ABC’s famed Ripponlea studios, once home to such shows as Countdown, Seachange, Kath & Kim, Spicks & Specks, Bellbird, Gordon Street Tonight are in the final stages of being dismantled before demolition will be completed within four weeks time.
New owners Milieu Property will construct contemporary apartments across six buildings. Designed by architects Woods Bagot, Elsternwick Gardens (below) will be surrounded by greenery and private access to the adjacent to the heritage-listed Ripponlea Estate. Upon completion Ripponlea gardeners will also care for Elsternwick Gardens.
The site was originally the traditional land of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation, before being transformed by colonialism during the mid-19th Century.
ABV2 became the fourth television station in Australia in the mid 1950s which a Glen Eira City Council heritage assessment noted was of “cultural significance at the national, state and local level as a place associated with influential television programming over a broad range of subjects including natural history, drama, comedy, news and current affairs, but particularly for culturally influential drama productions such as Bellbird and Seachange and live-audience music productions such as Countdown, which greatly influenced an entire generation of Australian youth in the 1970s and 1980s.”
ABC vacated the site in 2017 with Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell as the final program to broadcast.
Following community consultation, the broadcast tower, part of the Elsternwick skyline, will become a sculptural element in the centre of the property. Artist Darren Sylvester has also been commissioned to create a permanent digital work from ABC Archives, to be installed in an ABC Lane, the main driveway for residents.
The demolition will mark an end of an era in Australian television and come at the same time as the 50th anniversary of Countdown in November. Developers will include a Countdown Swing set, inspired by the music show’s set, which doubles as an art installation.
A second former ABC administration site in nearby Selwyn Street has been the subject of local community objections after a Woolworths proposal for two towers with 139 apartments and retail.
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