Welcome to the jungle
Photography by Yasmin Mund
Yasmin Mund was walking to her apartment in Tamarama’s notorious Glenview Court one day when a disconcerting object sparked a creative note in her mind.
The object was none other than a mouldy onion sitting in a fruit bowl that she spied through the window of an apartment near her own. But it triggered in her mind a cascade of questions.
“I was like, ‘Who are these people living in this building?’” says Mund, a lifestyle and documentary photographer, presently living at Diamond Bay.
“I was like, ‘I’m going to go and photograph as many apartments here as I can before it’s too late’.”
Mund was in a unique position at the time. The building, a brutalist monolith designed in the 1960s by Australia’s most famous architect, Harry Seidler — who later disowned it after developer Walter Rivkin grotesquely enlarged the scope of the building — was about to be completely evacuated of residents in order to undergo a massive upgrade.
The $20 million rebuild of the entire facade was aimed at making the building — variously described as an eyesore, and called names including The Beast and the Tama Toaster — fire safe, and would also perhaps alleviate decades of hatred levelled at it as the ugliest and least satisfying building on the coastline.
The upgrade would be financed by the addition of two penthouses on the top floor, but the size and scope of the works meant that all residents had to move out for the duration of the rebuild (which has now gone on for more than two years).
Mund decided as a matter of urgency that she had to document Glenview Court in its pre-renovation glory, while capturing a glimpse into the lives of the residents, most of whom were paying affordable rents and living in apartments that had not been touched since the 1960s.
“My curiosity was sparked,” says Mund. “Everyone in the building was paying $550 a week for a one-bedroom apartment with million-dollar views. The kitchen sink might be on a bit of an angle and the tiles falling off in the bathroom, but the view was incredible. I thought, ‘I really have to try to capture this’.”
She says she put out feelers in the building for anyone interested in being part of the project. Of the 78 apartments, she eventually accessed 22, capturing the stories of the people living in the flats, as well as aspects of the building itself.
“I thought, ‘I’m going to capture as many apartments as I can’,” she says. “But as soon as I started photographing them, I thought, ‘This isn’t about the building, this is about the people who live here. It’s about the stories, the anecdotes and the memories.' These are what bring a story to life.”
Mund says she met a “really, really eclectic mix” of people in the building, from other photographers and creatives to real estate agents and retirees. Some residents were suspicious about being in the project while others got in touch immediately.
“It was a race to the finish to photograph as many as I could before the last apartment was shut down,” she says. “I thought that was pretty good. I was pleased with myself for getting into that many.”
The project has been turned into an exhibition called Concrete Jungle that was held at the Tamarama SLSC in mid-April and is now a book available through Mund’s website. Prints of Glenview Court in all its pre-renovation glory are also for sale through Mund’s site.
She says the residents who moved out for the upgrade are hoping to get back into the premises by mid-year, with the drawn-out rebuild set to finish soon. Far from still being Glenview Court, the building has been renamed Sky Tamarama and has been given a flashy new glass exterior.
Mund laughs that even though the exterior has been renovated, the interiors remain untouched. So when people return later this year, they might just be feeling like they are stepping back in time.
Will she move back there herself?
“I 100% would move back in there,” she says, while still waiting for her real estate agent to call. “I think it’s beautiful in so many ways. Not just the view but the location and the sense of community.”
Concrete Jungle