Melbourne’s high-rise public housing towers are icons of the city’s skyline.

Indelibly associated with the inner-city suburbs, they are the product of hard-fought battles between social reformers, residents’ associations and the sprawling bureaucracy of the Housing Commission of Victoria. Throughout their history, they have been both hated and loved, provoking protests against their construction, and later, protests to defend them from demolition.

All 44 brutalist-designed towers have now been slated for demolition by 2051, in what was one of the final acts of Daniel Andrews’ premiership. The government calls it ‘urban renewal’. Critics argue it is a creeping privatisation program that has already destroyed nearly a dozen walk-up estates. Whatever the lens, the high-rise flats are the last remnants of a time when Victoria engaged in ambitious projects to increase public housing stock at scale.

A precast beginning

The origins of the towers lie in the social reform campaigns of the 1930s and 40s, when slum conditions in Carlton, Collingwood and Fitzroy horrified middle-class reformers such as Frederick Oswald Barnett. His campaigning gave rise to the Housing Commission of Victoria in 1937 and, eventually, to a sweeping slum clearance program.

By the 1950s, the Commission had shifted from low-rise suburban homes to high-density redevelopment of inner-city land. Land costs were soaring, pressure to rehouse thousands was immense, and new technology offered a solution. In 1946, the state acquired the former Holmesglen munitions factory and turned it into a precast concrete panel factory. From there, structural reinforced wall and floor panels were manufactured, trucked across Melbourne, and stacked into towers of up to 30 storeys.

Between the early 1960s and 1970s, 44 towers were built using this precast panel system. For their time, they represented speed, efficiency and modernity. But they also left scars: entire communities were uprooted, and closely knit neighbourhoods were scattered to the suburbs.

A contested legacy

In the decades since, the towers have become lightning rods for debate. For some, they are symbols of bureaucratic overreach and the destruction of tight-knit inner-city communities. For others, they are proof that government can build boldly and house thousands when the political will exists.

Today, they still provide homes to around 10,000 residents. Migrants, refugees and working-class families have built new communities inside them. Many residents strongly object to demolition, pointing out that their communities will be fractured, displaced and replaced by private apartments with only a fraction earmarked for public housing.

Adding weight to their arguments, the engineer who helped design the towers has publicly stated that they remain structurally sound and could be refurbished more affordably than demolishing and rebuilding. Maintenance costs are high – around $110 million annually – but refurbishment advocates argue this pales compared to the cost and waste of wholesale demolition.

Where precast fits today

Whatever path is chosen, precast concrete remains central. The technology that built the towers in the 1960s is not the same as the precast of today. Modern systems deliver superior durability, fire performance, acoustic separation, and thermal efficiency, with the added ability to incorporate recycled aggregates and industrial by-products. Design flexibility is unsurpassed.

• When towers are decommissioned, precast offers the fastest way to deliver new high and mid-rise apartments. Factories can mass-produce wall and floor panels, reducing build times dramatically.
• Large estates often include under-utilised land. Precast enables new mid-rise blocks to be built quickly on these sites, allowing residents to move into modern homes before towers are demolished.
• Precast can rapidly deliver schools, health clinics and community hubs, ensuring renewal is not just about buildings but about supporting people.

Closing the loop

It is ironic that precast gave us the towers in the first place. What was once a tool for mass housing – albeit bluntly applied – can now be the key to a smarter, more people-centred renewal. With today’s advances, precast can help us avoid the mistakes of the past: not uprooting communities wholesale, but redeveloping in stages; not delivering austere monoliths, but well-designed, sustainable housing.

The debate over Melbourne’s towers will rage on. Their history is contested, their future uncertain. But one thing is clear: precast is part of both their past and their future.

If demolition proceeds, modern precast gives us the ability to replace them with better housing, faster and more sustainably than any other method. If renewal is staged, precast can deliver the infill and facilities that make it possible.

The very technology that built the towers can help us build what replaces them… this time, with the lessons of history firmly in mind.

By Sarah Bachmann, Executive Advisor, National Precast

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