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Architect Peter Lonergan remembers riding the space-age external lift that rose 13 levels to a rooftop restaurant on the curved BMA Chatswood skyscraper designed by migrant architect Hugo Stossel.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went up and down a few times with a view to nowhere and my stomach in my mouth,\u201d he said of the 1970s curved commercial block at 815 Pacific Highway, also known as the Panorama building.<\/p>\n
A proposal is now being considered by the state\u2019s fast-tracking panel to demolish the building to create what will be the tallest building in Chatswood.<\/p>\n
The news has unleashed a wave of \u201cthose were the days\u201d memories \u2013 and hopes that it might be saved.<\/p>\n
For Lonergan, who grew up on the north shore in this era, the building with its rooftop Chinese-style Moon Terrace restaurant was the closest they came to a lunar landing.<\/p>\n
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View from the north of the Panorama building at 815 Pacific Highway designed by Hugo Stossel in Chatswood.Credit: City of Sydney Archives John Ward Collection<\/p>\n
Stossel mania, though, has grown after social media posts by the Northshore Lorikeet <\/a>and others<\/a>. Hundreds of people recalled first dates at the rooftop restaurant, trying fried ice-cream for the first time, and the exciting lift ride that featured in a 1970s Go Lotto advertisement.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was WOW for a bright-eyed boy from the bush,\u201d wrote one. \u201cI remember the lift and thinking of the movie The Towering Inferno,\u201d wrote another recalling a visit in 1975.<\/p>\n Thanks to research by heritage consultant Rebecca Hawcroft, the city\u2019s go-to expert on modern European architects who migrated to Australia, and a dissertation by architect Paul Georgiades, interest in the Hungarian-born modernist architect\u2019s work has been revived over the past decade.<\/p>\n Architect Paul Georgiades at the Chatswood tower.Credit: Oscar Colman<\/p>\n Born in Hungary but trained in Rome and Vienna, Stossel came to Australia as a refugee from Nazism in 1939. He was an experienced architect before he arrived, having trained in Vienna and Rome and gaining a \u201cgood exposure to European modernism\u201d, Hawcroft said.<\/p>\n Hawcroft included Stossel in her 2017 book The Other Moderns, about migrant architects like Harry Seidler, Hugh Buhrich, Hans Peter Oser, Paul Kafka, a master cabinetmaker, and others. Until then, he was very much under the radar, she said.<\/p>\n She has been working with Woollahra Council to identify modern buildings worth saving. Two of Stossel\u2019s in Darling Point, including Broadwaters, 1957, and Yarranabbe Gardens, 1958, are now up for local heritage listing along with works by Seidler, Buhrich, and Douglas Snelling.<\/p>\n![\"Architect](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/d3dac188a980b573047f0ec0474d7a58097b583e.jpeg\")
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