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Mary Turner (Mollie) Shaw was born in Caulfield, Melbourne, Australia. She is one of the first woman to be employed as an architect in the early 1930s in Australia and thus pioneered new pathways for female architects. Her career is widely known for her working qualities that made her oversee many projects across Australia. She also became a distinct figure when she became an architectural historian, when she started publishing books and written articles. Her skills were diverse as she worked as a fashion designer, interior designer, project manager, public works architect and pioneer architectural librarian. As well known historian Geoffrey Serle described her, she was ‘a born writer and research historian with imagination, the ability to tell a story and define and ask fundamental questions’.

Early life and education
Mary was born the youngest in the family from her three siblings of well established Western District graziers. Her great-grandfather, Thomas Shaw, and grandfather, Thomas Shaw junior, were distinct figures in leading the development of Australia’s fine-wool industry. Her parents were Thomas Turner Shaw, Grazier (father) and Agnes May, Née Hopkins (mother). During her childhood, she lived in a thirty-roomed house at Wooriwyrite, on Mount Emu Creek near Mortlake, Victoria. In 1916 - 1922, she attended Clyde School in East St Kilda. During her adolescence, She endowed well in debating, dressmaking, drawing and piano and won many prizes. When she was sixteen years old, she was shocked and reluctant to move to seaside Beaumaris when she was told that her parent's house at Wooriwyrite was sold. She moved to London with her mother to continue her studies. She passed two entry exams assisted by her tutor, at LMH (Lady Margaret Hall), that gave entry to the University of Oxford.

Education and Architecture Career
Returned to Melbourne in 1925, she pursued architecture and worked briefly without pay in a small firm. After which, she appealed to her friend, Ellison Harvie’s employer, Arthur Stephenson who agreed to employ her, with the help of her uncle, Oliphant Shaw. In this period, architecture being a male-dominated profession, she managed well, attending evening classes at the Working Men’s College and enrolled in the University of Melbourne Architectural Atelier in 1935. While working for Stephenson, she became well known for her capacity to administer and supervise large projects, particularly hospitals. Later, she became a supervising architect overseeing site work and also specialized in designing areas such as 'kitchens'.

In 1935, her Atelier studies were interrupted when she transferred to Sydney to assist with setting up a branch office. After which in 1937, she was appointed associate member of the RVIA (Royal Victorian Institute of Architects). She went to Europe for a year, worked briefly in London and visited works of modernist architecture, Alvar Aalto and Willem Marinus Dudok. Upon returning to Melbourne in 1939, she formed a partnership with Frederick Romberg, administering and site supervision for Newburn Flats and Yarrabee Flats, which was early examples of functionalist architecture in Australia. During World War 2, she served in the public works' department and worked on munitions factories, food service kitchens and other wartime facilities. In 1942, she became the first woman architect employed by the Commonwealth government. During 1950 - 1951, she worked for Bates Smart & McCutcheon where she became the firm’s technical information officer and worked on projects to construct prefabricated hospitals. After which, she returned to the Public Works Department in Sydney, to supervise designs and construction of Commonwealth Migrant Hostels. She later returned to Melbourne in 1956 due to family matters. In this period, she re-collaborated with Bates Smart McCutcheon, where she is post to collected technical information and archived plans and drawings, which led her to become the first full-time architectural librarian. She has developed many procedures for control and retrieval, while also working as a technical officer in several firms. In 1965 she was elected a fellow of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects (RVIA).

Life as a Historian
From 1968 onward, even after retiring from architecture, she was highly sought-after by consultants in architectural information organization and retrieval. Mary then started her second career as a historian. In 1969 she wrote, ‘On Mount Emu Creek’, which is a description of ‘the closed Western District of a past era’. In 1972, she wrote 'The Builders of Melbourne: The Cockrams and Their Contemporaries' regarding historical architecture events in Melbourne. After which, she wrote five articles for the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In 1987, she wrote 'Yancannia Creek', which was described as her greatest achievement. On 23 April 1990, Mary Turner Shaw died at the age of 84 at St Kilda, Melbourne and was cremated.

Glenunga Flats
Designed in 1940 Architect: Frederick Romberg and Mary Turner Shaw Located: 2 Horsburgh Grove, Armadale

The first decades of the twentieth century and gathered momentum after World War I, the flats building of apartments began in Melbourne. The pattern of living and social life was affected by the war in Australia and the population followed to a shortage of housing. During the war few houses had been built and the solution to the problem saw by the building of flats and terrace houses became increasingly unpopular. In South Yarra and Toorak, there was a boom in flat building by the late 1920s began to surrender to what Wilde (1999:40) describe as "the combined pressures of probate, depression and profit" but it eventually made the resident protest and destroyed the character of South Yarra and Toorak and Prahran Council passed by law to controls over site analysis, building height and construction standards in certain areas in 1933. However, the flat development was introduced contracts prohibited by some new housing estates.

Modernism and influence
The influence of European modernism was demonstrated to the design of apartments in the late 1930 and early 1940s. European modernism was introducing to Victoria how specific its application to flat construction and one of a number of émigré architects was Frederick Romberg and he designed Glenunga flats with his partner Mary Turner Shaw in 1941, which "broke new ground in the manner flat development was arranged"(Lewis and Foster, 1992:205).<

Place History
Glenunga flats at 2 Horsburgh Grove, Amadale were completed in 1940 for Carl and Constance Stratman and the designs of architects were Frederick Romberg and Mary Turner Shaw. Before war regulation stopped all the building, Frederick Romberg and Mary Turner Shaw performed the last private commission for Glenunga. Carl Stratman was the brother of Dr. Paul Startman when he immigrated to Australia, Romberg travelled on the ship Mosel.

Physical Description
Glenunga flats functional plan divides the entry side with the external stairs and driveway from the garden and with the linear planning was accepting the four flats of four rooms each besides the building was no larger than those of the surrounding single residences however with the front boundary wall was surrounded with ivy and the frontage controlled by mature Canary Island Palm.

Romberg and Shaw explained about the Glenunga Flats analysis of the international style became softer with brickwork and stone. The design had texture and contrasts to their buildings so that to avoid the machine made it beautiful plain white by the international style architects. The flat roof form and modelling of form were using the hallmark of style had controlled with the function and grading the spaces however the privacy for tenants achieved with the stepped planning.

The stone wall forming the Europe chalet style chimneys extends vertically to the roof in a characteristic floating puzzle over the shaft and repeated for the rear flats. Glenunga has the angled glass bays which recall about Romberg's admiration of Alvar Aalto's Villa Mairea, Finland in (1937-38).



New Burn Flats
Designed in 1939 Architect: Frederick Romberg with his partnership Mary Turner Shaw and Richard Hocking Located: 30 Queens Road, Melbourne

History and Description
Newburn has four stories assets block of bachelor flats. This is the first self-supporting command by Frederick Romberg with the former partnership Stephenson and Turner employees Richard Hocking and Mary Turner Shaw. The original design was modified to low the costs and meet the client’s new requirements however the building was modern stylist. In 1930, Romberg balanced the flat unit to make it privacy to the balconies, views and north orientation which repeating curved elements by accepting the expressionist formal and the functionalist plan gave a sculptured exterior by bold horizontals of Erich Mendelsohn.

The balconies form used bent corrugated steel and by using 600 by 600 modular steel forms to create the concrete walls and slabs. Romberg hired Gert Sellheim to made a large colourful sundial on the main front wall and an Aboriginal motif in each entrance porch because it inspired by the Swiss practice of integrating art with the building. So the modification of the building was the front rooftop pergola with a pent house in 1950s, painting over of Gert Sellheim’s graphic elements and some internal finishes and fitting the flats. Romberg tried to create a penthouse apartment and office by using glazed in the rooftop pergola at the front of Newburn then an open cantilevered balconies that remind where Romberg lived while design Newburn called Cairo flats, garages and a tiny caretaker's flat shop at the rear of the block.

Statement of Significance
Newburn was one of the first blocks of flats to accept through the characteristic of innovation European architecture of the time with an offset plan suggestive of Gropius’s Berlin housing estate. Design elements connected to Expressionism of Enrich Mendelsohn and interior detailing. This block is the first residential building to use concrete for the exterior as a final finish however it was different from other buildings of the period which engaged the trend curved elements, traditional hipped roof and stuccoed brickwork to keep the reorganized exterior. Newburn was the earliest and advanced for example by the émigré architect Frederick Romberg who later went on to form modern firm of Ground Romber and Boyd in 1953 with Roy Burman Grounds (1905-1981) and Robin Boyd (1919-1971).



Yarrabee Flats
Designed in 1940 Architect: Frederick Romberg and Mary Turner Shaw Located: 44 Walsh St, South Yarra, Melbourne, Australia

History and Description
Yarrabee Flats is known for the architectural style and modernism. It was built for two musicians and it contains five flats. Yarrabee Flats was unusual building in Melbourne because it took a familiar form but the plan in elevation shows detail. Romberg was concern for natural light and the materiality in the form and unrendered brickwork at the exterior walls. It also has stripped awnings to block direct sunlight then it has crusty the rectangular blocks resting on the pilot. In this building’s each level has rounded balcony with curved corrugated iron and a large stone chimney which was applied on the top floor flat in the lounge room.

Similar Buildings
Yarra Flats has similarity with these two comparable buildings from the periods are Standhill Flats and Newburn Flats. The similarity of these building was the cantilevered balconies, opening, the detailed of façade and the windows.

Key of Influence
Yarrabee Flats has carving quality and it gives the character to European modernist architecture. It shows curved lines and bold horizons in those elements. It also can be seen by the inspiration of the work of Erich Mendelsohn and Walter Gropius (the Berlin Housing state).