ETA Foods Factory

Building

The ETA Foods Factory was designed by Romberg of Grounds Romberg and Boyd for the original owner, Nut Foods. The curtain wall of the administration building presented the public façade, and it was one of the most distinguished industrial buildings during the post-war period.

It is notable for the elegance of the handling of the Miesian curtain wall fronting Ballarat Road with alternating bands of clear and black glass, exposed tubular steel diagonal members picked out in gold matte paint and classical colonnade implied in the regular rhythm of structural columns. The building forms a façade to the more utilitarian sawtooth roof factory behind but is detached from it, separated by a landscaped courtyard garden and linked by a continuous cantilevered loading bay canopy which forms the fourth side of the courtyard.

The glass and aluminium construction continues around the sides and back giving the building a stand-alone integrity unusual for factory offices. A cantilevered, "floating" staircase enclosed by the glass wall forms the prominent entrance feature. A service tower stands above the roof line as a projecting geometric form that originally carryed the ETA brand name.

Landscape and sculpture

Integral to the design was an internal landscaped garden courtyard with a rock pool and fountain designed by John Stevens. A sculpture commissioned from Teisutis (Joe) Zikaras consists of two cast concrete sections of similar curving forms, placed one above the other in a delicate sense of balance on a basalt boulder at the base, and set in a circular concrete basin filled with water and edged with basalt boulders. Four copper discs on opposite sides were meant to direct water onto the sculpture but are not in working order. Remnants of the original integrated landscape design can be seen, including cactus and cordyline in the courtyard. Angular and zig-zag paths and pebble borders are only evident in fragments.