Orica House

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Orica House, originally ICI House, is a tall office building at 1 Nicholson Street in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Construction began in 1955 and finished in 1958 to house the Australian headquarters of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI), which later became the independent company Orica. At 81 metres tall and with 20 floors, it was Australia’s tallest building when it opened, breaking Melbourne’s height limit of 132 feet. It was the first International Style skyscraper in the country and helped redefine Melbourne’s skyline, signaling postwar progress and corporate power. The design, by Osborn McCutcheon of Bates Smart McCutcheon, drew on modern glass towers in the United States, such as the UN Secretariat Building. Early on, some panes of coloured glass shattered in the heat of Melbourne summers. The building is listed on the Victorian Heritage Register as one of the few post‑war office buildings and the first to be added.