Barbecue Design for, 1969

George Surtees design for for Kingsford-Smith Air Terminal

BBQ Stopper

When the $31 million Kingford-Smith airport redevelopment was opened in 1970, its size, modernity and efficiency were all celebrated. The opening publicity proudly boasted that Sydney was now ‘elevated to the status of a “jumbo” airport capable of handling the … Boeing 747 and the Concorde supersonic airliner safely and efficiently’. Twelve planes could be handled at one time. Passengers now boarded through aerobridges, and parked their cars for 20 cents an hour.

One of the terminal’s restaurants was the Copper Barbecue Grill. This very Australian eatery, decorated with hand-beaten and burnished copper, was in fact designed by an Hungarian émigré George Surtees. Surtees had fled the Communist takeover of Hungary in 1949, and arrived in Australia in about 1951.

Surtees’ lively and skilful design drawings seem to capture the commercial confidence and optimism of the 1960s. But they also remind us of the diversity of 1960s’ design—it was not all smooth surfaces and sleek modernism.
Display item Barbecue Design for, 1969

 

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