Julius Gottlieb Gallery and Boathouse at former Carmel College

The Julius Gottlieb Gallery and Boathouse was designed in 1968 and built between 1969 and 1970 by Sir Basil Spence, Bonnington and Collins, with John Urwin Spence as design architect. It originally served Carmel College, a Jewish boarding school founded in 1948 and located at Mongewell from 1953 until its closure in 1997. The building was presented to the college as a memorial by Lieutenant Commander E.J. Gottlieb to his father, Julius Gottlieb, a designer in wood and patron of the arts.

The building comprises a boathouse set within a plinth of curving brick walls, topped by a reinforced concrete pyramid. The pyramid is 12.2 metres square and rises to a height of 14 metres. Brick pavers form the roof of the boathouse. The pyramid’s concrete shell, finished with a trowelled ‘gunite’ surface, is pierced with triangular openings whose soffits are painted in primary colours and fitted with toughened plate clerestory glazing in metal frames. A side entrance has glazing with triangular lights and square panes within a board-marked triangular surround, incorporating coloured glass and the monographed ‘J G’. Projecting concrete gargoyles direct rainwater into brick pools, integrated into the building’s design.

The gallery interior is lined with board-marked concrete, with integrated light brackets. Entry is via steps leading to a raised platform designed for three-dimensional artwork, bordered by fixed concrete benches. The boathouse interior is reportedly simple, lit by a single triangular rooflight.

The pyramidal form was considered appropriate for a monument, with the boathouse deliberately designed as a subordinate element. The building’s original purpose was to exhibit industrial and engineering design as well as arts and crafts. It represents a dramatic example of the increasingly monumental geometrical forms favoured by Sir Basil Spence in the 1960s. The structure’s small scale allowed for the successful integration of these ideas and has been recognised as proto-postmodern due to its use of classical geometry.