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Aubrey H. Job (1907-2003) and Robert P. Froud (1920-2001) were Australian architects who shared a practice in South-East Queensland. They are best known for the design of Torbreck, Brisbane’s first “home unit development”.

Early Years (1944-1957)
Job and Froud met as employees for the Commonwealth Department of Labour and National Service, in the period immediately following World War II, in which Froud had briefly served. Upon release from this department, Job began practicing with two colleagues, Charles W. Fulton and James M. Collins, with Job as a drafting assistant.

Following a gradual breakdown of relationships within the practice, Froud and Job decided to leave and commence their own practice as a partnership, under the name “Aubrey H. Job and R. P. Froud Architects”. They based themselves in the Kratzmann Building on High Street in Toowong, where they remained for the duration of the practice.

The early years of the practice consisted of a number of domestic projects, often with friends or family as clients. Examples include Bullock Residence (1955) for friends of Job in Noosa, and O'Reilly Residence (1957) for friends of Froud in Toowong. The business was failing financially, so Job took a part-time position lecturing at the Central Technical College (now Queensland University of Technology), supplementing the practice revenue and ascertaining cheap labour from inexperienced students.

Torbreck (1957-1960)
After three years of practice, Job and Froud were commissioned to design a twelve-storey development of 150 individual units, designed to exploit the loose planning regulations for domestic buildings twelve storeys or smaller. Froud won the project through an evocative perspective he drew for first-time developer Rowley Pim. Within two months of the initial sketch, the Torbreck project became the subject of great public speculation, for its innovation well beyond the construction of the time. Torbreck was the first domestic high-rise housing in Brisbane, promoted as “the highest reinforced concrete building in the Southern Hemisphere” in 1960.

The scheme was composed of two blocks, the Tower Block and the Garden Block, situated in on Dornoch Terrace in Highgate Hill with maximized views to the North, East and South. Job and Froud sought to incorporate "new living standards" and consciously domestic detailing into a skyscraper typology, exploiting modernist construction technologies. The open-ended brief allowed Job and Froud to express their architectural ideals, of a “softer version” of modernism.

While the project raised the profile of Job and Froud significantly both in the architectural profession and the public realm, difficulties in the business aspects of Torbreck eventually led to the practice distancing itself from the enterprise, which saw the bankruptcy of one developer and led to the jailing several directors from the second, following a string of mismanaged sales. Job and Froud refused to provide a final certificate for the job.

Architecturally, Froud described Torbreck as “a dream he never imagined would be built”. Following the project, Job and Froud agreed never to work with developers again, subsequently rejecting offers to design high-rise complexes for that reason. The project established the practice in the community of Queensland domestic architects and remains one of Brisbane’s most recognisable domestic buildings.

Practice After Torbreck (1960-1974)
Following Torbreck, Job and Froud expanded their scope to begin designing houses and resorts around the Noosa area, where Job had visited for weekends and holidays over many years. They opened a second office in Noosa Heads in 1962, overseen principally by Job, with Froud taking greater responsibility for the Toowong office.

The 1960s saw the removal of many frugal building restrictions and economic prosperity driving an influx in architectural work in Queensland. Job and Froud maintained constant work designing domestic projects and small scale civic projects, including shopping centres, lawn bowling clubs, medical buildings and coastal resorts, notably Castaway Cove Resort (1971) at Sunrise Beach. Domestic projects from the practice developed to incorporate Japanese aesthetics and climate-based planning, steadily moving away from modernist aesthetics. Riggs Residence (1966) in Kenmore and Cole Residence (1967) in Brookfield are good examples of the new aesthetic.

Through the 1960s and early 70s, Job and Froud successfully ran two practices, designing hundreds of projects throughout South-East Queensland and the Sunshine Coast.

Life after Practice (1974-1996)
In 1974, Job retired from the practice, following an extended holiday and the Brisbane floods of the same year. Froud resolved to continue the practice under his name until his own, which he did until 1986, when the High Street office was disbanded and the practice merged with Thomson Adsett and Partners, where Froud continued to work part-time for ten years until 1996.

Design Characteristics and Influences
Early works of Job and Froud were influenced by postwar building restrictions, which curtailed the size and materials of domestic housing. Many of these restrictions were lifted shortly prior to the establishment of the practice, but they continued to influence the approach to design and construction, as well as normalising the distinctive “post war vernacular”. For their entire career, Job and Froud worked through planning from the basis of a square, perhaps as a throwback to their wartime architectural training. Karl Langer, who had taught Froud, and his “Sub Tropical Housing” were particularly influential to Job and Froud’s approach to planning and place, becoming the principle ideological influence of their practice.

These ideas of place combined with Wurster’s “warmer version” of modernism to develop a regionalist style idealizing livability. Job and Froud’s understanding of place led to gardens becoming especially significant to their designs, sometimes replacing the traditional verandah. In the mid 1960s Job and Froud developed their expression of place in accordance to the pacific rim influence, with particular regard to the writings of Robin Boyd. This is best expressed through the increasingly Japanese aesthetic applied to timber detailing and garden spaces, as well as new ideas about ventilation. The Lane Residence in St. Lucia was designed with a Hawaiian lanai, essentially a central verandah to induce cross ventilation.

Materially, the practice consistently used expressed or rendered brickwork, gable vent terracotta pipes and tiled or fibro roofing, all consistent with the local vernacular of the time. The expression of brickwork typically reflects the budget afforded by the client. Following the concrete construction of Torbreck, the practice gave particular attention to the specifications for concrete elements. As wider ranges of materials became more readily available, Job and Froud experimented with lightweight modular elements and advancements in timber framing, all with particular interest to their suitability to local climate. The practice aimed to express structural slabs, brickwork and timber framing where possible. Froud and Job’s latter works describe a “primitive coarseness” in materiality, which they referred to as ‘inexpensive’ rather than ‘brutalist’.

Job and Froud used Torbreck to express their architectural ideals. Despite the scale of the project, special attention is given to external gardens and terraces, as well as material expression. Brickwork is specified to assume the intimacy of domestic scale detailing within civic scale elements. The aesthetic is given over to ideas of comfort and livability, while the planning is dominated by the prioritisation of ventilation, positive light and efficiency. At its core, modernity is reined in to account for the climate and character of place.

Significant Works

 * Bullock Residence (1955), Alexandra Headlands.
 * Sherwood Kindergarten (1956), Sherwood.
 * O'Reilly Residence (1957), Toowong.
 * Sapsford Residence (1957), St. Lucia.
 * Torbreck Home Units (1957-60), Highgate Hill.
 * Cole Residence (1960), Fig Tree Pocket.
 * Sutton Residence (1963), St. Lucia.
 * Lane Residence (1964), St. Lucia.
 * Ashgrove Bowls Club (1964), Ashgrove.
 * Lyons Residence (1965), Kenmore.
 * Camp Hill Bowls Club (1965), Camp Hill.
 * Mortimer Residence (1966), Indooroopilly.
 * Riggs Residence (1966), Kenmore.
 * Cole Residence (1967), Brookfield.
 * Eadie Residence (1968), Indooroopilly.
 * Mt Gravatt Secondary School Administration Building (1968), Mt Gravatt.
 * Girdis Residence (1969), Indooroopilly.
 * Semple Medical Centre (1970), Everton Park.
 * Castaway Cove Resort (1971), Sunrise Beach.
 * Alroe Residence (1971), Indooroopilly.
 * Boettcher Residence (1972), Indooroopilly.
 * Kedron Park Teacher's College Assembly Hall (1972), Kedron.