 Claridge married Evelyn Degenhardt, the daughter of Adelaide solicitor Gustav Degenhardt. They had a daughter, Evelyn Dorothy (b.1913), and a son, Philip George Brian Claridge (known as Brian) (b.1924), who also became an architect. Philip Claridge died on 29 June 1968, aged 84.

Claridge was educated at Crystal Brook Primary School in his mid-north home town. He continued his education at Prince Alfred College, Kent Town playing collegiate football and cricket. His art teacher at Prince Alfred College was James Ashton who influenced the young Claridge in his choice of architecture as a career. After leaving school in 1901 he attended the SA School of Mines and Industries and was articled to Edward Davies of Edward Davies and Rutt in 1903 for his architectural training.

Claridge was employed for a time by Messrs. Sibley and Wooldridge but later returned to work for Edward Davies and Rutt. In 1910, when Charles Rutt left the firm, Claridge joined Davies in partnership as Davies and Claridge until 1917 when the partnership was dissolved. Claridge became an associate of Hubert H. Cowell and later set up what was to become his own practice of Philip R. Claridge and Associates. In 1930 he opened an office in Renmark and worked at river towns such as Barmera, Berri, Waikerie and Loxton. Claridge worked as a sole practitioner as well as with Lionel Gregory Bruer and Norman Carter Fisher in 1932 and with Fisher at Renmark in 1933. From 1935 to 1937 he also worked with Thomas Rex Viner Lloyd in country locations throughout South Australia. In Adelaide he took on two associates, Russell Stuart Ellis and Colin Hassell to become Philip R. Claridge and Associates.

In 1937 Jack McConnell was introduced to Claridge, who was in Melbourne to recruit a designer for a proposed bank head office in Adelaide. McConnell accepted the job and moved to South Australia to begin work with the practice. In 1939 the practice became Philip R. Claridge, Hassell and McConnell when Claridge took on Hassell and McConnell as partners. He retired in 1949 and the practice was renamed Hassell and McConnell. The practice continues as Hassell with offices both nationally and internationally.

Philip Claridge was a member of the South Australian Institute of Architects (SAIA) serving as Vice President between 1923 and 1925 and President from 1925 to 1927 and again from 1933 to 1935. As such he became involved in the push for the federation of the six separate state institutes into one national body, the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAIA). In 1929 he was part of the group which constructed the Memorandum of Agreement for the Australian Institute of Architects (later RAIA). Claridge was a Councillor of the RAIA from 1929 to 1936, Vice-President from 1930 to 1931 and 1935 to 1936 and President from 1931 to 1932. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1930. Claridge was also the President of the SA Chamber of Building Industry and Director of Claridge House, the building which housed his offices and other commercial tenancies (Who’s Who 1936).

Philip Claridge was very active in his local community. He was a member of Burnside City Council for 25 years and was twice elected Mayor, from 1944 to 1947 and from 1956 to 1959. As Mayor of Burnside he was able to organise the donation of the house ‘Attunga’ and surrounding land on Kensington Road to build the Burnside Soldiers Memorial Hospital in 1948. A design competition was organised which was won by Hassell and McConnell in 1955. In his second term as Mayor he took a leading role in the establishment of Burnside Public Library.

Claridge played many sports including bowls, tennis, district cricket and golf. His sporting associations included those with the Norwood Football Club for which he played in 1905 and later became Vice President, the Toorak Bowling Club where he was a foundation member, Mt Osmond Country Club, as Director and founder, and with the SA Cricket Association of which he was both a member and their architect.

During the Depression of the 1930s Claridge was a member of the Unemployed Relief Council. He joined the Cheer Up Society during World War Two. Claridge was President of the Prince Alfred Old Collegians Association, a member of the Prince Alfred College Council, and on the Board of Directors of Girton Girls’ School. Other organisations he served included the Adelaide YMCA, the Royal SA Justices Association and, for 25 years, the Adelaide Rotary Club. He received the King George V Jubilee Medal for Civic and Community Service in 1935.

While Claridge was working in the office of Sibley and Wooldridge in the early years of the century, he worked on the Hackney tram barn and administrative offices for the Metropolitan Tramways Trust. On his return to Davies he completed designs for the tramway power station at Port Adelaide for the same client. While working with Hubert H. Cowell he designed the Memorial Block at Prince Alfred College and the later Preparatory School building (1936). In the early stages of his practice he was very active in the Crystal Brook area and designed the new District Hospital. During the period in which he had an office at Renmark he worked on an extension to the Renmark Hotel and the Distillery and Packing Sheds for Renmark Fruit Growers Co-op Limited.

Claridge worked on many sporting and recreation projects. He was in charge of golf course construction and designed and built the clubhouse at Mt Osmond Country Club. He was the Maintenance Architect for the SA Cricket Association until 1968. It was this cricketing connection which allowed him to meet Donald Bradman for whom he designed a house at Kensington Park and later, in 1935, added a billiard room. Claridge designed many suburban residences, including one for V. Claring-Bould, Heywood Avenue, Unley Park, and his own homes in Alexandra Avenue (1914) and in Grant Avenue (1926) both in Toorak Gardens. His garden won several garden competitions.

Claridge designed the Westbourne Park Methodist Church and Girton Girl’s School, Kensington Park (now part of Pembroke School). In 1936 the practice designed the Port Lincoln Soldiers Memorial Hall which features Art Deco inspired interiors. When he worked with T.R.V. Lloyd between 1935-1937 projects included a reinforced concrete church design for Berri and country churches at Ardrossan, Wudinna and Minnipa. They also collaborated on the State Bank at Gladstone (1937), which gives a modern interpretation to historic decoration and forms (RAIA SA Significant 20th Century Architecture 1983). Another built work by Claridge, Bruer and Fisher is Sands and MacDougall’s building on King William Street, Adelaide (1933).

The Bank of NSW, designed by a young Jack McConnell for the practice and which stands on the corner of North Terrace and King William Street, Adelaide, (1937-38) although not designed personally by Claridge is perhaps the practice’s first truly modern building. It was built in association with Louis Laybourne Smith, who had been articled to Davies and Rutt alongside Claridge, to give advice on the structure. It has eight floors with the main entrance from King William Street. Designed in the ‘inter-war stripped classical’ style (Apperly 1989) the bank is characterised by symmetrical massing reminiscent of classical proportioning systems.

In the early 1940s the firm of Claridge, Hassell and McConnell won the competition to design the Prospect Town Hall and in 1946 won the Burnside War Memorial Hospital competition. In 1947 they designed the new premises for International Harvester Co. at Southwark also in the modern style. The influence of the younger generation of architects in the practice was becoming increasingly evident by the time the Claridge, Hassell and McConnell partnership dissolved in November 1949. Claridge then joined with Ronald Gunn, before setting up his own office until his retirement in 1964 (Dutkiewicz 2008).

Julie Collins

Citation details
Collins, Julie, ‘Claridge, Philip Rupert’, Architecture Museum, University of South Australia, 2008, Architects of South Australia: [http://www.architectsdatabase.unisa.edu.au/arch_full.asp?Arch_ID=10]