BHP HOUSE, 2018
Melbourne, Victoria

The former BHP House was completed in 1972 as the national headquarters of the Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) Company. The forty-one storey steel, concrete and glass building designed by Yuncken Freeman Architects and engineers Irwin Johnston & Partners and built by EA Watts was the tallest building in Melbourne at the time.

The Victorian Heritage Database citation reads in part:

The former BHP House is of architectural, scientific (technological) and historical significance to the State of Victoria.

It heralded a new aesthetic in high-rise buildings, with the replacement of 1950s and 1960s banded curtain walls and externally- expressed service cores with a new all-embracing sheer glazed curtain wall.
BHP House was designed, like similar earlier buildings of Mies van der Rohe, to be viewed as a three
dimensional sculptural monument separate from the surrounding cityscape. The open plan, fully glazed, ground floor plaza, which raises the bulk of the building to the first floor level, increases the sense of distinction. The building is an outstanding architectural expression of corporate image, especially through its innovative and extensive use of BHP's steel technology. The building was also distinguished by high quality and co-ordinated interior design, furniture and artwork, all now unfortunately removed.