Mordechai Benshemesh

Mordechai Benshemesh (Tel Aviv, 16 January 1911 – Melbourne, 22 December 1993) was a noted architect who practiced in Melbourne, Australia from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Born in Palestine, he was one of a number of often Jewish émigré architects who migrated to Australia both before and after World War II who brought a different approach to architecture, as well as an appreciation of apartment living.

He is best known as the architect for one of the city's first high rise modernist apartment blocks, Edgewater Towers in St Kilda.

Mordechai Benshemesh was born on 16 January 1911, in Tel Aviv, which at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire.

His father, Shmuel-Mosh Sekatrov, had emigrated from Ukraine, to Palestine changing the family name to Benshemesh.

He studied at the Polytechnical School in Tel Aviv between 1930 and 1933 before traveling to London where he completed diplomas from the British Institute of Engineering Technology and the International Correspondence School.

At the age of 28, perhaps sensing the coming war and possibly under the ruse of being part of a Palestinian soccer club, he migrated to Australia, arriving on 13 June 1939.

He spent the next ten years working with numerous Melbourne architects; most notably Arthur W. Plaisted (1940–41) and Harry Raymond 'Ray' Johnson (1946–49).

His late 1940s and 1950s apartment projects such as Barkly Lodge were almost Art Deco in style, characterised by cream brick in overlapping unadorned square volumes, with rectangular steel-framed windows and simple projecting balconies and stair towers.

His two St Kilda high rise projects were by contrast in thin planes of all-white reinforced concrete, but still with a complex rectangular character of projecting blocks and balconies.

Later projects were more typical for their period.

Benshemesh was naturalised as an Australian citizen on 6 December 1946.

While working for Johnson, he was the lead designer, producing a string of apartment projects in St Kilda and Elwood.

Between 1948 and 1954, Benshemesh designed a distinct group of significant apartment buildings in St Kilda, St Kilda East and Caulfield North which are fine examples of functionalist style architecture and show impressive boldness in their massing.

The group comprises:

They are all constructed either primarily or entirely of blonde brick, have flat, traversable roofs and steel windows.

Many feature distinctive porthole windows.

These buildings were all designed and constructed during a period of significant apartment construction in Melbourne's inner south-east following World War II, fueled by population growth, and changes to building codes and the introduction of land titles which allowed people to own individual flats.

While many of these apartments are generic, a number were architect designed and are distinguished by their fine detailing and sit responsiveness.

Significantly, many of the architects who designed these apartments were émigrés trained in Europe who moved to Melbourne either between the two world wars or after World War II, including Benshemesh himself, Kurt Popper, Ernest Fooks and Michael R. E. Feldhagen.

They very often were also working for European émigré and refugee clients accustomed to apartment living.

When Johnson retired from architecture Benshemesh opened his own architectural firm in 1950.

Beginning with the then typical 2-3 storey walk-up flats in the St Kilda-Toorak area, by the end of the decade he was designing high-rise apartments, and then office towers as well.

Edgewater Towers located at 12 Marine Parade, St Kilda, was constructed in 1959–1960.

When construction was complete the tower was advertised in The Age as "everything you'd find in a Manhattan building, only minutes from Collins Street".

It was the first high rise apartment block in St Kilda, and one of the first in Melbourne.

The tower supports 100 one bedroom and two bedroom apartments all with balconies, laundry and garbage disposal chutes, lounge rooms and dinettes.

Throughout the 1960s numerous planning permits were permitted to allow enclosed balconies.

Edgewater Towers is an example of International Style modernism, and is constructed largely out of reinforced concrete.

The City of Port Phillip's heritage listing notes that it was "the first of St Kilda's residential highrise developments".

The listing goes further to state "It still plays an important symbolic role in the perception of St Kilda's character and imagery.....Standing somewhat like a towering section of a stranded ocean liner, it announces St Kilda's uniquely nautical cosmopolitan zone at its southern approaches."

The Motel Palm Lake is located at 50-52 Queens Road, facing Albert Park.

Only the two Canary Island Palm trees that represented the Motel's name that were planted at the entry in 1961 on the opening day by the Lord Mayor still remain.

The building was demolished and trees removed in 2023.

Opened on 13 December 1962 by the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Maurice Nathan, it was one of Melbourne's most prestigious motels at the time.

It originally had 84 suits with open balconies facing the park on one side, and a popular swimming pool terrace to the north.

Facilities included on site parking, conference facilities, a nightly dinner dance and a licensed restaurant ('The Outrigger').

It remained in operation under a new name, Noah's Palm Lake Motel.

In recent years, two more storeys and a multi-level car park surrounding the swimming pool terrace were added in phases, and the open balconies on both sides enclosed, completely changing the appearance.

Benshemesh died on 22 December 1993.