Ermin Smrekar

Originally named 'Erminio',[1] Ermin Smrekar was born in 1931 in the Italian city of Trieste, near the border of Slovenia, the unusual surname hinting at a Slovenian background.

This was in the early post World War II period, when Trieste, a city with a very long multicultural history, was controlled by joint US-UK military administration and claimed by both Italy and Yugoslavia.

He may also have been influenced by the sculptural, expressive and sometimes historicist Italian architecture of the 1950s and 60s, such as works by Luigi Moretti, Marcello D'Olivo, Carlo Scarpa and architect and theorist Paolo Portoghesi.

The most outstanding of his 70s work includes the 1972 Fisherman's Pier restaurant in Geelong, variously described as like an oyster shell or upturned hull, but also employing angled forms and concrete and timber marked with bold parallel lines, reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright and Carlo Scarpa.

His Eureka Stockade basement restaurant in Bourke Street completed the same year was equally historicist, again with second hand bricks and cast iron lace, and a central circular space defined by a rough timber post and beam structure.

It employs dramatic opposing triangular forms, huge areas of glass, and interpenetrating double height spaces and walkways, described as having "... a kind of discordant splendor.